Ruritania: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:Syldavie.jpg|link=Tintin|frame|
{{quote|''"Stupid National anthem... Look at this flag! Two bears, fighting over a pineapple. What message does this send to the world? 'Come to [[Belarus]]! Where wild animals will steal your fruit!'"''|'''[[Bill Bailey]]'''}}
A Ruritania is a fictional country located in Central Europe or the
The name comes from Anthony Hope's 1894 novel ''The Prisoner of Zenda'', and the concept originated around the same time; the idea itself was at least in part "inspired" by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was viewed by many Europeans as an incompetent backwater. At that time and in most early 20th century depictions, Ruritania had a royal house (of which the King [[Royals Who Actually Do Something|actually did something]], the Prince was dashing, the Princess was a dazzling beauty, and the [[Nice Hat|headgear]] was quite frankly ridiculous), which was forever being schemed against by a lot of [[Evil Chancellor|dastardly usurpers]] or [[Terrorists Without a Cause|anarchists]] and was a source of enormous tension among the Great Powers. [[World War One|That last bit was actually true, unfortunately]]. A good example is, of course, the original. Although it is worth noting that where most examples of this trope are set in the Balkans or Eastern Europe, the original was wedged between Germany and Bohemia and had a Germanic-style culture.
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With the coming of [[Hole in Flag]] revolutions, Ruritania has pretty much reverted to what it started with: ludicrous hair, ethnic strife, poverty, and backwardness. The monarchy is(usually) gone, replaced by a mock democracy run by some [[General Ripper|unsavoury generals;]] the Great Powers are now acting through NATO or the UN. Everyone still seems to hate his neighbours, the anarchists may still be around, or they may have turned into terrorists or plain old gangsters.
If the place shows some of the characteristics of Ruritania, but is also full of [[Dracula|vampires]], [[Wolf Man|werewolves]], [[Mad Scientist
Not to be confused with [[Nadesico|Ruri-]]tania.<ref>You might be thinking of Peaceland there.</ref>
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* The Duchy of Cagliostro from ''[[The Castle of Cagliostro|The Castleof Cagliostro]]''. [[Lupin III]] states that the country is 'Ruritanian' when they first enter it, along with it being the smallest UN nation (population: 3500). A few other miscellaneous Ruritanias were featured on the various ''Lupin'' TV series as well.
* ''Meine Liebe'' is set between world wars in a lovely noble monarchy on an non-existing island in the Bay of Biscay which lives as if it was still XIX or even XVIII century.
* ''[[Iono the Fanatics]]'' is a two-issue [[Girls Love]] manga whose whole plot is about an [[Ordinary High School Student]] being pursued by the [[Loveable Sex Maniac]] queen of a small and obscure European nation. In fact, it's implied at several points that the queen's obsession with having a massive (several ''thousand'' strong) harem of women is partially responsible for the traditional poverty associated with
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** For a while after the "Our Worlds At War" arc, there was the Soviet breakaway state of Pokolistan, ruled by the human version of General Zod.
* ''[[Superman]]'' - Ruritanias were very common in both [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]] and [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]], ranging from simple backdrops for foreign royals to stand in's for Hitler's Germany. The first appearance of Lex Luthor was in a 1940 comic in which he was revealed to be the mastermind behind a war between fascist Toran and peaceful Gallonia.
* ''[[Tintin|The Adventures of Tintin]]'' feature Syldavia, a kind of Balkan Belgium menaced by Borduria, its warlike neighbour. Borduria stands for Nazism in ''[[Tintin/Recap/King Ottokar's Sceptre|King Ottokar's Sceptre]]'' and for Stalinesque Communism in later stories. Syldavia is an atypically detailed version of
The [[Identical Stranger|consul of Poldavia]] makes a brief appearance in the ''[[Tintin]]'' adventure ''[[Tintin/Recap/The Blue Lotus|The Blue Lotus]]''.
