King Ottokar's Sceptre

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King Ottokar's Sceptre (Le Sceptre d'Ottokar) is a one of a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring the young reporter Tintin. King Ottokar's Sceptre is the eighth in the series. The first strip was published in "Le Petit Vingtième" on 4th August 1938. A new colour version was drawn and published in 1947.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Tintin goes to Syldavia, a European country invented by Hergé, and prevents a takeover by the neighboring Bordurians.

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The storyline

Tintin finds a lost briefcase and returns it to the owner, Professor Hector Alembick, who is a sigilographer, an expert on seals. He shows Tintin his collection of seals, including one belonging to a Syldavian king. Tintin then discovers that he and Alembick are under surveillance by some strange men. His flat is even bombed in an attempt to kill him.

Suspecting a Syldavian connection, Tintin offers to accompany Alembick to Syldavia for research.

On the plane Tintin begins to suspect his companion. The Alembick travelling with him doesn't smoke and doesn't seem to need the spectacles he wears, while the Alembick he first met smoked heavily and had very poor eyesight. Then the pilot opens a trap door and Tintin falls out, landing in a haywagon.

Tintin has a hunch that a plot is afoot to steal King Ottokar's Sceptre. In Syldavia, the king must possess the sceptre to rule. Every year he rides in a parade carrying it, while the people sing the national anthem ("Rejoice, Syldavia!/This is our king/The sceptre is his witness/Of its feats I will sing!" or in some English translations "Syldavians unite!/Praise our King's might;/The Sceptre his right!").

Tintin succeeds in warning the King despite the efforts of the conspirators. He and the King rush to the treasure room to find Alembick, his photographer and some guards unconscious. But the sceptre is missing. How did it leave the strongroom? Later, Tintin notices a spring cannon in a toy shop and this gives him the clue. He returns to the treasure room and demonstrates that the camera is really a spring cannon in disguise - it must have let the conspirators fire the sceptre across the castle moat into a nearby birch forest.

Rushing out, Tintin spots the sceptre being found by agents of the neighbouring country, Borduria. Following them all the way to the border, he wrests the sceptre from them and steals a plane to fly it back to the King in time. Shot down, he manages to make the rest of the journey by foot; Snowy runs in with the sceptre (which had fallen out of Tintin's pocket) just as King Muskar is about to abdicate.

The King makes Tintin a Knight of the Order of the Golden Pelican, the first foreigner to be so honoured. It is discovered that Professor Alembick is one of a pair of identical twins; Hector was kidnapped and replaced with his brother Alfred who left for Syldavia in his place.

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Notes

In this adventure Tintin first met Bianca Castafiore.

Originally published in black-and-white in 1938, the story was redrawn in 1947 in colour. Hergé redrew and colourised it with the help of Edgar Pierre Jacobs who is credited with much of the Balkan feel of the new edition. For instance, in the 1938 version, the Syldavian Royal Guard are dressed like British Beefeaters, while the 1947 version have them dressed in a more Balkan-like uniform.

Like earlier albums The Blue Lotus and The Broken Ear, King Ottokar's Sceptre has a political subtext. Written in the late 1930s, the storyline reflects real-life events taking place in Europe at the time: the annexation of neighbouring states by Nazi Germany.

The leader of the conspiracy is called Müsstler, obviously a combination of Mussolini and Hitler. His group, the Iron Guard, seeks re-unification with a neighbouring country in ways similar to Nazi Germany’s Anschluss with Austria and the Sudetenland. It includes supporters in the police and the government. Syldavia represents the small, peaceful, agrarian countries which the Axis powers (represented by Borduria) were threatening.

The fact that King Ottokar's Sceptre is critical of Nazi methods of unification appears to have been lost on the German censors during the occupation of Belgium during World War Two. While books like Tintin in America and The Black Island were banned because they took place in enemy countries like the United States and Britain, King Ottokar's Sceptre was still allowed to be published.

The Syldavian motto, "Eih bennek, eih blavek", means "Here I am and here I stay", and the Syldavian words resemble that expression in the popular dialect of Brussels. The whole Syldavian language is based broadly on the slang of the Marolliens, the people of the popular quarter of Brussels, with the addition of some s and z sounds to make it sound more "Slavic". The use of Marollien slang is a staple of Hergé's humour, found also in the dialect of the Arumbayas in The Broken Ear, although it is lost on non-Belgian (and many Belgian) readers.

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