I hide in my garden and look at the treetops — how high they reach now. Will there come a day when it will become “national”? I hope so. But where will I be? Because in a nation, not everyone's love can fit in.

1837, Piraeus. The twenty-two-year-old king Otto returns home newlywed. The first queen of Greece is named Amalia and is a nineteen-year-old German duchess. Her sole duty and mission is to bring an heir into the world.

Amalia does everything with passion and determination. She loves her husband, Greece, and the strange people of her eyes. She becomes familiar with many things, experiencing the striking contradictions of a country searching for its identity, but there are also things she will never understand.

She closely meets the small and great protagonists of the Struggle and the politics of the 19th century and actively engages in the administration of the new state. She endures bodily torture for her childlessness and withstands insults, yet she also resists the exciting new currents of democracy that blow all around her.

Her refuge, the only thing she grew with her own hands, is her garden, which was destined to one day become national.