M. le Comte de Rateliff

So, thanks to Janice for the following link, to a short film called THE DUEL AT BLOOD CREEK [2010]. For the first thirty or forty seconds I thought it was a remake of/tribute to the opening scene of Arthur and his squire from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, leading into the Black Knight/You Shall Not Pass episode, recast into eighteenth century garb. But it turned out the filmmaker (Leo Burton) was up to something cleverer than that. Here's the link (be warned, though, that it includes some unbleeped profanity):

http://vimeo.com/13121783

Watching this makes me want to dig out my copy of EN GARDE, one of the earliest rpgs [GDW, 1975], part of the first wave of post D&D-games, when imitators of Gygax and Arneson were trying to expand the concept into other genres (another example being TSR's own BOOT HILL). In EN GARDE,  PCs are gallants in the era of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, and might rise to be Musketeers themselves (or alternately their chief rivals, the Cardinal's Guard), if they live long enough (which, given the lethality of the dueling system, is unlikely).


And, speaking of France in the ancien regime, while looking up something entirely unrelated a few nights ago, I came across a wholly unexpected appearance of the name RATELIFF in an unusual context: one 'M. le Comte de Rateliff' who was, at least according to an online scan of the ALMANACH ROYAL,* one of the 'marechaux de camp** in the French army in Janvier (January) 1770. It's quite unusual to come across folks who spell the name the same way I do (with the silent e), and I've never seen it in a French context before (according to family tradition it's either German altered to sound more English, or English altered to sound more 'American'); it's probably English, one of a number of inadvertent variants of Ratcliffe (which goes way back in England; one of Richard III's chief henchmen, in both Shakespeare's play and real life, was a Ratcliffe).

So, interesting, but not significant. I assume this title 'Comte de Rateliff' vanished, probably along with the family, during the Revolution that followed less than twenty years later. Still, I'll keep my eye out, in case I come across more references to them down the road.

--John R.
current reading: THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA by Philip Roth [2004], the Fifth Edition PLAYER'S HANDBOOK [July 2014]




*link:
archive.org/stream/.../almanachroyal1784adam_djvu.txt


**which translates literally to 'Field Marshall', but was apparently instead equivalent to a two-star general.