From the introduction: Long ago, somewhere deep in the jungle... There lived an emperor named Kuzco, who ruled over a kingdom in Mesoamerica. Pampered and spoiled since he was a baby by his servants, and practically raised by a very obviously evil- and also, ancient- adviser named Yzma, he treated his kingdom and its people as little less than backdrops to the most important thing in the world: himself. Even his “adoptive parent” was not immune to his self-centered whims, and on the eve of his eighteenth birthday he had her fired.