[1] Mark Franklin arrives on the Mauretania at Liverpool in 1909 with a copy of Shakespeare's works, an old Mexican charro saddle and two Remington pistols in his battered luggage.

Through playing bridge with Edward and his mistress Alice Keppel, Franklin elevates himself greatly in the king's estimation through his easy manners.

Flashman is in his late 80s at the start of the book (as he says, "I'm eighty-eight next May, and I attribute my longevity to an almost total abstinence from tea"), and an important sub-plot involves his grandniece, Lady Helen Cessford, a suffragette.

Her brother is an officer in the British Army and is involved in running guns to Ireland during the Curragh Mutiny, using Franklin's money obtained by Peggy from him by deception.

At the last moment, he changes his mind, and the reader is left unsure whether he intends to return to his unfaithful wife, to possibly accompany Samson who plans to serve in the Legion of Frontiersmen under Frederick Selous, or something else entirely.