Editorial Note on the Present Version

The following text is presented to the public as literary fiction. This designation, however, is not to be understood as a factual assertion concerning the origin, status, authorship, diplomatic relevance, symbolic charge or any possible future applicability of those materials on which the text may or may not be based.

1. The manuscript from which the present edition is alleged to have emerged was, according to several mutually contradictory accounts, found in the course of construction work in a side room of a federal building in Vienna. At the time of the discovery, the room in question could not be assigned to any clearly identifiable office.

2. Whether this room had previously belonged to a ministry, a dissolved advisory board, a cultural foundation, a temporary working group, a subordinate office or an institution not listed in the available directories could not so far be clarified with the degree of certainty required for a contrary assertion.

3. The persons alleged to have found the folder could not be identified. The folder itself has not survived. Several copies exist, whose chronological order cannot be established beyond doubt. A digital scan bearing the file name Annex_3_Lance_PreliminaryReview_final.pdf is said to have circulated briefly among recipients not more precisely identified before being deleted, archived, restored and deleted again.

4. No competent office has confirmed the authenticity of the document. No competent office has denied it in such a way as to exclude a later divergent interpretation. For reasons of utmost caution, the publisher has therefore decided to treat the text as fiction until further notice.

5. This decision must not be interpreted to mean that the events described in the text did not take place, could not have taken place, should not have taken place, are intended, occurred unintentionally or have meanwhile been definitively prevented by appropriate measures.

6. Any similarities to actual persons, offices, chancelleries, protocol departments, foreign ministries, religious authorities, lances, replicas, palaces, ships, heads of state, popes, emperors, federal chancellors, television personalities, water entrepreneurs, spa towns or former skiing champions are either coincidental, unavoidable, historically conditioned, administratively pending or reserved for clarification by the respectively competent office.

7. No invitation, recognition, coronation, transfer of relics, protocol rehearsal, symbolic handover, foundation of dynastic claims, imperial continuity, transatlantic understanding or restoration of the Austrian imperial idea is to be derived from the publication of this book. Should such a derivation nevertheless be made, it shall occur expressly without the involvement, knowledge, approval, denial or procedural responsibility of the publisher.

8. Readers, in particular diplomatic representations, government offices, religious authorities, private collectors, television producers, social media, as well as persons who currently hold or formerly held executive offices, are requested not to treat the following pages as preparatory material for the transport, insurance, gilding, blessing, photographic presentation, solemn handover, diplomatic contextualisation or velvet-lined storage of ceremonial objects.

9. This note replaces all previous notes, insofar as such notes may have existed, without thereby prejudicing their existence, non-existence, responsibility, file status or later discoverability.

The book is therefore to be read, until further notice, as a novel.