In this fascinating and scholarly biography Professor Hatton has tackled the basic problem which any modern study of Charles XII, King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718, poses: where does the truth lie between the vilification of one school of historians for whom an 'illiterate warrior-king' can do nothing right, and the boundless admiration of those who, in search of rational explanations for Charles' policies, tend to a belief that the king could do no wrong?

The framework of the story is the wide-ranging war which began in 1700 when Sweden was attacked by Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland, and Tsar Peter of Russia, a coalition later joined by Prussia and George i of Great Britain. Behind the façade of enemy and Swedish propaganda the central character is discovered: more dependent on others, more complex and with wider interests than usually assumed – a man who regarded someone without mathematics as 'lacking one sense', who cared for social justice as well as for architecture and deserved in some measure the label of 'philosopher' bestowed on him by one of Louis XIV's diplomats.

Riddles no doubt remain, but answers have been attempted to the questions which contemporaries and posterity alike have asked: did Charles' just war of defence have aggressive aspects? Why did he pay homage to Mars but not to Venus? How was the offensive of 1718 mounted and what were its objectives? Was he, as many historians still hold, murdered by someone on his own side or was the shot that ended his life that of an 'honest enemy bullet'?