AllMovie

This picture, about a mythical kingdom, owes a lot to The Prisoner of Zenda. King Gustav (Howard Hall) and his son, the Crown Prince Oscar (Maurice Costello), are exiled from Ostrau during a revolution, and the prince goes to America with a friend, Peter Hart (Thomas R. Mills). Prince Oscar falls in love with Hart's sister Isabelle (Norma Talmadge, on the verge of stardom), and they elope. But the inhabitants of Ostrau decide that they want King Gustav back as their ruler, and he sends Baron Hagar (Anders Randolph) to America to fetch the prince. The problem is that they want the Prince to annul his marriage and make a strategic match with a neighboring princess. The prince won't have it and convinces look-alike Barry Lawrence (also played by Costello) to pose as him. The denouement comes when both the prince and Lawrence come face to face with the Baron, and the Prince insists that he won't leave his wife. In the age of fancy computer effects, the double exposure needed here is nothing special, but in 1916, it was a big deal indeed.