The story takes please somewhere undefined in the Middle East, most likely Persia. The story is simple. A king sleeps with different women every night and in the morning he beheads the previous nights' wife because his wife cheated on him and he doesn't trust them anymore. When he meets Scheherazade she asks him if she could tell a story to her sister and the king also sat and listened. When it dawned, he liked it and decided not to kill her because it was a cliffhanger. This happened every night for 1001 nights during which he fell in love with her and eventually made her his new wife sparing her completely.