The beginning of a novel fresco
It begins with the accession of John of Luxembourg to the Czech throne and ends with the death of his son, the Roman Emperor and Czech King Charles IV.
It is one of the most glorious periods of our history, when Prague was the centre of the Roman Empire, but also aspired to become the "second Rome" of Christianity.
The complex struggle of the two monarchs for control at home and abroad was intertwined with the efforts of the North and South Bohemian nobility to consolidate the shaken position of the Bohemian lands and to protect the estates' privileges.
The third level of the novel's plot is the life of the common people through the eyes of the bourgeois Rotlev family. The epic alternates power intrigues and war scenes with the everyday concerns of the novel's heroes, all in a colourful picture of life in the High Middle Ages.
