Ruritanian romance is a genre of literature, film and theatre comprising novels, stories, plays and films set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the "Ruritania" that gave the genre its name. Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty, although (for instance) Winston Churchill's novel Savrola, in every other way a typical example of the genre, concerns a revolution to restore rightful parliamentary government in the republican country of Laurania. The themes of honor, loyalty and love predominate, and the works frequently feature the restoration of legitimate government after a period of usurpation or dictatorship. History of the genre Romantic stories about the royalty of a fictional kingdom were common, for instance Robert Louis Stevenson's Prince Otto (1885). But it was the great popularity of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) which set the type, with its handsome political decoy restoring the rightful king to the throne, and resulted in a burst of similar popular fiction, such as George Barr McCutcheon's Graustark novels (1901–27) and Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Lost Prince (1915), Edgar Rice Burrough's The Mad King of Lutha (1914), and other homages. In children's literature, the 1938–39 The Adventures of Tintin comic King Ottokar's Sceptre eschewed literal romance, but is an adventure about foiling a plot to depose the king of Syldavia. Literary critic John Sutherland says Eric Ambler brought the Ruritanian romance to "its highest pitch" with his 1939 novel The Mask of Dimitrios. An earlier venture into Ruritanian themes was Ambler's very first novel, The Dark Frontier (1936), set in the fictional Balkan country of Ixania. George MacDonald Fraser's 1970 novel Royal Flash and the 1975 film Royal Flash based on it are set in the fictional Duchy of Strackenz, and its plot freely borrows many elements of Anthony Hope's book; indeed, Fraser's protagonist Harry Flashman audaciously claims that Hope had plagiarised his own exploits. The genre was widely spoofed and mocked. George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man (1894) parodied many elements. Dorothy Sayers's Have His Carcase (1932) featured as the murder victim a man deceived by his murderers because of his foolish belief in his royal ancestry, fed by endless reading of Ruritanian romances. The Marx Brothers film Duck Soup (1933) is set in a bankrupt Freedonia. Antal Szerb's Oliver VII (1943)