Authenticity is a difficult quality to identify in any of "Colonel Redl"'s characters or the posts they assume. Redl's reverence for the emperor Franz Josef is itself built upon the fallacy of myth and deification, as evidenced by the rearing he experiences in military school. Because his lot in life was determined by the charity of the empire, the viewer is constantly reminded that Redl's deeds and loyalty spring from a well of gratitude for a man he has never met and an empire whose nature he childishly understands. It is once he is exposed to the bureaucracy and deceptive nature of the general staff that the true nature of the empire's inner workings is revealed and Redl's own sense of identity begins to fail him. In his unflagging devotion to the antiquated and romanticized morals of the imperial age Redl is incapable of reconciling his ideals with reality, of both his own nature and the reality of Austria. His love of the Empire is authentic, yet they Empire is not, and there lies the tragedy.