The beginning funeral
For this story to begin with a funeral says a lot about the scope of the narrative. The funeral also has the idea of royalty woven into it. Not only is King Edward VII royalty, but also nine other kings are present. The kings coming together around death symbolizes their awareness that death is universal. At the funeral, they are united as humans who are powerless against death, although in life they are powerful sovereigns.
Architecting warfare
These leaders depart from the somber funeral and begin plotting more funerals, deciding whether they will participate in upcoming wars. This is a symbol for the strings behind the system, because they are powerful enough to decide the fates of many people. These are the years leading up to World War I, and instead of depicting that war as a tragic accident of fate, this story shows the leaders who specifically planned it, right down to the alliances.
Franz Ferdinand's assassination
The book details the outbreak of WWI with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austrian-Hungarian throne. This assassination sends an unmistakable message to the rest of Europe that what has formerly been the status quo will no longer be. The death symbolizes a pivot-point in the history of the West, and it symbolizes the catastrophic release of the tension that has been growing with new armies and technologies.
The motif of violence and war
The horror of warfare is detailed in several accounts of major battles. These battles speak of the horror of warfare, because many of the technologies used in these battles are technologies that had not existed prior to WWI. The trench warfare in the Western front is symbolic of the tension between superpowers who cannot overwhelm their enemies, such that both sides are weakened more and more every day, draining the resources at home. Other symbols of the times are tanks, airplanes, and mustard gas, which redefine the landscape of war, baffling the foot soldiers who had never heard of such technology.
The Eastern Front
The Eastern front is symbolic in its own way, because the vastness of Russia and their understanding of weather in that region can be seen as foreshadowing, pointing to the future of Russia as a nation, and therefore pointing to WWII and the Cold War as well. The rest of Europe tries to coordinate with Russia, but their attempt to become allies against Germany is complicated and full of back-stabbing and ominous overtones.
