The Indian Queen

The plot is situated at the courts of Peru and Mexico right before the Spanish invasion – and difficult to follow thanks to an information gap which is filled only in the last scenes and thanks to changes of the location which the reader is likely to miss. The play's protagonists can be divided into the groups of two countries and their respective royal families: the Peruvians: King Ynca and his daughter Orazia, and the Mexicans – divided in a family feud between the now ruling Queen Zempoalla, her general Traxalla and her son Acacis. Zempoalla has, with the help of Traxalla usurped the Mexican throne, Acacis (whose uncle the deposed king had been) is not at all happy about the prospect of becoming the next Mexican king. He remains horrified by his mother’s deeds. There is secondly: the legitimate Mexican line of succession still alive with Montezuma, the son of the deposed king – a man of valour and at the play's beginning, Peru’s successful general. Montezuma has (information of the last act) been educated in the woods by Garrucca who has not told him anything about his noble heritage; his background remains unclear right into the play’s last scenes in which his mother Amexia appears with Garrucca, both supported by the Mexican people who are now ready to end Zempoalla’s reign. Minor characters are Ismeron, a Mexican prophet and conjuror and the God of Dreams whom Ismeron manages to evoke on Zempoalla’s request. In 1695, the play was expanded with additional music to create a new semi-opera of the same name by the composer Henry Purcell.