In February 1815, some twenty – three years after the proclamation of the First Republic, a king, Louis the XVIII, once again sits on the Throne of France. He succeeds Emperor Napoleon I, defeated ten months earlier by a coalition of the great European powers united against him. Now banished from Europe’s continental Territory, the deposed sovereign is relegated to the throne of the Principality of Elba, a minuscule Island in the Mediterranean sea, off the coast of Tuscany. It is there that begins the saga of Edmond Dantes soon to be reborn as Count of Monte Cristo.