It's often interesting to see how moviemakers treat coats of arms, especially when the coat of arms is supposed to be that of a fictional country.
Well, the other day, I was continuing my quest to see movies that, in my opinion, I should have seen before, but which I haven't. And one of those movies which recently popped up on my radar was the old 1957 work starring the unusual, or at least unexpected, combination of Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, The Prince and the Showgirl.
I'm not going to get into all of details of the movie, its plot, or even (at least not very much) my opinion of it overall. However, there was some heraldry, and that, of course, got my attention.
The prince of the title, played by Sir Laurence, is His Serene Highness the Grand Duke Charles, Regent of the (fictional) Balkan country, the Kingdom of Carpathia.* And as many of the scenes in the movie take place in the Carpathian Embassy in London, there are several depictions of the Carpathian coat of arms, two in color, and one two tone.
None of the screenshots I got of these arms are quite clear enough to make out everything on the shield, but you can certainly easily notice that they are very complex.
The first and fourth quarters are actually pretty clear: 1, Or three lions passant guardant in pale Sable; and 4, Or a double-headed eagle displayed Sable, but it's hard to make out what is on the eagle's breast or what is in chief, though there is clearly something on the eagle's breast and clearly something is in chief. In the second image (and you can click on any image above to go to the full-size screenshot to see the details a little better), the charge on the eagle's breast looks like a lozenge Argent charged with a W throughout Gules, but I don't entirely trust my interpretation of that.
The second and third quarters are grand-quartered. The second quarter, as far as I can make it out, is: Quarterly, i and iv, Azure a fess and canton Or between in chief [something I cannot make out] and in base a tree Proper; ii and iii, Sable a chevron reversed Argent. The third quarter looks to be: Quarterly, i and iv, Gules a chevron between three [leopard's faces?] Or; ii and iii, Vair on a pile reversed throughout Argent a cross pomelly Gules.
Overall is an inescutcheon, Azure a [horse?] passant Argent [saddled? bearing a pack? Or is there something hanging from its neck over its side?] Proper atop a terrace [mount?] Vert.
Somebody, somewhere, put a lot of work into creating this very complex coat of arms for the fictional Kingdom of Carpathia. And the fact that the set builders kept all three examples of this coat of arms pretty consistent meant that they were paying attention to detail.
All in all, I am fairly impressed by the work that went into creating this coat of arms and its several depictions. I am less impressed by what I feel is its unnecessary complexity.
Still, though, its another example of running across some heraldy in an unexpected place, and I am always willing to stop (or in this instance, hit the "Pause" button) and look.
* As Google is happy to inform us, "There is no real country called 'Carpathia'; it is a geographical region that spans across eight Central and Eastern European countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine."
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