At its heart this is a card game. There is no board, the cards played to the table form the 'board' in a sense.

The game is played in a series of phases:
First Player Phase: This is done with a simple dice roll, with highest being first player who will conduct certain actions in the following phases.
Office Phase: The Offices are checked to see if any are empty and those that are refilled. This costs 2 to fill an Office with your nobles, which is usually worth doing as each Office gives certain benefits to the Office Holder.
Political Problems Phase: Ministers responsible for solving the current problems must try and resolve them this phase. A die roll is compared to the Ministers ability rating and if less than the rating the problem is resolved. Sometimes other ministers can also help to resolve a problem (or hinder it) by giving a +/- modifier to the die roll. Failure to solve a problem for 3 turns and you lose the Office, but resolving a problem increases the Monarch's Support...
Crown Events Phase: Dice are rolled and a table consulted. The result varies from a Royal death to a Court Ball to Plague.
Player Turn Phase: A player draws counters. Then he can perform two of the many activities. Third, he may coinsel the Monarch. The meat of this phase are the activities that a player can perform. The pirpose of these activities is to gain more nobles to your faction and increase your status to make the overthrow of the Monarch easier. There are 19 activities to choose from one being for example to consult several Prestige Tables. A favourable result gains you status and wealth, for example, whereas a bad result can see you imprisoned or banished!

Once you have a friendly Royal in your faction you can then try to Usurp the King and success wins you the game.

Thats a brief overview of the game. Some find it a little dry, others find an intriguing world hidden amongst the gameplay. Soon after it was published several errata appeared, some correcting errors, others adding to the game and expanding it. This did improve the game in my opinion and I have the revised rules and tables available from me as a zip file. Review by Brian