The Prisoner of Zenda
（重定向自Prisoner of Zenda）
![](/Images/godic/202502/04/Hope_Prisoner_of_Zenda_cover3628.jpg")
![Frontispiece to the 1898 Macmillan Publishers edition, illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson.](/Images/godic/202502/04/Zenda1_Gibson3629.jpg")
The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), by Anthony Hope, is an adventure novel in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation, and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such, that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania, who resembles the monarch, is persuaded to act as his political decoy, in effort to save the unstable political situation of the interregnum.