Plot
The plot begins in Cradock, a District of Cape Colony, a wild place with a handful of white settlers. Fifteen miles from the Mission station where Allan and his father, who is a church of England clergyman, live, there resides a Boer called Henry Marais, who has a young daughter named Marie. Allan and Marie meet when they are given a tutor called Monsieur Leblanc who teaches them French language and other subjects. What starts as a childhood friendship slowly grows into a fully fledged love and deep affection, much to the chagrin of Marie's father, who tries everything within his power to separate them. One day, monsieur Leblanc goes to one of his Sunday riding expeditions. Being intoxicated with his Peach brandy, and after sleeping, he wakes up to find his horse missing. Thinking it stolen, he sets out to look for it when he by chance comes across two red Kaffirs leading it away though looking for its owner to restore it to him. On sighting them, he shoots the eldest son of the chief and he drops dead. When he fires again, he injures the other son on the thigh but he manages to run away to tell the tale.
The result is that they trace the attacker to Maraisfontein and plans an ambush attack on it to avenge the death by killing all its inhabitants and driving away all their cattle. On hearing this, and with the little time available, Allan manages to raise support and tries as much as he can to save Maraisfontein. Though with initial success, with their supply of gunpowder dwindling, and almost losing the fight, they almost commit suicide when Henry Marais comes with other Boers from other camps and fires at the red Kaffirs thus bringing the matter to a happy conclusion. Allan saves Marie's life together with those of the servants save for Monsieur Leblanc who is captured and killed by the foe.
After this, the love between Marie and Allan grows, and her father gets wind of the affair and tries to oppose it, because of his hatred of the English, and also because he had promised his daughter's hand in marriage to another Boer called Hernando Pereira, who, on learning of how Marie loves Allan and would rather die than marry Pereira, also hates Allan to the bone. He challenges Allan to a shooting match where they are to shoot at birds but Allan beats him to the game, and he and other Boers together with Marie's family decide to move away and finally settle at the banks of the Crocodile river some 50 miles from Delagoa Bay. Overtaken by hunger and fever, Marie writes a letter to Allan, who organizes himself, says goodbye to his father, and goes to their rescue with a good supply of food and other necessary provisions. He finally saves Marie's life for the second time, something which makes Marie love him even more.
Slowly they recover, and they plan a journey to look for another place where the pasture of life is green. On the way, they encounter Dingane a king of the Zulu tribe's forces which had been sent to kill Allan. They, after much deliberation agree to take Allan and all his company to the king, who ends up liking Allan. But he gives Allan a bet. He tells Allan to shoot three of five vultures with his gun to prove his magic and all his companions will be left to go free, something which he does, thus saving Marie's life for yet another time. When Marie becomes of age, Allan marries her though without her father's blessings. And after then set off to Dingane on matters of a Treaty about a piece of land that the Boers want to possess. Mistrusting the Boers, he tricks, deserts and his regiment massacres them saving Allan's life. Allan returns to his home and finds Marie weeping by the river where she had gone to draw water, wearing the robes of mourning. He goes home with her and all the people are excited to see him alive.
When Hernando Pereira and his company arrive, due to Hernando Pereira's jealousy for winning Marie's hand in marriage, they are unhappy to see Allan alive and plot on how to exterminate him. They form a court to try Allan, build up false charges against him and sentence him to death by shooting. As the party move away to deliberate on how to execute him, Allan's servant spies on them and a plot is made of how to rescue him from death. They drug Allan's coffee with sleep inducing herbs brought by his servant, dresses him in Marie's clothes and then hide him in a grain pit leaving Marie in his place of detention.
In the morning, Marie is taken out for execution. Thinking her to be Allan, she is shot at by Hernando Pereira, who in turn is shot at by Henry Marais for shooting his beloved daughter. As Hernando lies down in fits of his impending death, he confesses that he bore false witness during Allan's trial so as to bring him to his death. Hernando later dies with a lot of people heaping curses upon him. A letter is given to Allan from Marie; she thanks him for saving her life three times, and says that she has saved his life now in the end, and is going to where she will be waiting for their reunion.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure fiction romances set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a pioneer of the lost world literary genre. He was also involved in land reform throughout the British Empire. His stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature and including the eighteen Allan Quatermain stories, continue to be popular and influential.
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also known as CountMaeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. In later life, Maeterlinck faced credible accusations of plagiarism.
