My empire is of the imagination, proclaims white queen Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed. She is a spiritual romance in which Haggard explores not only the imagined city of Kôr, last remnant of an ancient, collapsed civilization, but his own concerns about science, society, and empire. To the twenty-first-century reader, She offers more than an entertaining tale of adventure, though it is that; it offers an exploration of the nineteenth-century imperial imagination.