Prince Michael Obolovitch and Prince Nicholas: rival claimants to the throne

Prince Michael Obolovitch and Prince Nicholas are first cousins whose relationship becomes a contest over who might inherit the Herzoslovakian throne. The rivalry is shaped not by a direct confrontation between the two men, but by a political crisis that makes Michael the established restoration candidate while Nicholas’s identity, whereabouts, and survival remain uncertain. When Michael is murdered, the succession question exposes the stakes behind competing royalist and financial plans—and leads to Anthony Cade’s revelation that he is Nicholas.

Kinship and the succession question

Prince Nicholas is identified as Prince Michael’s first cousin and, in the absence of Michael, the probable next heir to the throne. The claim is made during a discussion of how quickly Herzoslovakia must find a king after losing its existing candidate. George Lomax answers cautiously that Nicholas would probably be next in line; the later, more direct account from Superintendent Battle names Prince Nicholas Obolovitch as Michael’s successor in the order of inheritance.

That distinction matters because the royalist project is not simply a question of finding a suitable public figure. It depends on the hereditary order as well as on political support, financial arrangements, and the identity of the proposed monarch. Michael’s death turns the cousinship from a background genealogical fact into an immediate political problem: if the restoration is to proceed, Nicholas can no longer be treated as a remote or merely theoretical claimant.

Two possible kings, two political profiles

Before Michael’s death, the restoration movement is organized around him. Herzoslovakia’s Loyalist party supports his claim, and the British government is described as encouraging the plan to restore the monarchy and offer him the crown. The proposed arrangement has a financial dimension: Michael is prepared to grant concessions to Herman Isaacstein’s group in return for a substantial loan intended to help place him on the throne.

Nicholas’s position appears differently. According to Lomax, little is known about him. As a young man he held unusual views for someone of his rank, associated with Socialists and Republicans, and behaved in ways regarded as unbecoming to his position. He was reportedly expelled from Oxford after a wild escapade. A report later circulated that he had died in the Congo, but it proved to be only a report; he reappeared when news of a royalist reaction reached him.

In America, Nicholas was represented as a preferable alternative to Michael for Herzoslovakians who might value modern, enlightened ideas. His early democratic opinions and sympathy with republican ideals were emphasized to potential American financiers, while financial support was solicited in return for concessions. The competing claims therefore involved more than two cousins’ places in a family tree: Michael was the established Loyalist choice, while Nicholas was presented as a candidate whose supposed political outlook might appeal to a different constituency.

A succession crisis shaped by money and secrecy

The memoirs of the late Count Stylptitch threaten to disrupt the restoration effort. George Lomax warns that their publication at this political juncture could ruin the plan to restore the monarchy under Michael. The danger is not that the memoirs will go unread, but that their contents could interfere with negotiations while the proposed restoration and its financial support are still being arranged.

The disclosures about the succession reveal a second layer of uncertainty. Isaacstein and Lomax are dealing with the prospect of a new king after Michael’s death, while Battle presses them to identify the next heir and establish where he is. Lomax says Nicholas had turned up in America, and Battle later says there is reason to believe he had been there until quite recently, raising money on his expectations. Nicholas’s absence from the immediate political scene does not make his claim irrelevant; it makes his whereabouts and identity essential information.

The resulting contest is therefore mediated through reports and representations. Nicholas’s presumed death, his reported return, and his American appeal to financiers all shape how others understand his candidacy. The contrast between the Loyalists’ support for Michael and Nicholas’s effort to secure American backing exposes a succession system in which dynastic legitimacy and political financing operate together. Battle recognizes that the death of Michael has made an already large deal more precarious, but he does not initially disclose the full explanation of Nicholas’s identity.

Michael’s death and Nicholas’s return

After Michael is murdered, Anthony asks Battle who will take the dead prince’s place. Battle answers that Prince Nicholas Obolovitch is the next heir and Michael’s first cousin. Asked where Nicholas is, Battle says that he is believed to be in the United States, where he had until recently been raising money on his expectations. The exchange connects the abstract succession rule to the practical search for a claimant: Michael’s death makes Nicholas’s location a matter of immediate consequence.

The final revelation resolves the uncertainty by joining the two identities that had seemed separate. When Isaacstein asks whether the same loan can be offered to Michael’s cousin, Anthony says that Nicholas was reported killed in the Congo because Anthony himself had spread the report. He then identifies himself as Nicholas Sergius Alexander Ferdinand Obolovitch, explaining that he emerged from the Congo as Anthony Cade because the full royal name did not suit the life he intended to live.

Nicholas’s earlier absence was thus not a simple gap in the succession story. The supposed death was deliberately circulated, and the heir had been living under another name. The revelation also changes the meaning of his American activity: the reported claimant whom financiers believed they might support is present in the room as Anthony, while the expected royal identity has been concealed behind the name he chose for himself.

Significance of the rivalry

The relationship between the cousins makes Herzoslovakia’s political instability personal without reducing it to a straightforward rivalry between two visible opponents. Michael’s candidacy is supported by the Loyalist party and the British government, and is tied to a loan-for-concessions arrangement. Nicholas’s claim is grounded in kinship and succession, but his political reputation and presumed death complicate its recognition. Their competing positions show how the return of a monarchy depends on a mixture of hereditary order, political legitimacy, and financial sponsorship.

The eventual revelation turns the succession plot into a problem of mistaken identity. Nicholas is not simply a missing claimant whose arrival would settle the matter; he has already entered the story as Anthony Cade, and his concealed identity makes the distinction between political candidate and apparent outsider unstable. Michael’s death creates the opening for Nicholas’s claim, while the disclosure that Anthony engineered the report of his own death explains why the heir could remain absent from the public account of the succession. The cousins’ relationship is therefore the hinge between the restoration negotiations and the story’s final exposure of Nicholas’s identity.