The story of the ill-fated second wife of the English king Henry VIII, whose marriage to the Henry led to momentous political and religious turmoil in England.

Rupp (Jannings) is a former butcher, made rich in the meat packing industry as a result of the reversal of fortunes brought on by WWI. He is crude, uncouth and uneducated. His son, Fred, is the apple of his father's eye and is an auto enthusiast. The widowed Rupp falls in love with a former aristocrat, Helen, now down on her luck and pawning her last heirloom. He proposes marriage and she accepts in order to save her ailing mother who needs a monetary influx to avoid death. Her former boyfriend, Platen, warns Helen against Rupp's intentions - he and Rupp are enemies, Rupp having caused his being fired for protecting a chorus girl against Rupp's unwanted advances. Meanwhile, Graf, a shyster, arranges purchase of a near bankrupt auto manufacturing firm, Phoenix, to Rupp's great advantage with practically no monetary recognition to Graf, who swears revenge. Rupp comes upon his son begging Helen not to marry his father but to return to Platen.

Auguste is an aging prostitute who falls in love with Felix, a younger student. While Felix has strayed away from his parents, Auguste starts taking care of him and spends her life savings into a cake shop to move further away from prostitution, but trouble comes when another woman enters the picture.

A aristocratic lieutenant is forced to resign his commission and give up his career in the cavalry after having defended himself against deliberate provocations by a superior officer who is competing with him for the love of the daughter of a respected privy councillor. His family bans him to New York, where he falls on hard times until a former circus performer helps him to become a world-renowned trapeze and aerial artiste.

In the last years of his life, Bavarian king Ludwig II (1845 – 1886) devotes himself to ambitious architectural projects, which strain the state coffers to the extreme. The monarch, who is afraid of people, also withdraws more and more into a dream world at his various castles. His brother is already in a psychiatric institute and Ludwig is also eventually put under the care of psychiatrist Bernhard von Gudden. The king attempts to get out from under this guardianship at Starnberg lake…

In Vienna, Anna von Ziska is the beautiful daughter of an upper-class family that has lost its wealth. Prince Augusto notices her in a chance encounter and immediately falls in love with her. Anna, however, is unapproachable and would have remained so had it not been for her parents' plight. She at first suspects that the prince sees in her simply another one of his many affairs. Though she will have none of this, she does see in him an opportunity to help her parents. Consequently, she proposes to play the role of the prince's mistress in public for his esteem, but in private to remain platonic.