Late nineteenth century. Jarma is a small Asian kingdom that stands between the green of the rice paddies of Thai Samuthprakarn diamond crown beautiful tropical sea of French Indochina. For Maia, the young princess of Jarma, and Gabriel Barthes, the son of a French advisor their King. differences of race and class do not count. Instigated by the sweet wisdom of the monk Li, both young men are promised eternal fidelity. But the swirl of the separate colonial history of the cruelest form when a sinister character assassinate the brother of Maia.