Paris

Paris is both a refuge and a crossroads in the history of Herzoslovakia: Count Stylptitch settled there after the assassination of King Nicholas IV, James McGrath first met him there, and King Victor’s criminal network operated from the city. Its theatres, diplomatic connections, and criminal underworld become entangled in the rise of Queen Varaga, the fate of the royal jewels, and the secret letters that later threaten a proposed restoration of the monarchy.

Count Stylptitch and the city

Four years before the conversation in which he recounts the episode, James McGrath was walking through a lonely part of Paris when he came upon six men attacking an older gentleman. McGrath intervened, drove the attackers away, and learned the next day that the man he had helped was Count Stylptitch. The count had a house near the Bois and thanked McGrath in person. Their brief encounter acquired lasting importance after Stylptitch’s death in Paris: a parcel containing his memoirs reached McGrath, with instructions to deliver the manuscript to a London publisher by 13 October in exchange for a thousand pounds.

Paris was also where Stylptitch had made his home after King Nicholas IV was assassinated. He remained committed to the monarchy and declined a later invitation to return to Herzoslovakia as president. At the same time, he was rumored to have influence in the political intrigues of the Balkans. His Paris residence therefore marks a withdrawal from public office, but not necessarily from political affairs. The memoirs sent from the city after his death threaten to expose matters that powerful people would prefer to keep concealed.

Criminal networks and royal ambition

Paris is described as the headquarters of King Victor’s gang. Victor, a notorious jewel thief known by that name in the city, had been arrested there and sentenced to seven years on a lesser charge, while more serious offenses could not be proved. His reputation for daring and disguise places Paris at the center of the criminal history that intersects with Herzoslovakia’s royal history.

Years earlier, the Sûreté suspected that Victor was operating in Paris under the name Captain O’Neill. They also suspected that Angèle Mory, a young actress at the Folies Bergères, was connected to his activities, though they lacked proof. When Herzoslovakia’s King Nicholas IV was due to visit Paris, the authorities were instructed to monitor the Comrades of the Red Hand, a revolutionary organization. The group offered Angèle a large sum to attract the king and lure him to a place where its members could act against him. She accepted the offer, but her ambition soon outgrew the role her employers had assigned her: she captivated Nicholas, who fell in love with her and gave her jewels, and she sought to become queen rather than merely the king’s mistress.

Angèle was presented in Herzoslovakia as Countess Varaga Popoleffsky, supposedly descended from the Romanovs, and eventually became Queen Varaga. Her ascent turned the Parisian actress into a royal figure, but did not sever her connection to the city’s criminal world. She remained in correspondence with King Victor, using a secret code and signing the letters with the name of an English woman at the embassy. The letters were written in English and addressed to Captain O’Neill at his rooms in Paris. Their disguise depended on the possibility that an inquiry into the signature might not be believed, since the contents appeared to be those of a guilty woman writing to her lover.

The revolution and its evidence

The political consequences of the Paris connections unfolded in Herzoslovakia. Angèle’s betrayal of the Comrades of the Red Hand provoked their hostility; they tried to kill her twice and helped stir the country toward revolution. The uprising ended the reign of King Nicholas IV and Queen Varaga, whose bodies were later recovered. The memoir’s account, as recounted by M. Lemoine, connects that upheaval to the secret partnership between the queen and Victor, while leaving open whether Victor devised the larger plan.

After the royal deaths, jewels that had passed into the hands of the crowd found their way back to Paris. Many were found to have paste substitutes in place of their principal stones. The replacement of valuable gems suggests that the queen continued her earlier criminal activity even after becoming a royal; the scale and quality of the substitutions also point toward Victor’s expertise. Paris thus becomes the destination of objects taken during the revolution and a place where the apparent boundary between royal possession and criminal theft breaks down.

The coded letters also had a history of their own in Paris. After the king and queen were killed, Captain O’Neill was arrested there and sentenced on a minor charge. The Sûreté hoped to find the packet of letters in his rooms, but it had already been stolen by a Herzoslovakian intermediary, who appeared in the country shortly before the revolution and then disappeared. The packet’s removal left the secret correspondence outside the authorities’ reach and helped make it a continuing source of danger and leverage.

Paris in the restoration crisis

The city’s past remains active in the later political plot. Count Stylptitch died there, and the memoirs sent to McGrath threaten to disrupt negotiations to restore the monarchy in Herzoslovakia. The proposed settlement depends on British government support for Prince Michael and a substantial loan from Herman Isaacstein’s interests in return for concessions. Because the memoirs may reveal compromising history, their publication threatens an arrangement that reaches from Parisian scandal to international finance.

Paris also frames the succession question. After Prince Michael’s murder, Superintendent Battle identifies Prince Nicholas Obolovitch as the next heir and notes that he had recently been in the United States raising money on his expectations. The eventual disclosure is that Anthony Cade is Nicholas: he had spread a report of his own death in the Congo and adopted the name Anthony Cade. That revelation gives the royal struggle a further link to the city’s history of assumed names and concealed identities, though the available evidence places the false death and transformation elsewhere. Across the plot, Paris matters less as a single scene than as the recurring point of origin for the people, documents, and jewels whose hidden histories reshape Herzoslovakia’s future.