Prince Michael—Boris Anchoukoff

Prince Michael—Boris Anchoukoff is a master-and-servant relationship transformed by murder: Boris’s loyalty to Prince Michael survives his master’s death and passes, in a sudden act of allegiance, to Anthony Cade. It gives personal force to the political struggle over who may inherit the throne of Herzoslovakia, while Boris’s vow of revenge makes grief itself a continuing presence in the investigation.

Identity and Service

Boris is Prince Michael’s valet, a role he describes plainly when questioned. On the night Michael dies, Boris says he went to bed at half past ten and slept in the anteroom beside his master’s room, as he habitually did. Michael apparently left by a second door leading to the corridor without Boris hearing him; Boris allows that he may have been drugged. The details make his position intimate but powerless: he is close enough to serve Michael in private, yet cannot explain how his master left or prevent what followed.

Grief and the Vow of Revenge

Boris interprets his sleep not as an ordinary failure of observation but as a betrayal of service. He calls himself unfaithful for having slept while Michael was awake and says that he is accursed. When Superintendent Battle asks whether he loved his master, Boris answers with an absolute declaration of devotion: he would have died for Michael. Since Michael is dead and Boris remains alive, he promises not to sleep or rest until he has found the murderer and avenged him. His resolve turns the servant’s private bereavement into an active pursuit, although the novel gives no evidence here that Boris discovers the killer or carries out his threat.

A Transfer of Allegiance

After Michael’s death, Boris appears before Anthony Cade and identifies himself as Michael’s servant. He then states that he now serves Anthony. When Anthony protests that he neither needs nor can afford a valet, Boris answers that he asks for no money and will serve him to the death. He steps forward, kneels, takes Anthony’s hand, places it on his forehead, then rises and leaves as abruptly as he arrived. The formal gesture and the refusal of payment make this more than a practical offer of employment: Boris treats allegiance as a bond that can be renewed after its first object is gone.

Political Stakes and Narrative Role

The transfer matters because Michael’s death opens a succession question. George Lomax identifies Prince Nicholas Obolovitch, Michael’s first cousin, as the next heir, while the proposed restoration of the monarchy is entangled with British support and a large loan tied to commercial concessions. Boris’s loyalty, by contrast, is personal rather than financial or diplomatic. His fierce attachment to Michael and immediate commitment to Anthony bring the private language of service into a plot dominated by dynastic claims, political calculation, and concealed identity.

The bond also helps connect the dead prince to Anthony’s eventual revelation. Anthony explains that he had been presumed dead after he spread a report of his own death, and that he had lived under the name Anthony Cade. The evidence does not establish that Boris knows Anthony’s royal identity when he pledges himself to him. Instead, the timing creates a sharp narrative parallel: the servant who has lost one prince chooses a new master just as the novel’s concealed heir is about to disclose who he is. Boris’s loyalty therefore links Michael’s murder to the succession plot without resolving the mystery of the murderer or making Boris’s vow its solution.