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King Ottokar's Sceptre: The cameos in the book

maximus
Member
#1 · Posted: 31 Dec 2004 10:55
Hi All,

Not a discussion. I just wanted to tell you all that Hergé has portrayed himself twice in King Ottokar's Sceptre.
He appears first when Tintin is arrested by the guards, and is being taken out of the hall after he sneaks into the Audience Chamber. Hergé is standing, wearing a green uniform, with a man in a red and white uniform, to the extreme left side of the last frame of page 38.

The next appearance is when Tintin walks into the palace to receive the Golden Pelican medal from the king [Page 59, last frame]. Hergé is to the right side of the page, standing beside a lady wearing a pink dress.

Cheers,
Maximus
Mikael Uhlin
Member
#2 · Posted: 31 Dec 2004 11:40
Maximus:
Hergé has portrayed himself twice in King Ottokar's Sceptre.

Yep, that's true. And the man in the red & white uniform is Edgar P. Jacobs, assistant of Hergé and creator of Blake & Mortimer.
edcharlesadams
Trivia Challenge Score Keeper
#3 · Posted: 31 Dec 2004 11:59
Also, in the last frame of page 59:

Hergé's wife Germaine is the blonde lady standing next to him in the purplish-pink dress.

Hergé's brother Paul Remi is standing next to Germaine, wearing a monocle, and with the quiff that is said to have inspired Tintin's! He later also inspired Colonel Sponsz.

Finally, on the other side of the room, the man with the shock of blond hair and the white bow-tie is Jacques van Melkebeke, one of Hergé's assistants.

Ed
GurraJG
Member
#4 · Posted: 31 Dec 2004 12:21
edcharlesadams
On the other side of the room, the man with the shock of blond hair and the white bow-tie is Jacques van Melkebeke, one of Hergé's assistants.

And the person in front of him, with a large nose and black hair is the artist Marcel Stobbaerts.

-Gustav
snowy_1001
Member
#5 · Posted: 28 Aug 2011 19:52
Wow!!!
I knew about Hergé being present in the frame on page 59, but I had no idea about the rest of it!!!! Nice to see that he included actual people (and himself) in the frames sometimes :)
jock123
Moderator
#6 · Posted: 1 Oct 2012 12:27
One further identification, which I just found made in the recent Young Reader edition of the book: the white-haired gentleman with the monocle, wearing a black jacket, standing to the left of the picture is the absolutely spelndidly named Édouard Cnapelinckx, a friend of Hergé and Hergée (his wife Germaine).

If the name seems vaguely familiar, it may be because a rather striking picture by Hergé which came up for auction in the recent past, showing Tintin and Haddock on a beach carrying shells, was originally a gift by the artist to M. Cnapelinckx on his fiftieth birthday.

I have also seen elsewhere an identification of the lady in the green dress, standing just to the right of M. Cnapelinckx as you move across the scene, as Ginette Van Melkebeke, wife of Jacques Van Melkebeke.

Several of these people are also said to be in the music hall scene of The Seven Crystal Balls on p. 16, when Haddock makes his "bull-headed" appearance on stage: E.P. Jacobs is shown in the middle box on the left-hand side of the picture, together with a figure who, given his shock of hair, could be Jacques Van Melkebeke, although he has his back to us. In the foreground, to the right of the page, and reading right to left, we have the blonde head of Germaine, and then M. Cnapelinckx, and a lady who is said to be Manon Cnapelinckx, his wife.

More interestingly, M. Cnapelinckx actually seems to appear twice, as if you look back to the box on the left, you will see a man sitting, bearing the same round head, fringe of hair and curved nose!

One last thing; M. Cnapelinckx was the manufacturer of the silk scarves produced by his company Mantérob, to mark the end of WWII which are mentioned in this thread – and therefore was an early and perhaps un-sung hero of the appearance of Tintin in English (albeit under the pseudonym Tufty)!

Update: Having found further information, it seems that the young man in the front row of the music-hall, sitting three seats in from the left and pointing at the stage, is Michel Regnier, known as "Greg"; if this is indeed the case, I think it might be possible that he is also the person I thought was Van Melkebeke in the box, as they look to be twins.
mct16
Member
#7 · Posted: 28 Apr 2014 20:13
Have you ever come across something in Tintin which you found quite notable and then later learned that there was more to it than you originally thought? That there was more to a scene than met the eye?

An example for me was on page 38 of "Ottokar's Sceptre", in the last panel, when Boris speaks to the King and Castafiore lies fainted in a chair. On the left is a man in green who really stands out. The way he stands upright, giving a hard stare at the young agitator being led away by the guards, really struck me.

Imagine my surprise many years later when I learned that the man in green is actually Herge himself! I've sometimes wondered if the way he is staring at Tintin was a subconscious feeling of "Good riddance" given that in 1947, around when this scene was drawn, he was beginning to feel the pressures of life and work which would lead to periods of depression in the years to come.
jock123
Moderator
#8 · Posted: 8 May 2023 15:24
I've been revisiting this scene on Facebook and Twitter, what with all the royal pageantry going on in the U.K. at the moment, and have got another two names to add.
The lady in the blue dress, standing next to E.P. Jacobs has been said to be Jeanne Faignart-Quitellier, his long-time companion, and later his second wife - but this appears to be supposition, and probably incorrect.
Over on the other side, the woman in pink between Ginette Van Melkebeke and Marcel Stobbaerts is apparently Manon, or Manou (depending on source), Cnapelinckx, the wife of Édouard Cnapelinckx (who would be standing directly behind her).

I'm also warming to the idea that the white-haired lady in blue, beyond M. Stobbaerts is the same lady who is knitting (and scratching her head with her needle) in the background of the chess scene at the start of Tintin in Tibet - but who she actually is, I don't (yet) know!

Please Note: I had been mis-spelling the name Cnapelinckx as Cnaepelinckx, because this is how Hergé had been spelling it - the first "e" is incorrect! I've changed the spelling, where I have spotted it, but in the event that I have missed something somewhere, it is Cnapelinckx...

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