The Great Trek was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British Empire. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers", "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
Dingane ka Senzangakhona Zulu, commonly referred to as Dingane or Dingaan, was a Zulu prince who became king of the Zulu Kingdom in 1828, after assassinating his half-brother Shaka Zulu. He set up his royal capital, uMgungundlovu, and one of numerous military encampments, or kraals, in the eMakhosini Valley just south of the White Umfolozi River, on the slope of Lion Hill (Singonyama).
Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretorius was a leader of the Boers who was instrumental in the creation of the South African Republic, as well as the earlier but short-lived Natalia Republic, in present-day South Africa. The large city of Pretoria, executive capital of South Africa, is named after him.
Mpande kaSenzangakhona was monarch of the Zulu Kingdom from 1840 to 1872. He was a half-brother of Sigujana, Shaka and Dingane, who preceded him as Zulu kings. He came to power after he had overthrown Dingane in 1840.
Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines, its one sequel Allan Quatermain (1887), twelve prequel novels and four prequel short stories, totalling eighteen works. An English professional big game hunter and adventurer, in film and television he has been portrayed by Richard Chamberlain, Sean Connery, Cedric Hardwicke, Patrick Swayze and Stewart Granger among others.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, also promoted as LXG, is a 2003 steampunk/dieselpunk superhero film loosely based on the first volume of the comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Distributed by 20th Century Fox, it was released on 11 July 2003 in the United States, and 17 October in the United Kingdom. It was directed by Stephen Norrington and starred Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, and Richard Roxburgh. It was Connery's final role in a theatrically released live-action film before his retirement in 2006 and death in 2020.
She and Allan is a novel by H. Rider Haggard, first published in 1921. It brought together his two most popular characters, Ayesha from his 1887 novel She, and Allan Quatermain from his 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines. Umslopogaas from Nada the Lily (1892) also appears in the novel as a major character. Along with the other three novels in the Ayesha series, She and Allan was adapted into the 1935 film She. She and Allan is the third story in the Ayesha series and the fifteenth in the Quatermain series.
King Solomon's Mines is a 2004 American two-part television miniseries, the fifth film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by Henry Rider Haggard. Starring Patrick Swayze as Allan Quatermain and Alison Doody as Elizabeth Maitland, the film was produced by Hallmark Entertainment, and originally aired June 6, 2004, on Hallmark Channel.
King Solomon's Mines is a 1985 action adventure film, and a film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by H. Rider Haggard. It stars Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone, Herbert Lom, and John Rhys-Davies. It was produced by Cannon Films. It was adapted by Gene Quintano and James R. Silke and directed by J. Lee Thompson. This version of the story was a light, comedic take, deliberately referring to, and parodying, the Indiana Jones film series. It was filmed outside Harare in Zimbabwe. The film was made and released exactly 100 years after the release of the novel on which the film is based.
"Allan and the Sundered Veil" is a six-part horror comic story written in the style of a boy's periodical by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, included at the back of each issue of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I and collected at the back of that volume. It serves as a prequel to the comic.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century is the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. Co-published by Top Shelf Productions and Knockabout Comics in the US and UK respectively, Century was published in three distinct 72-page squarebound comics.
Nada the Lily is an historical novel by English writer H. Rider Haggard, published in 1892. It is said to be inspired by Haggard's time in South Africa (1875–82). It was illustrated by Charles H. M. Kerr.
Tous les matins du monde is a 1991 French film based on the book of the same name by Pascal Quignard. Set during the reign of Louis XIV, the film shows the musician Marin Marais looking back on his young life when he was briefly a pupil of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, and features much music of the period, especially that for the viola da gamba. The title of the film comes from words of the narrator in Quignard's novel.
Monsieur Lecoq is a novel by the nineteenth-century French detective fiction writer Émile Gaboriau, whom André Gide referred to as "the father of all current detective fiction". The novel depicts the first case of Monsieur Lecoq, an energetic young policeman who appears in other novels by Gaboriau.
The Battle of Maqongqo was fought on 29 January 1840 during the First Zulu Civil War. Due to military defeats, the Zulu king Dingane had lost the respect of a significant portion of the Zulu people. His brother Mpande sought to separate his followers from Dingane and drew support from an alliance with Boer settlers led by Andries Pretorius.
El secreto de Puente Viejo is a Spanish soap opera produced by Boomerang TV that originally aired from 23 February 2011 to 20 May 2020 on Antena 3.
