Stevenson, Robert Louis
Prince Otto (1885)

An action romance set in the imaginary Germanic state of Grunewald. The Prince and his wife, Princess Serafina, in their roles as heads of state and royalty, have grown apart from each other. As the story progresses, they undergo momentous transformations as they begin to lose these superficial veneers that mask their humanity. The unlikely catalyst for this transformation is a web of court intrigue that includes power struggles, treachery, and deceit.
Prince Otto is Robert Louis Stevenson's third full-length novel. Stevenson referred to Prince Otto as "my hardest effort" - one of the chapters was rewritten eight times by Stevenson and once by his wife.