A Byzantine princess is snatched and entrusted to a fierce Ottoman warrior to deliver to the sultan as part of a surrender package of the city, until an unexpected overturn of the political chessboard changes all their fates.

U.S. Hispanics are not—most of them, anyway—laying claim to a united territory. It may therefore be objected that Hispanics cannot become a “nation” because they have neither a flag nor a land to fly it over. And if they did, where would it be? A secessionist chunk of the American Southwest? East Harlem? Miami?