The play tells the story of one of Europe's greatest and bloodiest wars, the War of the Spanish Succession, which opened the eighteenth century and shaped the course of history for generations. This great and bloody war could have been avoided if King Carlos II of Spain had had an heir. But Carlos was a disease-ridden spastic and epileptic, the product of centuries of Hapsburg inbreeding. The peace of the world, the life of millions, depended on this pitiful creature's potency. The play, in truly epic style, shows the efforts, intrigues and machinations of the Spanish court to achieve this one end; the production of a successor to the throne. It shows how, in an age of religious fanaticism and superstitions, heretics were burned at the stake, witches hunted and tortured in order to induce the Heavens to produce a solution. And how, in the end, all the machinations came to nothing, precisely nothing
