The wild forest

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Der Wilde Wald ( Dutch secret van het Wilde Woud ) is a youth novel by Tonke Dragt from 1965. It is the continuation of the award-winning novel The Letter for the King, which was filmed in 2008, and forms a dilogy with it .

Summary

The book is about a young knight named Tiuri in a fictional medieval world that consists mainly of three realms: the land of King Dagonaut, from which Tiuri comes, the realm of King Unauwen west of the mountains, and Evillan, that of a son of Unauwen is governed. The Prince of Evillan (Prince Viridian) and his father are enemies, because the son seeks the father for the crown, because as a younger (twin) son he has no right to it. In the first novel, Tiuri brought an important letter to King Unauwen, describing a plan by Viridian to take Unauwen by surprise, and in return received a white shield, which is usually only worn by knights from the West.

The Gray Knights , set out to avenge the death of the knight whose job Tiuri had taken on, now want to meet Tiuri at Ristridin Castle a year later for this purpose. But of all people, Knight Ristridin himself is absent. Rumors say that he went to the Wild Forest , an inaccessible, huge forest in the triangle between the three kingdoms, in which legendary, almost elven-like men in green are said to live, which supposedly hardly anyone ever sees .

In fact, Tiuri not only finds the men in green in the Wild Forest, but also a secret operation by Evillan, who is preparing a surprise attack on Unauwen's kingdom from there. The men in green are the descendants of a knight from the west and his entourage, who renounced the world a long time ago and from then on lived in harmony with nature in the forest. However, due to their strict neutrality, they are actually a danger.

Ultimately, Tiuri has to warn the Unauwen empire of the attack, and a military conflict ensues in which no one can remain neutral.

content

In the spring after his knighthood , the young traveling knight Tiuri and his friend and squire has Piak to the castle Ristridin, birthplace of the knight-errant Ristridin, with the Tiuri last year at his dangerous journey into the realm Unauwens friendship closed. There the two wait in vain for Ristridin and the nephew of knight Bendu, a friend of Ristridin and Tiuris, who keeps them company in the castle; Instead, two knights from Unauwen's realm, one of whom is even Iridian, Unauwen's son and crown prince, and two Evillan's knights arrive, who are also admitted to the castle due to the hospitality rights in the neutral country of Dagonaut. After a few days, an incursion from Deltaland, which is a puppet state of Evillans, is reported from the south. But Evillan actually provides troops to defend Dagonaut. Both Evillan and Unauwen's emissaries try to reach an alliance with Dagonaut. The attack from Deltaland and the aid that followed is in this respect a rather obvious maneuver Evillan's.

Tiuri instinctively does not answer the call to defend against Deltaland, but travels with his squire Piak to Islan Castle in the Wild Forest, where Ristridin was last seen. He meets the beautiful daughter of the lord of the castle, Isadoro, who bewitches him, but with her strange erratic behavior also poses a riddle. During an excursion to the edge of the forest, Tiuri met, to his surprise, Marius the Fool, a retarded, childlike and harmless man whom he met on his first trip. However, Tiuri finds the fool completely frightened and after much effort manages to find out that the fool has fled from hidden enemies in the Wild Forest and that he has encountered Ristridin in the forest in a situation that is completely opposite to what Tiuri is in Islan experienced.

Marius leads Tiuri and Piak into the forest, where they find a message left by Ristridin stating that he is the only survivor of an ambush on his escort, who had King Dagonaut's assignment to explore the Wild Forest. Shortly afterwards, however, Tiuri and Marius are captured by Evillan's Red Riders, who are hiding in the forest, and taken before their master, the black knight with the red shield, who is responsible for the murder of the knight Edwinem, whose assignment to Tiuri this had made a knight. The knight turns out to be the Prince of Evillan by the name of Viridian, the twin brother of the Crown Prince of Unauwen's realm in his own person. As Tiuri can put together from his speeches, the Prince of Evillan plans to carry out a surprise attack on his homeland out of the wild forest and over an almost forgotten mountain pass. He enlisted the help of the Men in Green, highly reclusive and already legendary forest dwellers who really only want to lead their peaceful life in the lap of the forest and therefore do not want to interfere in the interests of the outside world; They only help the prince with his plan to get him out of their forest as quickly as possible.

Tiuri and Marius are arrested in the Tarenburg , the old seat of the ancestor of the Men in Green. There Tiuri also meets his old adversary Jaro, who actually wanted to lead an honest life after their last meeting, but has returned to the service of his old, hated master through a series of unfortunate circumstances. Jaro helps Tiuri and Marius to escape, and together they escape to the territory of the Men in Green, whose leader Tehalon refuses to surrender the fugitives to the Prince of Evillan. However, he pretends to the prince that he will ritually execute the young men.

Meanwhile, Piak manages to escape the ambush with great difficulty and he eventually passes out. He is found by a former robber named Adelbart, who leads him back to civilization. Once there, Piak sends a warning message to King Dagonaut and his loyal liege prince Sigirdiwarth Rafox, the lord of Mistrinaut Castle, who is preparing to march into the wild forest with a small force. In the troop is his daughter Lavinia, who disguised as a squire mingled with the seekers because Tiuri is very close to her heart; Piak becomes her confidante and accompanies her into the forest with the warriors. There they find out that Adelbart himself once belonged to the Men in Green, and with his help they come into contact with Tehalon, who brings them back together with Tiuri, Marius and Jaro. Those involved hold a council of war, and it is decided both to fight the prince here in the forest and to send someone over the hidden mountain pass to warn Unauwen's kingdom of the attack. In view of the development of things, Tehalon and the Men in Green feel compelled to break their principle of neutrality and help Tiuri and Piak on the secret path that leads into the kingdom of Unauwen.

After Tiuri and Piak have brought the news under great danger, a battle ensues in the Wild Forest between the knights Unauwens, Evillans and Dagonauts. The idyllic, peaceful world of the Men in Green also fell victim to the war when the Prince of Evillan set fire to the forest out of sheer malice as he retreated over the mountains. In the end, however, Tiuri and Piak meet the knight Ristridin again, who after his escape from the Wild Forest was kept secretly on Islan, but was released again by the lord of the castle and was able to intervene in the battle with his own armed forces. Together, the knights Dagonauts bring the Prince of Evillan to face his brother in a duel to end the war once and for all. Although Crown Prince Iridian defeats his brother, he is also killed at the same time by a last dishonorable act of Viridian with a poisoned sword.

At the end Tiuri and Piak find themselves again at the hermit Menaures in the mountains, where a boy has taken Piaks place, Idian, the son of Prince Iridian. Menaures himself is the younger twin brother of King Unauwen, who however never aspired to the throne, but chose a life of the hermitage; with him the young prince should now grow up in a simple life in order to ultimately be able to rule his grandfather's kingdom wisely. With that, Tiuri and Piak finally find a comforting prospect of the future of the three realms.

Literary motifs

As in the first book, in Der Wilde Wald numerous motifs are used in typical youth book and sometimes fairytale-like ways, which make up the character of the story. The epic conflict between the twin brothers who become enemies over the succession to the throne, the striking description of the knights with white shields on the one hand and those with blood-red or black shields on the other, Lavinia's endeavor to help her crush, even though she is a woman in this medieval society has no right and must not hope for understanding, the parallel world of men in green, where it is in turn a matter of course that women z. B. Carrying arms, the unconditional integrity of the novelist and the absolute inviolability of his friendship with Piak, all of this carries a central moral message of the simplest nature, which propagates honesty, forgiveness, peacefulness and selflessness, equality and loyalty.

Previous novels

literature