* ''[[Spirou and Fantasio]]'' visit the country of Bretzelburg, a [[Fatherland|faux-Austrian military dictatorship]] which borders another imaginary country of faux-Italian flavor, Maquebasta. It is probably a faux-Liechtenstein, a very tiny monarchy located betwen Austria and Switzerland.
* [[Carl Barks]]'s and [[Don Rosa]]'s [[Disney Ducks Comic Universe]] have Brutopia, an obvious name-changed version of the USSR.
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* ''[[Borat]]'' <ref>''Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan''</ref> turns Kazakhstan into a Ruritania as a satire on how first-world citizens view foreign, third-world countries. The country is depicted as a cartoonish backwater, with cars drawn by donkeys and absurdly intolerant local customs. The scenes were actually filmed in a Romanian village. The people of the village didn't take it with much humor when they heard what the actual movie was about. The only real Kazakh in the movie appears in the village as Oksana. The Khazak language featured in the film is all other languages, depending on the speaker. Borat speaks mostly Hebrew with some Polish thrown in. Azamat speaks Armenian.
* The [[Marx Brothers]] movie ''[[Duck Soup]]'' (1933) has Freedonia, land of the brave and free! In a clear cut case of Western Imperialism, the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale insists running dog Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) be appointed President in return for half her husband's fortune to avoid an impending liberation by neighboring Sylvania. (It's not clear whether this is the same Sylvania portrayed in the 1929 film ''The Love Parade'', in which Maurice Chevalier plays a [[Rich Idiot With No Day Job]] who becomes prince consort to Sylvania's Queen Louise.)
* The largely forgotten W.C. Fields classic ''Million Dollar Legs'' (1932) takes place in Klopstockia (chief exports: goats and nuts: chief imports: goats and nuts: chief inhabitants: goats and nuts). The country's out of money and the President's own cabinet are plotting against him. American salesman Migg Tweeney, who's fallen in love with the President's daughter, notices a lot of champion-level athletes among the general population. Since his boss plans to give huge financial grants to Olympic gold medal winners, Tweeney arranges to have Klopstockia entered in the 1932 Games. In the opening scene we see that Klopstockia is
* The 1937 movie musical ''Rosalie'' has the kingdom of Romanza. Its map, which is visible at one point, clearly shows that it is Romania with one letter changed. This is appropriate, as the Broadway musical the movie was adapted from, produced by Ziegfeld a decade earlier, had been [[Ripped from the Headlines]] of Queen Marie of Romania's visit to the United States.
* In Steven Spielberg's ''[[The Terminal]]'', [[Tom Hanks|Victor Navorski]] comes from the fictional East European country of Krakozhia. Though the Krakozhian language is actually Bulgarian.
* ''[[Flying Car|Chitty Chitty Bang Bang]]'' has [[Meaningful Name|Vulgaria]]. It is as much [[Prussia
* The 1940 film ''The Son of Monte Cristo'' takes place in the the Balkan kingdom of "Lichtenburg", where the good Princess Zona (Joan Bennett) suffers from the advances of the unscrupulous dictator, General Gurko Lanen (George Sanders). The eponymous hero (Lewis Hayward) leads the revolution in the guise of "The Torch."
* Tomania in ''[[The Great Dictator]]'', which is a very thinly disguised [[Nazi Germany]].
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* Borogravia from the [[Discworld]] book ''[[Discworld/Monstrous Regiment|Monstrous Regiment]]''.
* Mixolydia is a Slavic Ruritania invented by Angela Thirkell for her ''Barsetshire'' novels. In the novel "Cheerfulness Breaks In," set in the opening year of World War Two, Barsetshire has to accomodate a number of refugees from Mixolydia, all of whom are various foreigner tropes. We learn that the local religion is Orthodoxy, and they have a long list of hereditary enemies among real-world nations. The name is a word-play on the mixolydian mode or scale in music.
* Barrayar in [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s [[Vorkosigan Saga|book series]] is basically a [[Planet of Hats|planet-wide]]
** It's awkward but impressive rush to catch up technologically with peoples around while destroying it's own culture make Barrayar sound rather like ninteenth century [[Imperial Japan]] as well.
