Prince Nicholas

Prince Nicholas is the presumed-dead heir whose reappearance changes the stakes of the Herzoslovakian succession crisis. Long believed lost in the Congo, he had in fact adopted the name Anthony Cade; when the identity is disclosed, the adventurous intermediary at the centre of the story becomes a potential claimant to the throne and a participant in negotiations for restoring the monarchy.

Identity and Background

Prince Nicholas is Prince Michael’s first cousin and, according to George Lomax, probably next in line to the Herzoslovakian throne. Lomax describes a young man whose political sympathies were considered peculiar for his position: he associated with Socialists and Republicans and behaved in ways regarded as unsuitable for a prince. He was reportedly sent down from Oxford after a wild escapade. These details make him an uncertain fit for a royalist restoration, even before his whereabouts and identity become the subject of investigation.

The reports about his fate were contradictory. A rumour said that Nicholas had died in the Congo, but Lomax emphasizes that it was only a rumour. Nicholas later appeared in the United States after news of a royalist reaction reached him. By then, however, he was not publicly operating under his full dynastic identity: he had emerged from the Congo as Anthony Cade.

The Succession Crisis

Nicholas’s place in the succession becomes urgent after Prince Michael’s murder. The restoration plan had centred on offering the crown to Michael, with the support and encouragement of the British government. That arrangement was tied to financing: Michael was prepared to grant concessions to Herman Isaacstein’s interests in exchange for a loan of about a million to help put him on the throne. Count Stylptitch’s memoirs threatened to disrupt these plans, placing Lomax, Isaacstein, and the Herzoslovakian Loyalist Party in a politically exposed position.

When Superintendent Battle asks who comes next after Michael, Lomax identifies Nicholas as the probable heir and acknowledges that the two princes are first cousins. Battle presses him about where Nicholas is, and Lomax reports that Nicholas had recently appeared in America. Isaacstein explains the political and financial significance of that appearance: Nicholas represented himself as more sympathetic to modern, enlightened ideas than Michael, emphasized his earlier democratic and Republican views, and offered concessions to a group of American financiers in return for their support. The succession therefore involves more than family inheritance; rival claimants also offer different political associations and financial bargains.

Battle later confirms to Anthony that Nicholas is the next heir and that the authorities have reason to believe he is in the United States, where he had been raising money on his expectations. The information makes the presumed-dead prince a live political factor, even while his true identity remains concealed from those discussing him.

Anthony Cade’s Hidden Identity

The decisive revelation comes when Anthony addresses Isaacstein’s offer of a loan on the terms previously discussed for Michael. Asked whether he can produce Nicholas, Anthony explains that the report of the prince’s death was his own doing: he had spread it, rather than being killed in the Congo. He then identifies himself as Nicholas Sergius Alexander Ferdinand Obolovitch and explains that the full name was too long for the life he intended to lead, so he returned from the Congo as plain Anthony Cade.

The disclosure reinterprets the earlier reports about Nicholas. His supposed death was not confirmation of his fate but a deliberately circulated story, and the prince Battle believed to be somewhere in the United States was the man already present under another name. Anthony’s statement also places him directly inside the political-financial negotiations: he is not merely discussing a possible claimant but offering himself as the prince Isaacstein had been seeking.

Political Meaning and Narrative Role

Nicholas’s concealed identity links the novel’s personal and political plots. The succession follows a violent break with the old monarchy: King Nicholas IV and Queen Varaga were killed in an uprising that proclaimed a republic, and the country remained a republic thereafter. The later restoration proposal attempts to reverse that settlement, but its prospects depend on competing claims to the crown, foreign political support, and substantial financial arrangements. Against this background, Nicholas’s republican associations complicate the expectations attached to his royal birth.

His story also turns on the gap between public information and private identity. A rumour of death, an appearance in America, and the name Anthony Cade each provide a different account of the same man. The late revelation makes those accounts cohere: Nicholas has not simply returned to claim an inherited title but has lived under an assumed identity after arranging for the world to consider him dead. His disclosure changes the succession from a question about an absent heir into a negotiation with the heir himself.