Iris Acht was a famous Zemblan actress and the mistress of King Charles’s grandfather. To facilitate their affair, the King had a secret passage constructed between his dressing room and her dressing room at the Zemblan theater. Iris Acht supposedly killed herself in 1888, but it’s common knowledge that Iris was strangled in her dressing room by another actor who was a member of the Shadows, Zembla’s extremist group. In childhood, King Charles discovers the secret passage in the back of a closet, and this passage later helps him flee the palace after the Zemblan revolution.