The Emperor of Portugallia is the tale of a hardworking man and his wife who live idyllically in their small Swedish village with their daughter, Glory Goldie Sunnycastle, whom they adore. She is the light of their lives and they have even deemed the sun to be her godmother. However, when she is 17, Glory Goldie leaves her parents to travel to the Stockholm. After becoming wealthy and well known, she stops writing and decides not to return to her native village and family. Her father misses her terribly and decides that she must have become a great lady, an empress perhaps. And if this is so, he decides that he then is a great emperor, the Emperor of Portugallia. His delusion is pathetic; the old man quickly becomes a tragic figure.