At the center of the book is Childerich III of Bartenbruch, a grotesque contemporary and descendant of the Merovingian lineage. He strives to unite all degrees of kinship within himself through a complicated system of marriages and adoptions. He succeeds in becoming his own father, grandfather, nephew, and uncle simultaneously through four bizarrely planned marriages. Childerich, the last Merovingian in the 20th century, becomes fixated on the idea of the "totality of family" and its full representation in the principle of one man. "La famille c'est moi." However, the Merovingian eventually comes into conflict with other clans, is overwhelmed, stripped of his extraordinary masculine power, and condemned to a shadowy existence.