Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson

[regshoe]

As I mentioned, I was planning to read The Master of Ballantrae, his other Jacobite novel, next of RLS's works, but by good fortune I found a beautiful old omnibus of his stuff at the bookshop and of course had to start reading that first, and by bad fortune it does not contain TMoB. (It has Prince Otto, The Wrong Box, The Ebb-Tide and Weir of Hermiston, besides a various collection of shorter fiction and non-fiction; the editor is G. B. Stern, who apparently also wrote a novel about Stevenson, which I may read too. Incidently I have been under a misapprehension about Weir of Hermiston: I assumed that the Weir in the title was the word 'weir', but it seems it's actually a name, in the Scottish landed style, hence the otherwise odd lack of a 'the'—so there you go.)

Anyway: Prince Otto (1885) was Stevenson's second published novel and predates The Prisoner of Zenda, which gave the Ruritanian genre its name, by nine years. I have read very little in that genre (having been reminded of Zenda, I've just put it on hold at the library), and perhaps that's why I was surprised by how swashbuckling this book isn't. It's about the downfall of Otto, last sovereign of the principality of Grünewald, in a socialist revolution; but the focus is on romantic drama and the personal aspects of political intrigue, with action and adventure kept to the background (the actual revolution happens almost entirely offstage). Nor could it be mistaken for a children's book: while nowhere near explicit, sex and the possibility of sex are important to the plot and it's assumed that the reader has an adult understanding of it. Otto, a good-hearted man but not exactly steady, has been shirking his duties as Prince, while his relationship with his wife Princess Seraphina has deteriorated; now she's spending her time in political scheming alongside the duplicitous Baron Gondremark, and is widely believed to be his mistress. Otto is forced to confront the situation when, fraternising incognito with the people, he hears what they're saying about him, Seraphina, Gondremark and the coming socialist revolution. He returns to the palace and events follow—assisted by the Countess von Rosen, a wise and worldly lady of the court who is actually Gondremark's mistress. On the whole the book, rather than arguing about the good or evil of socialist revolutions, seems to be making the milder anti-monarchy argument that it's a terrible thing to do to the royals.

I cautiously and partially retract my earlier judgement that Stevenson can't write het. There are interesting things in Otto/Seraphina; neither of them is without personality, and perhaps the relatively unconventional shape of the relationship, as literary romances go, helps give it character. The omnibus includes alongside each book a few extracts from Stevenson's letters about its composition and publication, and the notes about Prince Otto include the interesting information that Fanny was not in general impressed by RLS's writing of female characters; but 'my wife who hates and loathes and slates my women—admits a great part of my Countess to be on the spot'. The Countess von Rosen too certainly has character; I wasn't really happy with how her motives and fate all ultimately depend on her feelings for men (her unrequited love for Otto, and her complicated love for Gondremark), but I did like her!

I also liked the narrative framing and the way the book uses in-universe writings: it's presented as a piece of real history told us by the omniscient narrator, and at one point includes an extract from a book written by a side character, an English traveller writing a description of the various European courts he's visited. RLS's use of Scots words in the dialogue of 'actually' German-speaking characters is also cool. And the comment about poetry at the end was kind of cute.

Comments

[sovay]

It's about the downfall of Otto, last sovereign of the principality of Grünewald, in a socialist revolution; but the focus is on romantic drama and the personal aspects of political intrigue, with action and adventure kept to the background (the actual revolution happens almost entirely offstage).

I am deeply surprised this was never adapted for film.

[edit] My formative Ruritanian books were Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy: Westmark (1981), The Kestrel (1982), and The Beggar Queen (1984). They are YA novels which complicate themselves politically and emotionally as they go. I have successfully revisited them multiple times as an adult. I wrote a little about them once.

[regshoe]

Was it never? Huh, I suppose everyone was too busy with Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde to pay it any attention.

I like the sound of this Keller! I might try those books at some point.

[luzula]

Interesting! I still haven't got a grasp of RLS’s breadth as an author: he seems to have written a lot of different things. I tried reading the Master of Ballantrae a while ago, but ended up not finishing it: for me it lacked the warmth of Kidnapped. But that was probably me wanting it to be a different story than it actually was. It will be interesting to see what you think of it!

On the whole the book, rather than arguing about the good or evil of socialist revolutions, seems to be making the milder anti-monarchy argument that it's a terrible thing to do to the royals.
Do you mean that monarchy is a terrible thing to do to the Royals?

[regshoe]

He is certainly very variable! There are some authors where, without them being boring or uncreatively repetitive, you have some basic sense of what sort of thing you're getting with each new book; RLS is not much like that.

Do you mean that monarchy is a terrible thing to do to the Royals?

Yes (sorry, I see that was poorly phrased)—wealth aside, having to be a Prince was not a good thing for Otto.