* The plot of the [[Agatha Christie]] novel ''The Secret of Chimneys'' is about the murder of the prince of the Balkanic state of "Herzoslovakia", and the identity of the next in line for the throne. Many plot elements are (probably deliberately) reminiscent of ''The Prisoner of Zenda''.
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* James Hogan's ''Voyage From Yesteryear'' has Baluchistan, a tangentially-mentioned (and surprisingly extant, though only as a region in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, and not a state) battleground for the US and USSR.
* ''Agaton Sax'' - This detective drama spoof featured the Balkan (and appearenly Communist) republics Brosnia and Mercegovina. The eponymous detective starts his career by stopping counterfeiters from wrecking the Brosnian economy. Brosnian criminal mastermind professor Anaxagoras Frank is a regular bad guy, and the author, who loved to play with language, gives us several examples of "Brosnian".
* The main character of Rose Tremain's ''The Road Home'' hails from an [[No Communities Were Harmed|unnamed]]
* [[Evelyn Waugh]]'s ''Vile Bodies'' just went ahead and named its version "Ruritania". The ex-king is a minor character who appears at a party and misses his old pen, which had an eagle on it.
* Many [[Michael Moorcock]] works feature the fictional Central European city-state of Mirenberg to a greater or lesser extent, although it's quite a lot more culturally and artistically sophisticated than the usual Ruritania.
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== Radio ==
* The [[The BBC|Radio 4]] [[Sitcom]] ''Man of Soup'' was set in a
* ''[[Bob and Ray]]'' - the "funnies in the news" announcer Peter Gorey (Bob, using a Lorre accent: "Een other news, only vun man vas keeled attempting suicide today...") hailed from Lower Schizophrenia.
== Theatre ==
* The Irving Berlin musical ''Call Me Madam'' has the duchy of
* Marsovia in ''The Merry Widow'' (originally Pontevedro before the operetta was translated into English). By the way, it's a thinly disguised Montenegro.
* In Ivor Novello's ''King's Rhapsody'', most of the action takes place in the kingdom of Murania.
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* ''[[Half Life|Half-Life 2]]'' is set in what appears to have been at one time a former Soviet state. No word has been given on the place's true location, and judging by the accents of all the NPCs you meet there, none of them are from there (seeing that many of them were forcibly relocated.) The only true native seems to be Father Grigori.
** Strangely though, the gas pumps around City 17 are labeled in ''Swedish''.
* In the ''[[Ace Combat]]'' series, the nation of "Belka" is the bad guy country and starts the ''Belkan'' War. The name seems somewhat familiar. Half the countries in Ace Combat follow this
** Of course it [[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As|familiar.]] and of course someone else saw the similarities and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nf-NkV84q8 ran with it.]
* ''[[Chrome Hounds]]'s'' fictional nation, ''The Republic of Morskoj''. Its history labels it as a former Soviet satellite that gained its independence when the Soviet Union collapsed, though they remain strong allies with Russia. Of course, they live in the coldest region of the fictional continent the game is set in. Olyena Guba seems to be the remnants of
* [[Infocom]]'s ''Border Zone'' is set in the fictional Soviet satellite state of Frobnia, complete with gruff officials demanding papers, run-down Soviet-era block apartments, international Cold War espionage plots, and a faux-Slavic language.
* The satirical PC shooter ''Heavy Weapon'' revels in this trope, set in an alternate 1984 where the "Red Star" has declared war on the rest of the world, and the player rolls the title vehicle through nineteen faux-Soviet countries.
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* ''[[Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake]]'' - Zanzibarland.
* Sega's tactical RPG ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' features the not-so-subtle "East European Imperial Alliance" as the villain nation, managing to mix together Tsarist Russia and the Warsaw Pact into one fun, evil package. They also look like [[Putting on the Reich]] [[A Nazi by Any Other Name]].
