The Prisoner of Zenda is an 1894 adventure novel by Anthony Hope, in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus is unable to attend the ceremony.

The popularity of the novels inspired the Ruritanian romance genre of literature, film, and theatre that features stories set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe,[1] for example Graustark from the novels of George Barr McCutcheon, and the neighbouring countries of Syldavia and Borduria in the Tintin comics.

The future king and his loyal attendants, Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim, wine and dine their new acquaintance at a hunting lodge.

However, Rudolf V's younger half-brother Michael, Duke of Strelsau, sees to it he is presented a bottle of drugged wine.

While Sapt searches for the King, Rassendyll becomes acquainted with the beautiful Princess Flavia, who is beloved by the people.

When that fails, Rupert Hentzau, one of the Six, visits Rassendyll to present Michael's offer of a million crowns to leave the country.

Rupert privately makes another proposal: Have Sapt and von Tarlenheim lead an assault on the castle.

Rassendyll enters the castle by stealth before then, then watches as Rupert, caught trying to force himself on Antoinette, stabs the outraged Michael.

The charismatic but Machiavellian Rupert of Hentzau has been interpreted by Ramon Novarro (1922), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1937), and James Mason (1952).

Many subsequent fictional works can be linked to The Prisoner of Zenda;[opinion] indeed, this novel spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance.

In a popular but very questionable account, a German circus acrobat named Otto Witte claimed he had been briefly mistaken for the new King of Albania at the time of that country's separation from the Ottoman Empire, and that he was crowned and reigned a few days.

However, the date of this claim (1913), and the lack of any evidence to back it up, suggest that Witte made up his story after seeing the first film version of the novel.

[citation needed] The novel Every Inch a King (2005) by Harry Turtledove takes Witte's story and places it in a high fantasy setting.

Author Salman Rushdie cited The Prisoner of Zenda in the epigraph to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the novel he wrote while living in hiding in the late 1980s.