Where Prince Otto Drops the Ball

Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not a very entertaining book, unfortunately.

I started as a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson. I read Treasure Island and was surprised at how entertaining it was. And I rather liked Kidnapped. But I hated The Master of Ballentrae, and found nothing to admire in Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. I thought I would. I kinda thought I was gonna like this, and for a minute I did, but everything I hoped for fell apart.

Prince Otto is the ruler of a small (like Lichtenstein) princedom in what we have to guess is Germany now. I thought it was set earlier, but it is apparently meant to be late 19th century (when it was written). He is a lazy ruler who likes to hunt and avoid work. The story starts with him hunting and then slipping away from his people. He crosses the border to another small country, where he isn't recognized, and he gets the unvarnished version of how he appears to his people and their neighbors. It isn't all surprising, but it does wake him up a bit. It seems like he wants to do better.

When he returns to the capital, he interrupts a cabinet meeting he was never invited to. His prime minister and his wife and others are planning a war against one of their neighbors (which he has just discovered) and without addressing the secret openly he tries to intervene in his own country's affairs. In part, they are doing it to prevent the country from rising up to declare itself a republic; in part, they are staging a coup for the reasons people always do that. So he presses and they push back; he tries harder, they try harder, mocking him. His wife's betrayal wounds him most, and he believes she is also unfaithful to him. Eventually, he realizes he looks a fool and ends the meeting. He looks for an ally in an old teacher, who supports him at first in taking back the reins, but later convinces him he's fooling himself. He has no leadership qualities, no strength of character, no way to come back from the useless prince that he has been.

Here I still hoped he would do something great. That would be a cool novel. But he collapses. All he can do is go along with the coup and make no fuss. He decides opposing it would be beneath his dignity. He has a chance at some intrigue with a countess who is on the edge of the conspiracy and would help him oppose it, but he gives that up.

The end of the novel is nowhere near where I guessed it would go. It is called a romance, which can either mean just a 19th century adventure novel or a kissing book, and I think he was referring to the latter. Apparently he had started this as a play, and in that form it might have made more sense. Here, though, it becomes a strange animal, with an uneven tone and unappealing lovers.

Disappointing. Unsatisfying. Even worse, the way he talks is deeply disturbing to me. (He keeps lamenting his weakness and unfitness in a way that is just icky. Pull it together, man!)

I would have liked the novel it promised--the one where he comes back, figures out what is going on, uses ingenuity and bravery to set things on the right track, maybe even puts his country on course for democracy, and earns the respect of his people. It doesn't do none of that stuff.

There are some good passages, a few things to enjoy, so I give it a hopeful 3 stars. But I recommend you read Treasure Island instead and never mind so much about this one.

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