On the surface, the eighth adventure of Tintin might seem rather straightforward. Our favourite Belgian journalist stumbles onto a mystery entirely by accident, effectively solves it in one action in a fictional country and, a little heroism later, saves the day. That might not seem like much but there's actually a heck of a lot going on here that isn't likely to be immediately obvious to anyone reading in 2024. For a start, that mystery is pretty close to being a locked room mystery and Hergé gives it a clever solution, but the real story is in what's going on in between the lines.

That fictional country, Syldavia by name, can be interpreted a lot of ways, as Romania, Albania or any Balkan country, but it truly represents pretty much any European nation, as shown through a host of notable features being borrowed from almost all of them. Its warlike neighbour, Borduria, on the other hand, is clearly Nazi Germany, and that's a really big deal given that 'King Ottakar's Sceptre' was initially published in serial form between August 1938 and August 1939. It specifically warned against Nazi aggression by fictionalising the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, known as the Anschluss.

A month after the serial ended, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Nazi Germany occupied Belgium in 1940, 'Le Vingtième Siècle', Tintin's home from the very beginning, was shut down for political reasons and the next four 'Tintin' adventures were published instead by 'Le Soir', a major Belgian newspaper that was allowed to continue under German management with political content like this firmly banned. Had Hergé attempted this story during that time, he would have been arrested by the Gestapo and probably killed. It was very ballsy to publish it when he did and we should acknowledge that fact while reading 'King Ottaker's Sceptre'.

The trigger for the adventure is that Tintin discovers a briefcase that's been left behind on a park bench and returns it to its owner, Prof. Hector Alembick. That's a good thing because it contains a paper that he's due to present to the International Sigillographical Assocation that very evening. Sigillography is the study of seals and he has all the rarest ones in his personal collection, such as seals belonging to Charlemagne, Edward the Confessor and the Doge of Venice. A rare one called out for notice is the seal of Ottakar IV, King of Syldavia, which he found by accident in Prague and intends to follow up on, now that he has a letter of introduction from the Syldavian Ambassador to access their national archives. All he needs is a secretary to organise his trip.

A sequence of events triggers Tintin's suspicion that Prof. Alembick is surrounded by mystery and his attempts to find out what's behind it trigger suspicion of Tintin by everyone involved and that suspicion on both sides only grows until he decides to become his secretary to get to the bottom of it. And now he can fly to Syldavia with Prof. Alembick and the intrigue can begin. So can the action, given that he realises a crucial detail on the plane before he's unceremoniously dumped out of it. Now the chase is on to get his news to the current monarch, King Muskar XII, before it's too late. A series of adventures follows, introducing at least one future regular and potentially more.

While he infused it with the usual combination of action and humour, Thomson and Thompson in a particularly slapstick mood, Hergé clearly took this story very seriously indeed, enough so that he dedicated three full pages of the traditional sixty-two (in the album version) to a brochure giving us all the background both Tintin and we need to figure out where we're going. Tintin reads it on the plane before he's jettisoned out of it and we can peruse it at our leisure, so learning all about its history, geography, population, the works.

Let's see if you can figure out the key detail. The "kingdom of the black pelican" started out with a set of nomadic tribes, but they were overrun by the Slavs in the sixth century, who were conquered by the Turks in the tenth. Neighbouring Borduria annexed it in 1195 but it was freed in 1275 by the revolutionary leader Baron Almaszout, who became King Ottakar I in 1277. The real founder of the modern Syldavia though was King Ottakar IV, who acceded in 1370. After knocking out an assassin with his royal sceptre, he decreed it to be "the true symbol of Syldavian Kingship. Woe to the king who loses thee, for I declare that such a man shall by unworthy to rule thereafter."

Yes, you guessed it. The nefarious plot, inevitably orchestrated by Müsstler, an obvious amalgam of Mussolini and Hitler, involves stealing the sceptre ahead of a traditional event so that the king will be forced to abdicate, having lost it and therefore become unworthy to rule according to this longstanding tradition. This is where the locked room mystery comes in, because, as I'm sure you can imagine, it's seriously well-guarded and Tintin reaches the king a moment too late to stop the theft but not by so much that it could have got past them. The hunt is therefore on to reclaim the sceptre before St. Vladimir's Day only three days hence.

As I mentioned, it's a relatively clean and straightforward 'Tintin' adventure in that it flows very smoothly from beginning to end, with only a couple of plot conveniences to help it on its way. The power is in the detail, which must have been biting indeed back in 1938. While Tintin doesn't get a lot of help in this one, Thomson and Thompson serving yet more emphatically as comic relief than usual, he gets a heck of a lot of hindrance. Syldavia seems to be a peaceful country but it's riddled with spies and traitors, because as Hergé clearly anticipated, war was right around the corner for the continent as a whole. Thus the danger we see Tintin struggle through is the same danger that would face everyone in Europe not much later at all. That realisation is chilling.

I mentioned future regulars. The one I recognised is Signora Bianca Castafiore, an opera singer in Syldavia presumably on tour, given that she's based at La Scala in Milan. I'll see much more of her as I work through the series and I remember reading a much later book, 'The Castofiore Emerald'. Her pianist, Igor Wagner, is here too but he isn't named. I failed to recognise another character of note from later books, Col. Jorgen, King Muskar's aide-de-camp, but I don't believe he's named in this book either. He'll return in the two books set in space, 'Destination Moon' and 'Explorers on the Moon', favourites of mine as a kid.

And so this is a powerful and important entry in the series, but it might not seem that way to any reader who isn't aware of what was happening in Europe at the time Hergé wrote it and that the very believable plot at the heart of the story was inspired by real events. While I enjoyed reading 'King Ottakar's Sceptre' as one of the many 'Adventures of Tintin', the more I think about what it represents, the more admiration I have for Hergé and the sheer guts that he must have found to merely write it in the first place. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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