Princess Letizia lives in the magnificent castle of a small principality together with her father the King, and the Chamberlain Anastasio. The young girl is sad and frustrated: she’s being ignored by both the gossip magazines and her subjects. The King orders the Chamberlain to prepare a plan that will help Letizia give her people something to talk and dream about again.
It’s an easy ploy to set up: all she has to do is pretend to fall in love with a poor wretch, Antonio De Biase, an unemployed Neapolitan and professional moocher, create a scandal, and all the magazines will start talking about her. The plan is put into action: Letizia and Antonio meet “by chance”, and the “pauper” is allowed to enter the castle. To be accepted at the “upper levels”, he’ll have to follow the lessons in etiquette and good manners imparted by the strict Anastasio. The boring court life is enlivened by the unexpected arrival of Antonio’s friends Pino and Ivan, and his cousin Jessica.
It will be Jessica who shakes things up a bit in the small principality: the Chamberlain, an overly serious, upright man, suddenly finds himself overcome by the lovely fruit seller’s cheerfulness and simplicity and becomes infatuated with her.
But to win her heart, he will have to put himself into working-class and totally inelegant shoes like the lovely Jessica Quagliarulo’s. Breaking with protocol, it will be the poor Antonio who gives the Chamberlain a helping hand, gradually arriving at forming a relationship of deep friendship and respect that totally cancels the differences between the rich man and poor man.
Romantic and comical situations are interwoven into a hilarious comedy rich with surprises and plot twists.