Return to Zenda

[argsilverson]

OK firends. Ruritania etc is my old passion, always interesting to game this sort of things but, alas, other things have distracted me (among others a thesis on future hydrogen storage materials I need to write till September! So, far only 10 pages already finished). This is the main reason that I have stopped contributing to the previous Ruritanian thread. So, the title of this new thread "Return to Ruritania" suits me an I hope that I will contribute something here.

Red Orc you did a serious research and put a great effort on locating Ruritania. Something I never did. For me Ruritania lies somewhere between Paris and Moscow, towards a bit to the South East just to suit my other armies.
Now for the serious facts: Having some time I googled and found:
1.- some Ruritania flag. I think the design is interesting and suits the time and the history of a Ruritania.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Ruritania.svg
2.- TVAC has some flags. Among them in the Dark green Army there is one named Ruritanian foresters; See them here:
http://www.thevirtualarmchairgeneral.com/346-Funny-Little-Flags.html

For my taste Ruritania is divided into 4 (maybe a couple added later) or if you prefer duchies. The first named Duchy of Streslau and the second Duchy of Zenda, the rest yet unnamed. Politically could be a form of federation under the King. The first belongs to the King while Duke of Zenda is Michael. Since it is not easy to decide which colour scheme I could follow and distinguish my forces I decided: King's troops (based on Zendarian infantry by WestWind) follow a sceme of light blu/sky blue jacket with dark blue/gray pants and red piping and black/gold pickelhaube. So far there is some infantry and some prussian (Foundry) Uhlans. plans include for ceremonial purposes some cuirassiers in white and gold. The Zenda troops (i.e. Duke Michael's own ) follow a scheme of rifle green (approximately) with bright yellow piping. Infantry is in skakos (Foundry prussian jaegers) Hussars (Foundry's FPW Prussian) and a gun (again Foundry, but crew is in ppickehaubes). Personalities for both sides follow the above colour schemes plus white coats to diferentiate somehow and are based on WestWind's vampire slayers etc, reinformced with some Foundry officers and personalities. Even one WW1 Old glory prussian is drafted into service.
In order to follow them with flags, I tried to find some flags following these colour schemes. So I searched german states flags (mainly from warflag) matching  the uniforms. Due to some crush of various past computers I used I lost trace which ones I used. Hope to research and refind them. I will post asap.

My next plans is to do some rethinking on the rest provinces/Duchies. One of them should be under the rule of princess Flavia with white uniformed soldiers, ala Austrian influence. maybe sometime in the future to add some hinterland hussarettes(!) . For the rest provinces one should include an Italian influenced province  (Just to find an excuse to use uniforms in blue/polish crimson uniform, but having access to the sea and maybe the other a bit influenced to some balkan state (maybe Montenegro if suitable figures would be available - or Greece, just to make me make a Greek besed VSF army). Decisions....

Ahh I forgot, while painting my German colonial sailors I did some mistake and painted quite a wrong all blue uniform. Quite an excuse. Giving them a Ruritanian flag here is my naval contingent but for what water setting? A large river (Donau/Danube) lake (Balaton) or sea (Mediterranean ?). Another decision I have to make.

I think that the best is to develop personalities. I tried to develop a character Lily L' Amour, an opera singer, adventuress, in love (and hate) with Michael or Maximilian, trying to be involved and evolve  Ruritanian matters.

This brings us to another speculation: Is Rudolf and Ruritania the real life Bavaria and Ludwig (so, Lily L' Amour could be Lola Montez) ?  The story of Bavaria and Ludwig has some similarities to the story of Ruritania. Even Nymphenburg seems to fit in Ruritania!   
 

[argsilverson]

After finished the above message returned to the Forum and found an unread topic:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=37827.0
Maximilians palace guard!!!!!

Yes, I think they should guard King's Palace !!!!!

[Red Orc]

Hi Argsilverson! Nice to have you back on board! Good to know Ruritania is still on your mind and your painting table! Good find on the flags too. Certainly plenty of red on them.

I just posted a map from the front piece< from Zenda> I found in the U of South Carolina Library years ago, I think the pub date was several years after the movie.http://theheliograph.blogspot.com

Interesting map - it very much implies we only see the action in the top left hand corner - if that's 'the German bit' and the rest (variously?) Slavic, then basically we're looking at Czechoslavakia here aren't we?

As far as how it matches up - apart from all the made-up stuff, which I'm perfactly happy to accept because Hope never says that all of Ruritania is contained in his books... there is no mention of 'Modenstein' on the map, which (in 'Heart') is Bishop Frederick of Hentzau's see; it's beyond Zenda when travelling from Strelsau, because the Bishop rests overnight at Zenda while travelling from 'his see to the capital'. Now, to be fair, this is in 1734, and Modenstein may have ended up 'over the border' after the Napoleonic re-organisation... so after say 1806 it might not have been in Ruritania. But on my version of the 'Austria-Hungary' map, there's plenty of space for Modenstein in the west of Ruritania (near where I co-incidently marked Hentzau anyway).

[Bogdanwaz]

A great discussion! 

I having been gaming in my version of Ruritania for years now.  Originally it was an outgrowth of a Space 1889 campaign but I expanded it to cover the 17th century and Wierd World War II games.  I am planning on running a pulp WWI game at Cold Wars in a couple of weeks.

I've recently created a blog to chronicle some of this:

http://bogdanwaz.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-try-this-again.html

My Ruritania varies quite a bit from Hope's and is done mostly for laughs so I hope the purists won't be too offended. The concept I use is that Hope did to Ruritania what Bram Stoker did to Transylvania, used an exotic location, borrowed a ruler from a neighboring country, and made up the rest.

[surdu]

I applaud your level of research and analysis.  For me I've always been happy to locate Ruritania "somewhere between Paris and Moscow, two valleys over from Graustark")

I've read Prisoner of Zenda and seen the movies.  Until reading this thread, I didn't even know there were other books.  I though it was a one-off book.  Can you give the full titles of the other books?  I'm going to try to find them and read them. 

What will be the end product of all this research?  Will you publish it?  If you don't have plans, please send me an Email at surdu@acm.org.

Buck Surdu

[Red Orc]

Hi Buck, the other books are:

'Rupert of Hentzau' (1898) - a sequel to 'Prisoner of Zenda', set four years later and with many of the same characters - the two Rudolfs, Fritz, Sapt, Flavia, and Rupert of Hentzau himself.

'The Heart of Princess Osra' (1896) - set in 1734-5, it's really a collection of short stories about Princess Osra and the men who compete for her affections. Osra is the sister of Rudolf III, the Elphberg who came to England and had an affair with the wife of Lord Burlesdon, thus causing the Elphberg traits in the Burlesdon family.

I had no firm plans to publish anything beyond what I put on here or on my blog, but I have been toying with an idea for a kind of gazetteer of 19th century fiction, for gaming purposes. I'm emailing you anyway right about now.


Bogdanwaz - I like the stuff on the blog. Doesn't fit with Hope's but what the hell, it looks like a load of fun!

[S J Donovan]

A 19th C Gazeteer sounds great for this and other imagi-nation period stuff.  Especially if there are reports of other "Imagi-Nation" novels in print, like Winston Churchill's Savola.