Fin-de-siècle Vienna ... a glittering city of waltzes on the edge of an abyss, where a new century will be born one bright January morning in an act of savage violence.
Young Sigmund Freud watches as the Royal Hapsburgs are swept down an Oedipal whirlpool of love and rage. He and friend Gustav Klimt -- the artist whose shimmering gold canvases will soon seduce the world -- stare in disbelief as the fate of the Empire rests on an indecisive, melancholic Prince, a half-mad anorexic Empress, an iron-fisted reactionary Emperor -- and a 16-year-old social climber whose affair with the Crown Prince threatens to topple the entire Empire.
