There is no specific time period for this book, but it must be set when there were kings who ruled a city or country, so around 1300. The kingdom was called Delain and at the beginning of the story it was ruled by Roland the Good. Most of the story takes place within this realm; there is only a small part of the story told outside of it. Roland was the ruler of this kingdom at the beginning of the book and is something of a party animal. He drank often and when he drank he drank a lot. One night he met a woman named Sasha. He eventually married her and had two sons, Peter and Thomas. Peter was born about 5 or 6 years before Thomas. A king usually has only one son, so when he dies the only son will become king, but ever since Thomas was born he has been frowned upon. His father also didn't like him as much as Peter. Sasha dies giving birth to Thomas. Tom was always jealous of Peter and actually didn't like him very much. The king had an advisor and he was also his wizard, this man's name was Flagg. He was evil and wanted to corrupt the kingdom. Eventually he had put a poison in Roland's wine that Peter brought him every night. He put a substance called Dragon Sand in it. What this does is melt your internal organs and set you on fire until you are completely melted. When Roland died, it seemed that Peter had killed him, because Flagg had planted the remaining sand in Peter's room and since Peter brought him wine every night, it seemed that Peter had done it. Then Peter was imprisoned in the needle, the highest point of the castle which is a cell, for the rest of his life. Tom became king and Flagg stuck around to convince Tom to do bad things and corrupt the kingdom. Peter had eventually developed a rope out of the napkin threads he received every day. She took 5 threads from each napkin and received 3 napkins every day. It took him about 5 years to get a long enough rope and escape. When he escaped, Tom had admitted that he had witnessed his father being killed and that he knew about the poison, a very, very long story.