I'm lucid, but I still can't think

[sovay]

Good news! According to the ENT this afternoon, I do not have a sinus infection. I have the aftermath of two months of sinus infection and therefore get to put steroids up my nose until it gets better. We live in a wonderful world.

1. I had never heard of Jinwar, the Yazidi women's commune and I strongly feel I should have. Especially since "Jinwar grew out of the democratic ideology that has fuelled the creation of Rojava, a Kurdish-run statelet in north-eastern Syria, since the civil war broke out in 2011 . . . The women's revolution, as it is known, is a significant part of Rojava's philosophy. Angered by the atrocities committed by Isis, Kurdish women formed their own fighting units. Later, Arab and Yazidi recruits joined them on the front lines to liberate their sisters." I should have heard about that.

2. I'm mostly boosting this article about Mesopotamian stargazing because I studied with the professor quoted within. He was one of the best parts of my time at Yale.

3. Discussing the fading of the Ruritanian romance as a popular genre with moon_custafer a few months back, I said that I thought its scarcity in the second half of the twentieth century had more to do with the fact that the landscape of Europe shifted so comprehensively that any further entries would have to be period pieces—after 1945, Europe was simply no longer covered with plausible small monarchies into which English or American strangers could wander and be caught up in swashbuckling intrigue. The essential conceit of creating fictitious, generally Central European countries never died out, but I think the majority of it was diverted into secondary-world fantasy or into more realist modes like Jan Morris' Hav or Ursula K. Le Guin's Orsinia or even Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), which is explicitly a romance until it runs into history. Does this hypothesis actually match other people's experience? Is there an entire school of contemporary Ruritanian romance that I've just missed? Are they just mostly post-Soviet states these days?

It's snowing outside, quietly dusting down into the street. Earlier this evening I watched Johnny Eager (1942) because it was on TCM and I will never cease to love that movie; I ate some goat's milk custard for dessert and kindly did not take pictures of Autolycus while he had his head stuck in the plastic container. I have hopes of actually sleeping tonight.

Comments

[alexxkay]

Not sure if it counts as *romance*, but I've always thought of Doctor Doom's homeland of Latveria as Ruritanian. Mainstream superhero comics had regular appearances by odd little countries in Eastern Europe or the Middle East at least into the early 2000s (when I largely stopped following them).

[niqaeli]

I don't read enough romance to comment on 3 directly but I suppose it's somewhat relevant that, whilst plotting a rock star AU of the MCU, I posited the Odinsons as heir(s) to a non-existent (and Ruritanian) monarchy. The royal line being unbroken, but the country itself no longer existing -- it crumbled apart in the various stresses of the first World War, the royal line ended up in exile, the country got snapped up into various other bits of Europe, etc.

It seems like the logical solution, really! Swashbuckling is perhaps a bit of a difficult sell, but royal family without a country seems ripe with opportunties for romance.

(The rockstar AU cannot be considered a romance as it contains remarkably little romance, or even sex (or drugs) for that matter. I, being a predictable parody of myself, focused rather more on the logistics of putting on a rock show than anything else. *g*)

Off-topic comment is off-topic

[rydra_wong]

But in the middle of the night I suddenly thought ".... has sovay seen A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night?"

So I am here to say that if not, you should; I think you would probably like it, and it has the single finest performance by a cat in a film I have ever seen.

[swan_tower]

Not Ruritanian romance in the narrative trope sense, but I do agree that the role of "small fictitious country somewhere in Europe" is generally filled by post-Soviet states nowadays -- places like Sokovia (Avengers) or this entire list of fake -stans. Alternatively, they get stuck somewhere in Africa. And Brenda Clough's recent time-traveler trilogy involves a fictional Southeast Asian country, Jalanesia. Basically, we're still willing to accept the notion of Country We've Never Heard Of so long as it's someplace we think of as politically unstable; most Americans couldn't list every existing real-world -stan anyway, so it's easy to make room for one more that maybe just came into being or just got overrun or whatever.

But the "small monarchies into which English or American strangers could wander and be caught up in swashbuckling intrigue" part . . . these days, our Ruritanias are more likely to be tinpot dictatorships than monarchies, and the swashbuckling intrigue is more likely to be espionage or military fiction. Which says a lot about global politics, of course. But also our entire relationship with travel and tourism has changed, so that I think we don't imagine the same kinds of narratives in foreign countries as we used to.

[watersword]

Harlequin/Mills & Boon/etc. definitely still do a version of Ruritanian romance, although they lean more to the Mediterranean and Arab states geographically, I think. The fake small monarchy (it's always a monarchy) is pretty much there to frame the kissing and the manliness, and the occasional dramatic ballgown.

[selkie]

I'm so glad you're only irritated!

I am back in the office. We'll see how that goes. Bronchioles are nonsense.

*hugs*
*and Ishtar*

[sartorias]

I think you're right about Ruritanians. They were already an old trope by the thirties (far more popular before and around WW I)/

But Black Panther has the feel, spot on.

[larryhammer]

The Mouse That Roars? Though that's political satire, despite the adventure plot, rather than outright romance.

[choco_frosh]

Yay steroids?

[thisbluespirit]

I have the aftermath of two months of sinus infection and therefore get to put steroids up my nose until it gets better. We live in a wonderful world.

Er, good? I hope it works for you! <3

[a_reasonable_man]

Li'l Abner gave us "Lower Slobbovia" in 1946, ruled by Good King Nogoodnik, and in 1959, Bullwinkle and Rocky gave us "Pottsylvania," ruled by Fearless Leader, but both places are anti-Ruritarian, with no romance about them. In Slobbovia, no one has money, food, or clothes, and everyone stands around waist deep in snow with icicles hanging off their nose, while Pottsylvania, whose population seems mostly employed in espionage, is the native habitat of a Little-Shop of-Horrors-like plant, the Pottsylvania Creeper.

On the other hand, The Princess Diaries (2001) (a film I've not seen) does seem to have been an effort to revive the genre. It was a romance set in "Genovia."

[choco_frosh]

PS: 1) I had never heard of Jinwar, the Yazidi women's commune
Well, apparently Yazidi/Kurdish/whoeverelsewantstocome, but yeah! Neither had I; that is indeed awesome; I hope that the US withdrawal doesn't mean it gets attacked or something.
Well, or it gets attacked, but then they take up arms and wind up taking over the world.

2) the landscape of Europe shifted so comprehensively that any further entries would have to be period pieces
The one late-twentieth-century example of the genre that I can think of fits that: one of Lloyd Alexander's Vesper Holly books that was set in the Grand Duchy of Unwahrschein, Somewhere-in-preBismarck-Germany.
...actually, on reflection, ALL of the VH's are sorta Ruritanian, but that's the one that's the most smack-dab on the genre.

[brigdh]

Thank you for the link to the Mesopotamian article! It was fascinating. I was particularly amazed by this bit:
To escape this, a “substitute king ritual” had to be performed. For this, the actual king stepped down for up to 100 days, and during this time he pretended to be and was addressed as a farmer, while a “substitute king” — often someone from the margins of society — formally became king in his stead.
Sadly, for the substitute king, the only way to absorb the effects of the evil omen was for him to be sacrificed. The real king was then free to resume his royal duties.

I've known of the Greek pharmakós tradition, but I had no idea there was a similar practice in Mesopotamia!

I also agree with your suggestion that Black Panther is an African Ruritanina, which is a neat new way of looking at the movie.