* ''[[Republic the Revolution|Republic: The Revolution]]'' is set in [[Meaningful Name|Novistrania]], a post-Communist
* ''Apollo Justice: [[Ace Attorney]]'' has the Republic of Borginia, which is vaguely eastern European and has what are probably Gypsies and its language, Borginian, is written in dingbat characters
In ''Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth'' there is Cohdopia, an European nation that was split into two smaller countries (Babahl and Allebahst) as well. As well as as the republic of Zheng Fa.
* Sloborskaia in the N64 adaptation of ''[[Mission Impossible]]''.
* Sercia (presumably a pun on Serbia) in ''[[Time Crisis]]''.
* The Malden Islands and the Independent Republic of Nogova Island from ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]''. Bonus points for them being ex-[[Commie Land
* ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'''s [[Spiritual Successor
* ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'' is set in what seems like a strange mash up of rural Spain, Eastern Europe and Mexico.
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== Western Animation ==
* Thembria from ''[[Tale Spin]]'' was a mock version of the Soviet Union (which was [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|still around]] at the time), with its hostile arctic climate, babushka-clad peasantry, inept and bombastic centralized government that insisted on putting the prefix "glorious" in front of everything and a moribund economy that resulted in constant shortages of everything, including ammunition. So much so that the Air Force had to sometimes employ bathtubs and lunch meat as offensive weapons
It gets worse; they even ban imagination, because imaginative people do not conform.
* ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' had Boris and Natasha's home country of Pottsylvania, an imaginary Soviet satellite where literally ''everyone'' is a spy.
** There was also an arc featuring a country that was actually called Ruritania.
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* ''[[Doug]]'': The country of Yakistonia, home of Fentruck Stimmel.
* The Robo-Hungarian Empire from ''[[Futurama]]'', which manages to be impoverished and technologically backward despite being inhabited entirely by robots. Its capital, Thermostadt, is a robotic [[Uberwald]].
** There's also an in-universe
* Rolf of ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]'' seems to come from one of these, though we never learn what "the Old World" is actually called. We do learn of its wacky customs in one episode, however, which include Folk Songs rife with violence between the singers ("That's my horse!" *SLAP*), "bartering poles", upon which the seller and consumer must balance by their abdomens while conducting business with produce and livestock, and idiots falling into holes being sufficient grounds for a celebration.
* ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'' gives us Zarkovia, a small monarchy somewhere in Europe.
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== Real Life ==
* Short version: [[Truth in Television|Not entirely unjustified]] thanks to Central and Eastern Europe having a long history of conquering and being conquered, resulting in some odd mixing of ethnic groups, religious affiliations and language families, often within a single empire.
* Poldavia (Poldévie) was a fictional country, invented by a French journalist who was a member of a far-right organization in 1929. Its supposed representatives wrote letters to French Senators to ask them to intervene in a Civil War supposed to take place in their country. The prank mainly targeted radical-leftist and anticlerical Senators
The [[Identical Stranger|consul of Poldavia]] makes a brief appearance in the ''[[Tintin]]'' adventure ''The Blue Lotus''.
The politician Marcel Déat in an editorial printed on May 4, 1939, wrote that Danzig was not worth fighting a war over and that French farmers had no desire to die for the Poldavians ("mourir pour les Poldèves"). Déat went on to become a prominent fascist politician in Vichy and occupied France.
Poldavia was also cited as the "birth place" of [[wikipedia:Bourbaki|Nicolas Bourbaki]].
* Sometimes real world politicians are asked about situations in fictional countries as part of a Gotcha test. One example referenced "[[Duck Soup|Freedonia]]" which at least one Congressman did recognize. Others did not.
* In fact, the history of many real-life east-european provinces can explain the mishmash of unrelated cultural elements (German, Slavic, Turkic, Greek, etc.) usualy found in the description of fictional Ruritania. For instance, the real-life province of Bukovina has successively belonged to Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria, Romania, USSR and is at the present time cut in half between Ukraine and Romania.
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