The King's Scapegoat

A first-person narrator recounts how misfortune made him a royal envoy and how he returned to private life, telling of the missions, intrigues, and reckonings that followed. The story shifts between Paris and provincial centers as diplomacy, plots, and counterplots unfold among rival interests and courtly powers. Political maneuvering and clandestine missions are interwoven with personal episodes of deceit, tenderness, and a developing romantic attachment that offers redemption. The narrative builds toward dangerous confrontations—a lie to save a life, a desperate pursuit, and an appeal to sovereign mercy—that test loyalties and reveal unexpected consequences for both ruler and emissary.