History Main / Ruritania

* ''Manga/SailorMoon'' actually named its fake countries D Country, with its NerdGlasses-wearing princess simply named Princess D, and U Country, with its... vampire ambassador. No doubt D Country is the original home of [[VideoGame/BionicCommando Master-D.]] In the anime, there's also the Amethyst Kingdom, where apparently, the concept of money doesn't exist. FridgeLogic much?

* Arstotzka of [[VideoGame/PapersPlease Papers, Please]] is a Soviet-era Ruritania set among a cluster of other Ruritanias. It has all the features of a Soviet Bloc country of the era, including bureaucracy, constant rule changes, and rampant corruption -- but given the constant flood of people trying to sneak in, it's entirely possible the surrounding nations are even ''worse.''

* ''TheFairlyOddparents'' has Ustinkistan where his grandparents, on his mother's side, Vlad and Glady's hails.

* The fictional country of Ravka in ''Literature/TheGrishaTrilogy'' is based off of Tsarist Russia.

* The fictional country of Ravka in TheGrishaTrilogy is based off of Tsarist Russia.

* SheriSTepper created the Ruritania of Alphenlicht ("elf light"?) for her Marianne trilogy (''Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore'', ''Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods'' and ''Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse''). Alphenlicht is a micronation tucked away somewhere where Iran, Turkey, and the Soviet Union get their borders muddled up in the mountains. It is ruled by a hereditary theocracy of Magi (Zoroastrian priests and the original magicians), and hasthe neighboring micronation of Lubovosk as its dire enemy. Lubovosk used to be part of Alphenlicht but was seized by the USSR and made into a puppet state. It, too, is headed by a Magocracy, an evil branch of the same family.

* In Steven Spielberg's ''TheTerminal'', [[TomHanks Victor Navorski]] comes from the fictional East European country of Krakozhia. Though the Krakozhian language is actually Bulgarian.

* ''Don't Drink The Water'', written by WoodyAllen early in his career, is set in the American embassy of an unnamed Soviet Ruritania.

* One ''Series/MacGyver'' episode featured a nation called Samadia, mentioning a neighboring "Azmir" region.

A Ruritania is a fictional country located in Central Europe or the Balkans -- in an area encompassing most of the territory east of Germany and west of Russia. This country is characterized by its small size, backward customs, and forests full of [[EverythingsWorseWithWolves wolves]] and {{bears|AreBadNews}}. It is often the home of the FunnyForeigner.

If the place shows some of the characteristics of Ruritania, but is also full of [[{{Dracula}} vampires]], [[WolfMan werewolves]], {{Mad Scientist}}s, and [[HammerHorror other]] {{Fantasy}} or {{Horror}} genre tropes, you've strayed over the border into [[{{Uberwald}} Überwald]]. We hope you brought some garlic and don't leave the hotel room at night.

* The long-running soap opera ''Series/DaysOfOurLives'' had an often villainous family, the Alamains, who were royalty from a small European country named Alamania. In an aversion, it's actually implied to be somewhere around France, Germany, and/or Switzerland (and Alemannia is a RealLife alternate name of Germany), but the country is often depicted as so impoverished, autocratic, and corrupt that it might as well be a former Soviet Bloc country.

With the coming of HoleInFlag revolutions, Ruritania has pretty much reverted to what it started with: ludicrous hair, ethnic strife, poverty, and backwardness. The monarchy is (usually) gone, replaced by a mock democracy run by some [[GeneralRipper unsavoury generals;]] the Great Powers are now acting through NATO or the UN. Everyone still seems to hate his neighbours, the anarchists may still be around, or they may have mutated into [[TerroristsWithoutACause terrorists]] or plain old gangsters. With any luck, contemporary Ruritania might be a part of the EU, causing more trouble for its finances than Greece, Spain and Ireland taken together.

->''"I feel sorry for those Eastern European countries at the Olympics, 'cause they've got rotten national anthems, eh? Here comes Belarus!...Stupid national anthem... Look at this flag! Two bears, fighting over a pineapple. We don't have pineapple in Belarus, where do they get it from?! 'Come to UsefulNotes/{{Belarus}}! Where wild animals will steal your fruit!'"''

