The story is Burrough's version of the then popular Ruritanian romance exemplified by Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau.
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The other significant difference is the fact that the protagonist lives happily ever after with his princess, unlike the far more tragic ending of the "Zenda" series.
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Set in the fictional European kingdom of Lutha, the protagonist is a young American named Barney Custer, of Beatrice, Nebraska, who is the son of an American farmer and a runaway Luthan princess, Victoria Rubinroth.
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Isherwood's stay with Turville-Petre on Agios Nikolaos has been described as 'farcical but grim', and in 1959 Isherwood wrote a lightly fictionalised version of Fronny in Down There on a Visit, where he is portrayed as Ambrose, the mad king of a small Greek island.