King Philip II of Macedonia was the most powerful man in Greek history when he was assassinated in 336 BCE. He was the first to unify the Greek city-states under his control and was about to launch the invasion of Persia that his son, Alexander the Great, would carry out. Philip won more battles than Caesar, was more cunning than Machiavelli, and had more wives than Henry VIII.

Little had been expected of Philip, the sixth son of a weak king of the Macedonians, who lived north of Mount Olympus and were considered barbarians by most Greeks. His family sacrificed him as a political hostage twice, and he was dismissed by many as an incorrigible womanizer. But as regent and later king, he built an unstoppable war machine and turned the previously beleaguered kingdom into an empire. He suffered defeats and serious injuries on the battlefield but always found a way to recoup his losses.

In this novel Philip has a secret from his time as a hostage. When he got a slave girl pregnant, he freed her and his slave scribe to raise his illegitimate son in the safety of anonymity. These former slaves knew Philip better than anyone else as they witnessed his rise to power and sudden fall.

Even though he craved acceptance as a Greek, Philip repeatedly antagonized the Athenians with his deceptions. The great orator Demosthenes depicted him as a drunken lout. The Persians considered him a dangerous threat to be eliminated. His unification of the plains and highlands of Macedonia did not end a bitter division within his kingdom. His iron-willed mother Eurydice deemed him unworthy of the crown, and he alienated his fourth wife Olympias, who tried to turn their son Alexander against him. But his biggest problem turned out to be the feud between his favorite drinking companion Attalus and his first beloved boy Pausanias