Level 1 · 15 August 1785
The Necklace
- Turns
- 10 turns, a week each
- Map
- 12 districts
The Revolution
A cardinal, a countess and a necklace worth a province. Nobody knows the truth, which is all the better: Lerouge has the story half printed already. Spread it, quietly, before the Watch finds the press.
Objective
Keep 3 Pamphleteers active in 3 districts for 4 turns, with Heat under 50
Stars
- Win the level
- Win within 7 turns
- Keep Heat under 30
The game's hint Click a district to recruit Pamphleteers. They are hard to see; keep them apart. End the turn with Space.
- Won
- The libel is everywhere
- Lost
- The press is found
The Law
A scandal about the queen is loose in the city, printed somewhere on a hidden press. Vaudray wants the printer before the first copies reach the salons. Three districts are suspected.
Objective
Find and arrest the hidden printer
Stars
- Win the level
- Win within 7 turns
- Keep Legitimacy above 60
The game's hint Move your Informants into the suspected districts: the Latin Quarter, the Palais-Royal and the Temple. When the printer is revealed, a lettre de cachet takes him.
- Won
- The press is found
- Lost
- The libel is everywhere
Events
News that reaches both sides during the level. Each side answers for itself.
The necklace and the cardinal
A cardinal arrested in his robes at Versailles. A jeweller unpaid. A queen who swears she never ordered the thing. Every café in Paris has a theory.
The Revolution
What happensOpinion +4
The Law
What happensOpinion −4
After the level
After level 1 · 31 May 1786
The Cardinal's Trial
The Revolution
The cardinal is acquitted and the crowd outside the Palace of Justice cheers as if the queen had lost. Lerouge wants to print a cartoon of her. The Moderates want to pay for the defence of the countess instead, and look respectable.
- Print the cartoonVoices loyalty +10Heat +10
- Fund the defenceModerates loyalty +10
The Law
The Parlement has acquitted the cardinal. The king can exile him anyway, and look strong, or let the matter fall silent.
- Exile the cardinalGovernment loyalty +10Opinion −5
- Let it fall silentLegitimacy +5
This level's booklet page
I. The Necklace
The story arrived in Paris before the facts did: a necklace of six hundred diamonds, a cardinal who thought he was buying the queen's favour, a countess who sold the stones in London, and a queen who had never asked for any of it.
If the Revolution won
By the end of the month the libel was in every café. Lerouge's sheets passed from hand to hand under the tables of the Procope, and the Watch never found the press.
Otherwise
Vaudray's men found the press in a cellar and the printer in his nightshirt. The sheets were burned in the courtyard of the Châtelet. A few copies survived, as copies do.
If the Revolution chose “Print the cartoon”
Lerouge drew the queen as a jeweller's dummy hung with diamonds. Everyone laughed, and the Watch noted who laughed loudest.
If the Revolution chose “Fund the defence”
The lodge paid quietly for the countess's lawyers. It made the Moderates look like friends of justice, which is what they wished to be.
If the Law chose “Exile the cardinal”
The king exiled the cardinal to an abbey in the Auvergne, against the judgment of his own Parlement. It looked like strength at Versailles and like spite in Paris.
Otherwise
The Crown let the matter fall silent. Silence, Valmont-Hesse said, costs nothing; he was wrong about most things, but not about that.