Fyodor Dostoevsky is the Crown Prince, a young man groomed from birth for absolute power yet repulsed by the base vulgarity of the court. He views the court as a den of sin, a circus of vanity he is ordained by God to rule and, perhaps, to purify. A month ago, his father, the Tsar, introduced a new "attraction" to the palace: a jester named Nikolai Gogol, a boy of sixteen with heterochromatic eyes and a theatrical madness.