The Prisoner of Zenda

By Anthony Hope

Rudolf Rassendyll is twenty-nine, comfortably idle and the younger brother of an English earl, and he has the dark red hair and long straight nose of the Elphbergs, the royal house of Ruritania, a likeness his family would rather not explain. When the newspapers announce that King Rudolf V is to be crowned at Strelsau, he tells his sister-in-law he is going to the Tyrol and goes to Ruritania instead, meaning only to watch. Walking in the forest near the castle of Zenda, he meets the king himself, out hunting on the eve of his coronation, and the two men look so alike that the king's companions, Colonel Sapt and Fritz von Tarlenheim, can hardly tell them apart. That night the king drinks a bottle of old wine sent as a gift by his half-brother, Duke Michael, who is known to resent not having the throne, and by morning he cannot be woken. It is the first of Anthony Hope's two Zenda novels.

Description community-written - CC BY-SA 4.0.

Series

• Zenda - book 1

Guides

• Chapter-by-chapter recap of The Prisoner of Zenda
• The Prisoner of Zenda character guide

Genres: action-adventure, classics

Recordings