Alice is the Imperial Princess Regnant of the Galactic Empire. At 22, she has been thrust into power after her father (the Emperor) and her two older brothers have all died in various ways. Her Imperial Chancellor, Lord Rupert, does everything he can to support her, but has somewhat different ideas about how the Empire should be run than did his late Emperor. Alice has one major problem: She cannot be crowned Empress Regnant until she marries and produces an heir. But Alice, being kept busy three days a week by interminable audiences with petitioners, and the rest of the week with what she terms "mostly busy work", has no real way to meet young men -- well, reasonably eligible young men, anyway, and of her own age -- with whom she might eventually take up and form a household. And she chafes at the necessity of trying to rule, hands-on, an Empire so huge it cannot be truly ruled by any one person to begin with. She just wants to leave people alone, as her father and his predecessors did for centuries. Then, into her life walks the Crown Prince of a planet many, many parsecs away from the Capital Planet...and her life begins to take on a life of its own...