He dreamed of things which might have been, had he been the heir and son of the Empress, instead of the child of her who seemed to him so much the greater lady and queen, his own mother, the dancer; and he came to see that dreams that are based upon regrets are useless and only a factor in the degradation, not the uplifting of a man.

The boy grew to understand that from that sweet mother, even though the world called her an immoral woman, he had inherited something much more valuable to himself than the Imperial crown--the faculty of perception and balance, physical and moral, to which the family of the Emperor, his father, could lay no claim.

From them, both he and his sister had inherited a stubborn, indomitable pride.

You can see it, and have already remarked it, in Zara--that sister's child.
"So when the boy grew to be about twenty, he determined to carve out a career for himself, to create a great fortune, and so make his own little kingdom, which should not be bound by any country or race.

He had an English tutor--he had always had one--and in his studies of countries and peoples and their attributes, the English seemed to him to be much the finest race.