The Mad King

Rating:
Summary: An early ERB pulp fiction yarn about a European "Mad King"
Review: For those of us who went through a phase of tracking down ACE paperback editions of everything Edgar Rice Burroughs ever wrote, it is interesting to see how many of his yarns were originally published in different issues of different pulp fiction magazines of the day. Such is the case with "The Mad King," a tale of confused identities involving European royalty in the tradition of "The Prisoner of Zenda." The first part was published in "All-Story Weekly" as "The Mad King" in March of 1914 with the follow up, "Barney Custer of Beatrice" appearing the following year in "Blue Book Magazine."

The story is set in the fictional land of Lutha where the corrupt regent Peter of Blentz has been keeping Leopold, the late king's mentally unbalanced son, locked up. But after a decade's imprisonment Leopold has escaped and the regent has his minister of War, Coblich, order Captain Maenck to recapture Leopold. Meanwhile, American tourist Barney Custer is visiting his mother's homeland. Seeing a description of the "mad king," he saves a young woman from a runaway horse and on a whim introduces himself as the "mad king."

At this point ERB pours on the contrivances. The young woman believes him, at which point explaining the truth does no good, because she is really the Princess Emma von der Tann, who father supported the old king and would like to see nothing better than Leopold assume the throne. The whole point of the first part of the story is to get the real Leopold on the throne, which does nothing to resolve the romantic tension between Barney and Emma, especially in light of all the political intrigue. The second part finds that the problems of Barney and Lutha are not settled by having Leopold on the throne and Burroughs plays on the various tensions in Europe that were leading the continent towards the First World War.

Your enjoyment of this early ERB potboiler depends almost entirely on your tolerance for confused identities and your knowledge of European politics in the years before WWI. Burroughs would use the idea of look alike characters often, most notably in a couple of Tarzan novels, which is one of the reasons this is an average ERB offering. Burroughs does have a plausible reason for why Barney and Leopold look so much alike, but that really just amounts to another trick from the same deck. You do get strong dosages of adventure and romance that you come to expect from a Burroughs pulp fiction yarn, but the total package is not especially special.