Katte

In 1730, in the brand-new Kingdom of Prussia and its new capital Berlin, King William imposed his martial excess on the entire state and made his own family reign terror. This later prompted Mirabeau to say: "Prussia is not a state that possesses an army, it is an army that has conquered a nation".

Things could only go wrong between a father who was only interested in war and hunting, and a son who only wanted to play the flute and read French poets. Faced with the King's growing brutality, young Prince Frédéric, ("You can't be serious when you're 17"), finds as an ally, in addition to his older sister Mine, his lifelong confidante, a dashing officer of the royal guard, Hans-Hermann von Katte, with whom he falls in love.

On a day when Frédéric has been publicly beaten and humiliated by his father, he decides to flee to France, with Katte's complicity. Now the King has the fugitives caught up, and, despite the pleas of the Queen, Princess Mine, and all the courts of Europe, he has Katte beheaded before Frédéric's horrified eyes.

This is the argument of the story from which Besset has drawn inspiration to revive the great French tradition of a tragedy in alexandrines.