The playwright says of his work "I am fascinated with this story. Not just as an Iranian, but also as a writer. I find this story to have all the elements of a first-rate Shakespearean tragedy. On the one hand we have the young Mohammed Reza Shah who was left a kingdom by his father. A father who had started from the lowliest ranks of soldiering and ended up a king of a vast and ancient land. So greatness is now thrusted upon the young king who has to carry on the father's traditions of nation building and ruling with an iron fist. He has miracalously escaped assasination plots, faced rebellion and is constantly mindful of the intrigues at the 2500 years old court. He has the added baggage of being compared with his father, Reza Shah The Great. Then we have the prime minister, Mohammed Mosadeq. The grand-grand son of the Crown Prince of the Qajar dynasty who Mohammed Reza's father had deposed years earlier. Mosadeq, by all accounts a brilliant and uncompromising politician, has come up the ranks and is now the elder statesman with an impeccable career as a politician going back some sixty years. Both men know each other well and there is mutual suspicion. Mosadeq had fought to prevent the Shah's father from coming to power. The old king had paid him back years later when he had Mosadeq arrested and thrown into the notorious Birjand dungeon. Years later, complex political circumstances make Mosadeq the Prime Minister of the young Shah. Shah, still not quite in charge, has to tolerate the towering presence of the Old Man." Zia then refers to the plot line of his play: "The play starts one evening at the end of the fall of 1954. Mosadeq is once again in jail, this time after what he calls a coup d'etat and what the royalist refer to as a popular revolt against Mosadeq. Finally, the gloves are off. Shah has challenged Mosadeq and has vanquished. All Mosadeq's men are either on the run, dead, or under arrest. Tonight, Shah comes to see Mosadeq for one last time." When asked about the authenticity of the play's events, Zia answers "That's a hard question to answer. On the one hand, as far as I know, this meeting did not take place. I made it up like I do my other stories. So in this sense, you could say this is a work of fiction. But on the other hand, the two men discuss events which are very much true and are the most important events in modern Iranian history. Of course I tried to be as factual as possible with these facts. I guess you could call my play a work of fiction with roots very much in historical truth!".