A Ruritanian Romance is a story set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the Ruritania that gave the genre its name.[1] The popularity of the Graustark novels led to this type of story also being called Graustarkian Romances.
Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the upper classes, aristocracy and royalty.[1] The themes of honor, loyalty, and love predominate, and the books frequently feature the restoration of kings to their thrones.
Although recognizable Ruritanian romances such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Prince Otto were written prior to Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, that 1894 novel set the type, with its handsome political decoy restoring the rightful king to the throne, and resulted in a burst of similar popular fiction,[2] such as George Barr McCutcheon's Graustark novels and Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Lost Prince and other homages.
The genre was widely spoofed and mocked. George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man parodied many elements. Dorothy Sayers's Have His Carcase featured as the murder victim a man deceived by his murderers because of his foolish belief in his royal ancestry, fed by endless reading of Ruritanian romances. In Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, the main narrator has the delusion of being the incognito king of a "distant northern land" who romantically escaped a Soviet-backed revolution.[3] The Marx Brothers film Duck Soup is set in a bankrupt Freedonia. In the satire The Mouse That Roared, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick attempts to avoid bankruptcy by declaring war on the United States as a ploy for gaining American aid.
The popularity of the genre declined after the first part of the twentieth century. Aside from the change in literary taste, the royalist elements of Ruritanian romances became less plausible as many European monarchies receded even from memory, and their restorations grew less likely.
Many elements of the genre have been transplanted into fantasy worlds, particularly those of fantasy of manners and alternate history.[4] The science fiction writer Andre Norton first reached success with a 1934 Ruritanian novel, The Prince Commands.[4] Although "Ruritania" originally referred to a contemporary country, the idea has been adapted for use in historical fiction. A subgenre of this is historical romance, such as Jennifer Blake's Royal Seduction and its sequel Royal Passion; both are set in the nineteenth century and feature Prince Rolfe (later King) and his son Prince Roderic respectively, of the fictional Balkan country of Ruthenia.
The countries of Syldavia and Borduria, in "The Adventures of Tintin" are clearly literary descendants of Ruritania, this origin especially accentuated by the classical Ruritarian plot device of identical twins - one good, the other bad - used to resolve a mystery in "King Ottokar's Sceptre".
Eric Ambler's 1936 novel "The Dark Frontier", taking place at the fictional East European country of Ixania, both uses and parodies the main elements of this sub-genre. And its influence is also evident in the first scenes of Charlie Chaplin's "A king in New York", where King Igor Shahdov is dethroned and escapes his unnamed country for America. The sinister Crown Prince Rudolf, whose country is never named and who confronts Simon Templar in several books of the 1930's also has Ruritanian overtones.
In an odd take on the genre, the 1956 British sci-fi movie The Gamma People is set in Gudavia, a Ruritanian-style central European dictatorship.[5]
Latveria, ruled by Doctor Doom in the Marvel Comics Universe, is a recognisable late addition to the genre - with the manifest anachronism of the series placing an absolute monarchy in post-World War II Europe.