In the Realms of the Unreal

The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco–Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion (abbreviated In the Realms of the Unreal) takes place on a fictional planet a thousand times the size of Earth. Although the world is said in the introduction to have the Earth as its moon, later references place it as being physically connected to the Earth; the United States is described as being hundreds of thousands of miles away by sea from the book's setting. Motivated against the evil Glandelinians' use of child slavery, a coalition of Christian nations (Abbieannia alongside Calverinia and Angelina) fight against them in a devastating conflict lasting four years. The Vivian Girls, the seven young princesses of Abbieannia, are the chief protagonists, and throughout the narrative fight to free the enslaved children from their captors. Beyond the general framing of the war, it is difficult to discern any sustained plotlines throughout the book, although various themes and situations reappear continuously throughout the narrative. Lengthy and extremely detailed descriptions of battles and sieges are the most common focus of the story. There are thousands of battles described throughout the book, with the descriptions ranging from less than a page to hundreds. These accounts feature descriptions of tactics, logistics, and their impact on civilians. Battles are fought by huge armies sometimes exceeding a hundred million participants, and frequently result in millions of casualties. Glandelinian war crimes are often recounted alongside the battles, with particular detail given to their massacres of children when occupying cities. Natural disasters, such as thunderstorms, floods, forest fires, tornadoes, and hurricanes, are another common focus throughout the book, often at supernaturally exaggerated scale, as are various poetic descriptions of more mundane weather phenomena. The internal geography and rules of the universe of In the Realms of the Unreal are inconsistent. Darger never produced a general map of the world. The story has two separate endings. The first, in which the photo of Annie Aronburg was found, has the Christian forces defeating and capturing the Glandelinian General Manley, while the alternate ending has Manley escape and rally his troops to repel the Christian armies from the country. The writing features frequent grammatical and typographical errors. Different volumes of the book will abruptly change subject matter between sections, and many adjacent sections appear to have been made years apart only to be inserted together when the book was compiled. Misspelled words are sometimes terminated early, and followed by the correctly spelled version. In other instances, the words are spelled out fully before a filler word such as "or" or "I mean", followed by the corrected spelling. Characters The main protagonists of the book are the seven Vivian sisters: Violet, Joice, Jennie, Catherine, Hettie, Daisy, and Evangeline. Other prominent supporting characters include the sisters' father Robert Vivian (the Governor, and later Emperor of Angelinia) and their uncle Hanson Vivian, the Governor of Calverinia. Jack Evans, an Abbieannian orphan who rose to prominence as a military commander, serves as the girls' guardian and protector. == Creation ==

in the May 9, 1911, edition of the Chicago Daily News, the loss of a clipping of which devastated Darger and greatly extended the length of In the Realms of the Unreal.|alt=A grainy black and white photo of a young girl Around the early 1910s in Chicago, the hospital worker Henry Darger began privately writing what would become a multi-decade literary work, In the Realms of the Unreal. One of his diary entries makes reference to a manuscript which was lost in September 1910, which focused on a fictional war dubbed the "Abbysinkilian-Abbieannian war and Tripolygonian war". However, other diaries state that he began writing the work in 1911 or 1912. In 1911, he clipped a picture of the five-year-old murder victim Elsie Paroubek from the Chicago Daily News. He became greatly distressed after losing this clipping, praying to God for its return and growing resentful for its continued absence. He incorporated the loss of the picture into the work through an alternate storyline in which his alter-ego within the story loses a picture of the rebellion's young leader, Annie Aronburg. For some time after losing the photo, Darger erected an altar to Aronburg in Schloeder's barn, offered novenas, and prayed seven times a day. This continued absence of the photo greatly prolonged the work, which expanded many thousands of pages over the following decades. Darger made ultimatums to God with the threat of depicting great acts of violence in the book and writing in defeats for the Christian armies. Physical construction Darger made leaves by pasting two sheets of typed paper together. These manuscripts also reused flyers and notebooks (most likely taken from the trash) which at times still bear their previous unrelated text. The bound books are very heavy, measuring around , and ranging from thick depending on page count. Their pagination is often inconsistent, as is the size of paper used, which frequently alternately between letter and legal paper. The alternation of font size points to Darger's rearranging of the text throughout the roughly twenty years he spent writing. ==Discovery and legacy==

William Schloeder is the only person known to have been friends with Darger, and is perhaps the only person he showed any of his writing to during his life. The bound volumes were likely seen by no one other than Darger. He is not known to have ever sought to publish the writings or mention them to others. After his death they were stored in his room, with individual volumes only briefly leaving for exhibition. When John MacGregor published an overview of Darger's work in 2002, entitled Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal, he stated that no-one had ever read the complete work, as it would involve many years of reading and adjustment to the idiosyncratic style. They have never been published. Darger scholar Michael Bonesteel wrote that Darger's inconsistent writing style has a unique charm and "runs the gamut from poor grammatical constructions to lofty flights of poetic description". Copyright During his last year, Darger is alleged to have made unclear and inconsistent statements regarding the status of his work. Berglund claimed Darger told him to throw away all the paintings and manuscripts while he was helping him move. In contrast, when Lerner later visited him at the nursing home and asked about his works, he is alleged to have said "it's all yours, please keep it." He is also reported to have told a fellow patient at the facility that he was giving his property to the Lerners. Darger's mental health deteriorated in his old age, and he reportedly struggled to recognize Lerner. In addition to the contradicting instructions on what to do with the material, it is unclear whether he was referring to the loose papers and notebooks in his apartments, the bound volumes, or both. He had no known will, most likely dying intestate. Under the Illinois probate code, his estate would have automatically transferred to the closest living heir; he had a number of living relatives through the descendants of his cousin Annie, but they were not tracked down and contracted after his death. His relatives may have been uninterested in a claim even if they were aware of his death, as the estate would have been judged to have little to no value. In this case, ownership would have been passed to Cook County or the state government of Illinois. None of Darger's works had been registered with the United States Copyright Office by the time of his death. In 1995, the copyright of Darger's work was claimed by Nathan and Kiyoko Lerner. Since Nathan's death in 1997, it has been claimed by Kiyoko Lerner and managed by the Artists Rights Society, a licensing organization. Following a 2019 article in the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property which called the Lerners' claim to the copyright into question, art collector Ron Slattery tracked down Darger's surviving relatives (mainly first cousins two or three times removed). A group of these relatives contested Lerner's ownership in a 2022 federal lawsuit. Archival In the Realms of the Unreal has never been published. The largest collection of Darger's works is held by the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) in New York. Acquired in 2000, the AFAM collection contains the original manuscripts of the Realms of the Unreal and its planning journal, alongside Further Adventures and Darger's last book, The History of My Life. Kiyoko Lerner made microform copies of Darger's writings during the 1990s. A digitized version of these is hosted online by the Illinois State Library. Another digitization of the bound volumes of In the Realms of the Unreal was done by the AFAM in 2020 as part of the Save America's Treasures program. ==See also==