Royal Highness - Thomas Mann

 Royal Highness was written in 1909.  The royal in question is Prince Klaus Heinrich, second son of the Grand Duke of an unnamed grand duchy somewhere in central Germany.   Klaus Heinrich is born with the exact same disability (an underdeveloped left hand) as Wilhelm II, Kaiser Bill, who had been emperor of Germany for twenty years when Mann wrote this romantic comedy.

Klaus Heinrich is very much not Kaiser Bill.  Klaus Heinrich is one of the good guys, trained from birth to reflect well on his autocratic and aloof father and sickly older brother.  So Klaus Heinrich learns to hide his hand and become loved by the people.  He does a good job.  He is only twenty or so when his father dies and his brother Albrecht is recalled from the healthier south to succeed.  By this time the grand duchy is heavily in debt and the rural population is quietly starving.

Duke Albrecht is too highly bred to do anything about such things.  His sister Ditlinde has already married an aristocratic princeling with a talent for modern business, so it falls to Klaus Heinrich to try and fumble his amiable way to a solution.

An American millionaire of German ancestry visits the city to partake of its spa waters.  He likes the place and buys one of the many redundant royal palaces.  He has an only daughter, Imma, who is of mixed heritage (as was Mann through his mother), who is intellectual, sarcastic, and beautiful.  She will inherit all her father's riches.  Klaus Heinrich is genuinely in love with her and all too willing to do his obvious regal duty.  But before he can win Imma's heart, he desperately needs to do something about measuring up to her mind.

Royal Highness is what I didn't entirely expect from Thomas Mann - a joy.  The themes of liberating modernity clashing with stifling tradition are common to the works of his I have previously read (Death in Venice and The Holy Sinner, both reviewed on this blog) but here everything is enlightened by eccentric and oddly charming characters.  The court master of ceremonies with his brown toupee, Klaus Heinrich's tutor and friend Raoul Uberbein who commits suicide the day Klaus Heinrich becomes engaged, and Imma's batty companion Countess Lowenjoul who thinks prostitutes are conspiring against her.