Wonderland is a country shadowed by the recent, violent civil war 12 years past and threatened by the inevitability of further conflict. Princess Alyss Heart celebrates her seventh birthday amidst the Inventors’ Parade, a highly anticipated annual event: Inventors of Wonderland present their inventions before Queen Genevieve, Alyss’s mother, who decides which inventions are worthy to pass through the Heart Crystal, the source of all imaginative and creative power in Wonderland.

Alyss is bored with the procession and brooding over the absence of her father, King Nolan—who, unbeknownst to Alyss, is away on a mission attending to reports of Redd’s rising military strength—and Alyss uses her imaginative powers to cause mischief, making a pair of her father’s boots dance. In Wonderland, imagination is power: A strong imagination enables one to materially manifest their thoughts and ideas. This ability can be used for either good or ill, and Alyss has the most powerful imagination hitherto seen in one of her age. Genevieve scolds Alyss and alludes to “what happened to your Aunt Redd” (14) as a warning against an undisciplined imagination. Genevieve knows that Redd’s attack on Wonderland is inevitable, and she knows that Alyss’s control over her imaginative powers will be crucial to Wonderland’s security and triumph in the conflict.