(working draft)
Y’Kar is a distant world where unfettered surveillance captures every moment of life on the nets (you could watch me watching you watch me etc.). Members of the ruling class endure paparazzi-like intrusion whether passing laws or making love. Consequently, in their inability to grasp secrecy or deception, the ruling aristocracy has lost touch with reality and the lives of their common subjects.
Call it Cinderella after the ball. A young widow from the common class has her child taken away. On her quest to find that child she is taken to an aristocratic banquet, given charge of a governmental relief program, delays a revolution and prevents a genocide, has an affair with a nobleman who is then disgraced. She experiences a mystical conjoining, is christened with noble status and participates in an arranged marriage.
Or maybe it’s the story of an arrogant recluse discovering the merits of selflessness.