How can you survive in a society where making a living means making a killing? If you are smart enough to realise that wealth and power lies in the hands of the few, kept of the many, what do you do? Try and live according to some absolute scheme of virtue, which involves serious financial hardship? Or turn vicious and corrupt, and make a sizeable killing yourself?
This is the world Vitoria and Flamineo find themselves in. Flamineo is a servant educated enough to resent his servility; Vittoria is a woman who craves and independence and an identity which her society will not permit. They are primarily victims, learning by examples handed down by mean like Francisco and Monticelso, the masters of realpolitik.
