Brussels, 1562. A cluster of noblemen's servants arrives at court in matching gray livery — a fool's cap stitched with a red hood that, if you squint, looks uncomfortably like a cardinal's hat. Everyone gets the joke. So does the man it's aimed at: Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, Cardinal and chief minister to Margaret of Parma, the most powerful — and most resented — man in the Netherlands.

What follows is a three-year campaign by the Netherlandish nobility to force Philip II to remove him: joint letters to the king, a mass walkout from the Council of State, and a running war of symbols and insults waged at the highest levels of European politics. In March 1564, the grandees win. Granvelle leaves Brussels for what's officially a family visit and never returns.

But winning raises a harder question than anyone in the room that day wants to ask: what, exactly, did they win? Two men who fought this campaign side by side walk away with two very different answers — and only one of them will survive what comes next.

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Intro Music: Hayden Symphony #39
Outro Music: Vivaldi Concerto for Mandolin and Strings in D