The prologue starts with a quote from Carl von Clausewitz's Von Kriege, which states that no one with any common sense would start a war without being clear of two things. First he who wishes to start a war must be clear of what he intends to achieve and secondly how he intends to conduct it. The prologue then goes on to be narrated by an unidentified person from first person point of view. This person tells a story of a time when she was three when she tried to kill her sister by smothering her, but her father happens to walk by the room and caught her before anything could happen, saying "That, never happened." and walking her to bed. The narrator then talks about how as her and her sister grew older she would imagine the ways in which to kill her sister since she felt like her life only existed in relation to her. In the end, though, she didn't kill her sister. She did that all on her own.