* ''{{Superman}}'' - Ruritanias were very common in both TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks and TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks, ranging from simple backdrops for foreign royals to stand in's for Hitler's Germany. The first appearance of Lex Luthor was in a 1940 comic in which he was revealed to be the mastermind behind a war between fascist Toran and peaceful Gallonia.
* ''[[{{Tintin}} The Adventures of Tintin]]'' feature Syldavia, a kind of Balkan Belgium menaced by Borduria, its warlike neighbour. Borduria stands for Nazism in ''Recap/TintinKingOttokarsSceptre'' and for Stalinesque Communism in later stories. Syldavia is an atypically detailed version of {{Ruritania}} with its own flag, royal dynasty, historical events and even a language created by Hergé. The made-up language, despite being written in Cyrillic script, was remarkably not Slavic but a dialect of Flemish/Dutch with some curious phonetics. In ''Recap/TintinDestinationMoon'', it becomes the setting for a fictionalized space program.In ''Recap/TintinTheCalculusAffair'', both Syldavia and Borduria are struggling in a secret war for [[AppliedPhlebotinum Calculus' device]].\\

* ''SpirouAndFantasio'' visit the country of Bretzelburg, a [[{{Kaiserreich}} faux-Austrian military dictatorship]] which borders another imaginary country of faux-Italian flavor, Maquebasta. It is probably a faux-Liechtenstein, a very tiny monarchy located betwen Austria and Switzerland.

* The long-running soap opera ''DaysOfOurLives'' had an often villainous family, the Alamains, who were royalty from a small European country named Alamania. In an aversion, it's actually implied to be somewhere around France, Germany, and/or Switzerland (and Alemannia is a RealLife alternate name of Germany), but the country is often depicted as so impoverished, autocratic, and corrupt that it might as well be a former Soviet Bloc country.

* Spoofed in ''{{Castle}}'' : A murdered spy was supposed to assassinate someone from a country called the Republic of Lovania, but quick Internet search reveals that no such country exists.

* GilbertAndSullivan created two significant Ruritanias: Barataria in ''The Gondoliers'' and Pfennig-Halbpfennig ("Penny-Halfpenny" in German) in ''The Grand Duke''.

* Manga/LupinIII: A few miscellaneous Ruritanias have been featured on the various ''Lupin'' TV series. Notable movie examples below.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' had an episode featuring the country run by the villain Baron Underbheit. It resembled the generic Eastern Europe country in every way... castles, forests, doomy dooms of gloom... but it is learned in the last few seconds of the episode that it somehow borders Michigan. Baron Underbheit is an {{expy}} of Doctor Doom.

* Concordia in the ColdWar comedy ''Romanoff and Juliet'', a postage-stamp European nation that has been conquered and liberated so many times that its citizens "are nominally the freest people in the world", and every day is an Independence Day of some sort. Fiercely determined to maintain neutral during the Cold War, the prime minister ended up playing matchmaker between [[StarCrossedLovers the Russian ambassador's son and the American ambassador's daughter]]. Concordia is the ass of the UN; at the UN roll-call, all the nations are called in alphabetical order, with a note on the bottom of the page, "P.S. [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg And Concordia]]." The country could be a parody of Tito's Yugoslavia.

* ''SpirouAndFantasio'' visit the country of Bretzelburg, a [[FatherLand faux-Austrian military dictatorship]] which borders another imaginary country of faux-Italian flavor, Maquebasta. It is probably a faux-Liechtenstein, a very tiny monarchy located betwen Austria and Switzerland.

* In fact, the history of many real-life east-european provinces can explain the mishmash of unrelated cultural elements (German, Slavic, Turkic, Greek, etc.) usualy found in the description of fictional Ruritania. For instance, the real-life province of Bukovina has successively belonged to Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria, Romania, USSR and is at the present time cut in half between Ukraine and Romania.

*** The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had several varieties of Slavs (Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians, etc.) Balts (modern day Lithuanians and Latvians), Prussian Germans, a good chunk of Europe's Jews and the odd smattering of Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks in those border nations. It's one of many reasons it was seen as a rather progressive empire in its heyday in spite of the unique mess of ethnic identity.

[[folder:Card Games]]
* In the popular card game ''Contraband'', the most valuable card that players must smuggle past the "Customs Officer" is labelled as the Ruritanian Crown Jewels.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Role-Playing Games]]
* ''Space:1889'' places an actual Ruritania in the Balkans, in ''Conklin's Atlas of the Worlds''.
[[/folder]]