Complete and unabridged, with 39 full-page plates by Edvard Munch, Christian Hilfgott Brand and Alexei Savrasov. Russia, 1740: the Empress Anna is dead, a regent rules for an infant tsar, and Peter the Great's daughter Elizabeth waits in disfavour while the German ministers at court - Münnich, Ostermann, the favourite Biron - fall one after another. Mühlbach was Klara Mundt, who wrote nearly three hundred volumes and poured the courts of Europe into them; the palace revolution of 1741 that put Elizabeth on the throne is history, and so is the knout at the end. Thirty-nine plates, among them winter scenes by Edvard Munch and coastal landscapes by Semyon Shchedrin, carry the northern cold and the Russian court through the book.

Luise Mühlbach (1814-1873) was the pen name of German author Clara Mundt. She wrote historical novels centered on European royalty and political figures, among them Joseph II and His Court, The Daughter of an Empress, and Henry VIII and His Court.