A COMMENTARY ON "LUDWIG AND KAROLY"

Andersen Prize winner Gianni Rodari has written a "bible" for fairy tale writers. I have, naturally, got this book, as well as countless stories by the same author: modern updates of "Snow White" (with a factory owner as the Wicked Queen Dowager/Stepmother,  his male personal assistant in the role of the heroine, and a mechanic nicknamed "Sevenwharfs"), "Hansel and Gretel" (with a twist ending: the baker we readers identify with the Wicked Witch adopts Hans and Greta and lovably cares for them, instead of enslaving or killing them), "The Pied Piper" (hired to rid 1970s Rome of motor cars), and "Little Red Riding Hood" (the girl goes to visit her aunt, wearing a green hood, she meets a giraffe instad of the Big Bad Wolf… a completely surreal update!). Not to mention a science-fiction "Cinderella", starring a seamstress on a planet with a republican government (though she swipes a spaceship instead of fetching a pumpkin carriage, she still gets President Charming!).

A couple of years ago, I decided to make an experiment with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: transpose the most known ones into other settings à la Rodari. The still unfinished project consists of a 2000s Pardoner's Tale, set amidst teen drug users in my home district and warning against addiction, and an eighteenth-century Knight's Tale. The latter, "Ludwig and Károly", AKA "The Two Lieutenants", is the story I am going to discuss in this post.

So, the setting is changed to eighteenth-century Prussia. Chaucer's Theseus becomes Frederick the Great. The enemy kingdoms of Feminy and Thebes are merged and identified with Imperial Austria, and so are their rulers with Maria Theresa (who shares the former's matriarchy and the latter's conservatism). Emily becomes Agnetha von Reyter, the only daughter of a widowed fortress governor. And the two young prisoners taken after a lost battle are not only changed from medieval knights to modern lieutenants, but also more fleshed out than their Chaucer counterparts: Palamon becomes strawberry-blond and blue-eyed Austrian Ludwig von Sprüngel, while Arcite is transformed into raven-haired and black-eyed Hungarian Karl Bornemissza, né Bornemissza Károly. They were not only named after Louis XIV and Charles VI, sworn enemies at the start of the century, but also after renowned nonsense writer Lewis Carroll. Unlike the heroes of The Knight's Tale, the titular two lieutenants of my version have a backstory: they are stepbrothers, raised together… but incredibly good friends and fond of each other, willing to share all that they have got. That is, until they are taken prisoner and fall for the governor's daughter…
The tournament is, quite obviously, exchanged for a gentlemanly duel between both rivals, but things turn out quite like in Chaucer's story: Károly shoots Ludwig in the left breast and causes him to fall unconscious on the grass, but the winner himself has been struck in the side, "in between the third true rib and the fourth one": a stream of blood gushes between Károly's lips, and an excruciating pain sears his chest.
Both duelists are taken to the fortress infirmary. "There was no blood on the Austrian's coat": his pocket-watch has stopped the fatal lead from piercing his heart. "Ludwig was alive, safe and sound". But Károly is not so lucky: pale and febrile, breathing with difficulty, he lays in bed between life and death. In spite of being young and strong, he ceases to breathe and closes his eyes for eternity after four long days of struggle. Before dying, he has told Ludwig and Agnetha that he loves them.
The young lovers' wedding and their departure (they leave Prussia for Austria, following their marriage) coincide with Károly's funeral. He is buried in foreign soil: beneath a modest cross that towers above the wildflowers on one of those lush Prussian meadows that once were swamps.
In the end, an older Ludwig and Agnetha couple, blessed with prosperity and children, returns to Her Ladyship's childhood home in rural Prussia. They carry an offering of briar-roses to said cross, which bears the inscription: "LEUTNANT KARL BORNEMISSZA".
"Then, they got back into the carriage, and they kissed in the autumn sunset", ends the story. With a true love's kiss that balances the melancholy of the evening and the feelings of guilt experienced by the married aristocrats upon Károly's grave.

But "The Two Lieutenants" is not only a retelling of The Knight's Tale, but also an allegory on Austro-Hungarian relations: The titular characters start out in perfect peaceful coexistence (it comes as no surprise that the story takes place during the reign of Maria Theresa). The appearance of a "Prussian beauty" (Prussia and other Protestant states during the Thirty Years' War) is the catalyst that triggers their disagreement. It is Károly who dies and is buried in foreign soil after quarreling with Ludwig. And Károly's funerary inscription is in German, with his military rank in said language and a Westernized name. The relationship between the central seat of a multiethnic empire and a subjugated nation is figuratively portrayed as a fatal case of (step-)sibling rivalry.