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RURITANIA

                                             January 15, 2022


"Ruritania" was the name of the
fictional European kingdom in Anthony
Hope's "Prisoner of Zenda" (1894)--
which is a remarkable job of bringing   It's sequel from
off an implausible, "melodramatic"      1898 is just as
premise successfully:                   remarkably bad:       IDIOT_PLOT
                                        a serious idiot
An idle British gentleman turns         plot.
out to be a dead ringer for a
distant relative of his, the            The hero has turned being high-minded
king of Ruritania.  When the Bad        and moral into a parody, the
Guys incapacitate the king-- and        beautiful princess has become a
later, kidnap and imprison him--        stupid drip, the driving force of the
our hero is pressed into service        plot is a mindless Compromising
as a temporary substitute, where        Letter and a trusted courier making
he performs excellently,                mistakes that are literally too dumb
impressing everyone including           to believe, despite pages of
The Princess, which is a                narration trying to make us believe it.
somewhat awkward situation,
because his nominal goal is to              It would take a close study of
restore the hereditary king and             both books to determine how
get the hell out of there.                  Anthony Hope papered over the
                                            holes in the first, but fell
"Prisoner of Zenda" is a book               into them in the second.
that aged tolerably well--
just reading it, it seemed
like it might've been written
anywhere from the 1930s on
though the 50s, but actually
it's from the late 1800s:
1894.



For many years "Ruritania" became a
short-hand name for a generic eastern       George Bernard Shaw missed
european country, but also for this         the trick of using a
cluster of romantic fantasies--             fictional country in his
escaping the mundane, into Adventure.       "Arms and the Man" which
                                            also first appeared in
                                            1994-- later he had to
                                            concilitate Bulgaria which
                                            was somewhat insulted by
                                            his depiction as a
                                            backward, ignorant place.


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