On the threshold of the final resolution, Archduchess Marianne takes a moment to look back at how it all began. Fittingly enough, this happens in the privacy of a small chapel in St Stephan’s Cathedral, in the company of a few of her trusted confederates. It all comes back to her now – the whispered gossip and absurd superstitions that long distracted her attention; the seemingly objective yet equally misleading thread of the fatal shot in the Bohemian forests; until, at last, the half-reluctant realisation of the most intimate soil of love and bitterness where the mystery had first taken root.
Anyone who has ever completed a complex task that has engaged them mentally and emotionally can understand Marianne’s sense of relief and liberation. Over the two and a half months in which the plot unfolds, she has travelled far – from an idle, carefree young noblewoman to a disillusioned Princess with uncommon experience and intellectual self-confidence. Depicting that inner transformation has been my quiet concern throughout the narrative. Whether I have succeeded or not, it is for the readers to decide.
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