It is 1433, and the ten-year-old Barbara von Brandenburg leaves her native Germany to marry the Prince of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga. When her husband leaves for war immediately after, she finds herself at the center of one of the most refined courts in Europe, and when, seven years later, Ludovico returns victorious from his campaigns, she has to live with him through the most difficult trials--"illnesses, mourning, and the curse of heredity: all Gonzaga women are born hunchbacked. Based on a series of letters between Barbara and her cousin Maria,