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In order to keep his lover, Maria Draga, in luxury, Captain Alex Pastitsch of Serbia contracts huge debts, which threaten his military career.  To save Alex's career, his superior officer, Colonel Strádimirovitsch, goes to Maria and beseeches her to abandon the affair.  Although in love with Alex, Maria agrees to the sacrifice and pretends that she is interested in another man.  Without Alex's knowledge, Maria then sells some of the jewels that he had bought her and repays his outstanding debts.

Soon after, Maria returns to her former occupation of cabaret dancer and becomes an enormous success, performing in Vienna, Berlin and Budapest.  While Maria is performing in Serbia one night, King Alexander, the Serbian ruler, visits the cabaret and is immediately impressed by her.  She agrees to accompany Lieutenant Iwan of the royal guard to the King's palace and extracts a promise from him to discover the whereabouts of Alex.

After a night of revelry at the palace, the drunken ruler is visibly disappointed when Maria refuses his invitation to share his bed.  The King summons one of his officers to escort Maria home, and she is stunned when Alex by chance appears.  Assuming the worst about Maria and the King, Alex insults her while taking her home.  To escape the King's persistent attentions, Maria tries to flee to Vienna, but is forcibly removed from the train and brought to the King.

At the palace, the King, whose ministers and military advisors have warned him against pursuing the dancer, proposes to Maria in a half-drunken state, and she accepts, realizing the power she will gain by such a union.

During a military parade held in honor of the new queen, Alex refuses to salute Maria and is sent to prison.  After pleading Alex's case for nearly a year, Maria finally convinces the King to free Alex and reinstate him in the guard.  As predicted by his prime minister and other advisors, the King's marriage to Maria causes strife within the kingdom, and on the day that her son Milan is to be christened, a group of revolutionaries bomb the cathedral where the ceremony is taking place.  Maria instructs Mascha, her servant, to flee with Milan, and then retreats to the palace with the King.

The army storms the palace, and the revolutionary committee, of which Alex is a member, confronts the King.  When one of the revolutionaries shoots and kills the King, Alex is momentarily horrified.  As the new king, Peter Georgevitch, is installed, Strádimirovitsch instructs Alex to persuade Maria to sign abdication papers.  After the Colonel tells him how Maria had paid his debts and arranged for his release from prison, Alex informs her that the document she is about to sign will declare her son a bastard.  When Maria refuses to sign the papers, the Colonel, without Alex's knowledge, orders her brought before a firing squad.  Moments before she is to be executed, however, Strádimirovitsch decides to spare Maria and allow her to live in exile with Alex.  Maria and Alex then join Mascha and Milan in a neighboring country.