Chapter 9
Neo-Verona was once peacefully ruled by the Capulet family, but the rival house of Montague led a coup against the Capulets, wiping them out. Fourteen years later, Lord Montague rules Neo-Verona with an iron fist. But there is hope for the suffering citizens: Juliet Capulet survived the massacre and now turns her sword against the wealthly Montagues in an effort to aid the poor. When she meets the son of Lord Montague at the Rose Ball, she discovers that he is similarly disturbed by his father's cruelty. As Juliet finds herself falling in love with her sworn enemy, she is conflicted... Is there any hope for a love that crosses enemy lines?
Chapter 0
I suspect you might not be surprised to hear that this is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's play. It tries to go a bit closer to what little we know about the historical Macbeth, and also to give Lady Macbeth (Gruoch) a bit more of a role, but he broad strokes are still much as the play was, and it even includes some of the play's more famous lines. That last bit was a little odd to translate too. The author's foreword says that they used Victor Hugo's son's translation of the play as a source, and changed them round, but I found for the most part they were straight quotes. However it posed a bit of a problem in translation, I don't know how 'modern' that French translation would be compared to a contemporary French translation of the play, I don't know of a 'modernised' 1860s English version of the play and I certainly wouldn't want to try it myself, so I used mainly the original, but left the foreword in anyway.