Johann Friedrich Struensee, town physician and doctor to the poor of Altona – then governed by the King of Denmark – accompanies his monarch in 1768 on the latter’s year-long trip around Europe. During the journey, he gains the trust of the psychologically unstable king and is made his personal physician. But Struensee wants more: together with Queen Caroline Mathilde, who falls in love with the handsome and assertive medic, he increasingly takes over state affairs. Committed to the grand ideas of European enlightenment, he implements freedom of the press and of expression, abolishes torture and serfdom, reforms the school system and curtails the privileges of the aristocracy.