An emperor and a king—both childless—met by chance at an inn. Neither recognized the other at first, but each noticed royal mannerisms in his companion. They confessed their identities and their shared grief: no heirs. They made a pact. If one had a son and the other a daughter, the children would marry.
They went home and forgot the agreement. The emperor had a daughter. The king had a son. Both children were sent to study with the same teacher, and there they fell in love. The prince placed a ring on the princess's finger. They were betrothed—secretly, without their parents' knowledge.
When the emperor summoned his daughter home and began arranging matches for her, she refused everyone. She was already pledged. The prince, separated from her, grew so lovesick that he fell ill. No one could diagnose the disease except his servant, who had been with him at school and knew the truth.
The king remembered the old pact and wrote to the emperor. But by now, the emperor had grown proud. He no longer wanted the match. He could not refuse outright—he had made a vow—so he set an impossible condition: send the prince, and I will test whether he is wise enough to govern my country. If he fails, he dies.
The prince traveled to the emperor's court. Along the way, he met a wise man who became his companion. At the palace, the emperor placed before him riddles and trials designed to be unsolvable. But the wise companion whispered the answers.
In Rabbi Nachman's telling in the Sippurei Maasiyot, the story spirals into increasingly surreal territory—a garden that contains all of human history, a portrait of the princess that steals the prince's soul, and a quest that circles the entire world. The emperor and king represent opposing forces in the upper worlds. The children's love is the love between the soul and its divine source. And the obstacles between them—pride, distance, impossible tests—are the barriers that exile places between God and Israel.
The betrothal ring placed in secret is the hidden covenant. The prince's illness is the soul's yearning. And the riddles set by the emperor are the trials of exile, solvable only with the help of the hidden tzaddik—the wise companion who appears on the road when all seems lost.