Starry-eyed twelve-year old Larissa Basmajinik vows to marry only for love. Though excited at being an attendant at her oldest sister's wedding, Larissa knows it is a marriage arranged for political purposes, as are most marriages among young members of the nobility in the 1700s in the eastern European nation of Varonobsk. In the journal she has just begun to keep, she records her secret thoughts, including this foolish vow of a child...