I Die Innocent (2025)
2 - 2 persone
15 - 25 min
12+
Al momento questo prodotto non è disponibile presso nessun venditore.
Descrizione: I Die Innocent (2025) is a game about power and betrayal. A perfumed viper’s nest of intrigue and shifting alliances in the Royal Danish Court in the second half of the 18th century.
Players assume the roles of royal physician and de facto ruler of Denmark-Norway, Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737-1772), and Privy Councillor, Ove Høegh-Guldberg (1731-1808), respectively. By deploying whatever resources are available to them, players build their courts and enter into coalitions to ingratiate themselves with the mentally unstable King Christian VII.
The story goes like this: Johann Friedrich Struensee is one of the most controversial figures in the history of Denmark. His 16-month takeover of the government of Denmark-Norway, and his affair with Queen Caroline Matilde, came to a violent end when he was arrested, convicted for crimes against the crown, lése-majesté, and executed in the spring of 1772.
I wanted to make a game about that: the intrigues, the scandals, the power struggles arising from Struensee's liberal reforms, something that felt like the scene from the film, "The Favourite" (2018), where a bunch of wigged Members of Parliament entertain themselves by chucking oranges at a well-nourished naked man wearing only a wig. That is, I wanted to somehow represent these useless upper-class types and nobles – especially the male characters – as incompetent and powerless twits. A game that would feel like being in the palace corridors of candlelit flickers against gilded mirrors and bad teeth; courtiers and snakes whispering in a brutal social environment where everyone is basically untrustworthy. Daggers wrapped in velvet.
And so, luckily, it turned out, the brilliant game designer, Amabel Holland, had already provided a basic mechanic for simulating this. "I Die Innocent" is a hybrid mix of "Reign of Witches" (2020) and "Republic of Virtue" (2021), representing the dramatic historical events during the years of Struensee. A small piece of Scandinavian political history. By using and adjusting Amabel's system to reflect the people, events and crises surrounding Struensee, the cards in the game represent the relations between players and between the cards themselves: some cards, for example, are more or less useless without other cards, etc.
In particular, I wanted to add some complexity and nuance to the otherwise doltish representations of Struensee and Caroline Matilde, offered in works such as writer Per Olov Enquist’s "The Visit of the Royal Physician" (1999) and the film, "A Royal Affair" (2012). In these works, Struensee unites the figures of the reformer, the lover, the thinker, the doctor and the friend in one single incarnation that presents itself against the reactionary forces of the Danish royal court and political landscape of 18th century. The main villain of Per Olov Enquist’s novel is Ove Høegh-Guldberg, the hardheaded, royalist jerk who, in contrast to Struensee, embodies both political reaction and human impoverishment. Conservative, sexually congested and contempt, Guldberg is the archvillain, whose personal shortcomings drive his lust for power. The plot: the natural, the genuine and the human against the barren, degenerate and inhuman. This plot is also replicated in the film "A Royal Affair" (2012), starring Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander, where the tragic and beautiful hero Struensee (and his equally beautiful lover Caroline Matilde), perishes in the backward and politically primitive system.
In fiction, films and literature, in short, Struensee and Caroline Matilde are typically portrayed as heroes of the Enlightenment in a country immersed in the darkness of feudalism and autocracy. Their story a banal and half-baked mix of Romeo and Juliet and Joan of Arc fighting to change the country and give freedom to the people. In reality, it was not like that. It never really is.
Historically, Struensee and Caroline Matilde were not even in love. They were not real-life Romeo and Juliet. Rather, they were using each other to gain what they both wanted: power. In fact, the couple reflected what everyone else in their segment of society wanted: power. Like all the other inbred degenerates at the top of society - the smug upper classes, the nobility, the aristocracy, the wealthy merchants - Struensee and Caroline Matilde were no different. They all wanted power, and in order to get it, they would exploit and use each other as disposable cutlery.
Like contemporary life in the greatest pyramid scheme and zero-sum game of late capitalism, and our postdemocratic, hyperpolitical moment, there are no real winners: the rich and powerful don't care, as long as profit is to be made on ecological collapse and social and racial injustices. The characters in this game are no different in their blind will to power.
—description from the designer
Players assume the roles of royal physician and de facto ruler of Denmark-Norway, Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737-1772), and Privy Councillor, Ove Høegh-Guldberg (1731-1808), respectively. By deploying whatever resources are available to them, players build their courts and enter into coalitions to ingratiate themselves with the mentally unstable King Christian VII.
The story goes like this: Johann Friedrich Struensee is one of the most controversial figures in the history of Denmark. His 16-month takeover of the government of Denmark-Norway, and his affair with Queen Caroline Matilde, came to a violent end when he was arrested, convicted for crimes against the crown, lése-majesté, and executed in the spring of 1772.
I wanted to make a game about that: the intrigues, the scandals, the power struggles arising from Struensee's liberal reforms, something that felt like the scene from the film, "The Favourite" (2018), where a bunch of wigged Members of Parliament entertain themselves by chucking oranges at a well-nourished naked man wearing only a wig. That is, I wanted to somehow represent these useless upper-class types and nobles – especially the male characters – as incompetent and powerless twits. A game that would feel like being in the palace corridors of candlelit flickers against gilded mirrors and bad teeth; courtiers and snakes whispering in a brutal social environment where everyone is basically untrustworthy. Daggers wrapped in velvet.
And so, luckily, it turned out, the brilliant game designer, Amabel Holland, had already provided a basic mechanic for simulating this. "I Die Innocent" is a hybrid mix of "Reign of Witches" (2020) and "Republic of Virtue" (2021), representing the dramatic historical events during the years of Struensee. A small piece of Scandinavian political history. By using and adjusting Amabel's system to reflect the people, events and crises surrounding Struensee, the cards in the game represent the relations between players and between the cards themselves: some cards, for example, are more or less useless without other cards, etc.
In particular, I wanted to add some complexity and nuance to the otherwise doltish representations of Struensee and Caroline Matilde, offered in works such as writer Per Olov Enquist’s "The Visit of the Royal Physician" (1999) and the film, "A Royal Affair" (2012). In these works, Struensee unites the figures of the reformer, the lover, the thinker, the doctor and the friend in one single incarnation that presents itself against the reactionary forces of the Danish royal court and political landscape of 18th century. The main villain of Per Olov Enquist’s novel is Ove Høegh-Guldberg, the hardheaded, royalist jerk who, in contrast to Struensee, embodies both political reaction and human impoverishment. Conservative, sexually congested and contempt, Guldberg is the archvillain, whose personal shortcomings drive his lust for power. The plot: the natural, the genuine and the human against the barren, degenerate and inhuman. This plot is also replicated in the film "A Royal Affair" (2012), starring Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander, where the tragic and beautiful hero Struensee (and his equally beautiful lover Caroline Matilde), perishes in the backward and politically primitive system.
In fiction, films and literature, in short, Struensee and Caroline Matilde are typically portrayed as heroes of the Enlightenment in a country immersed in the darkness of feudalism and autocracy. Their story a banal and half-baked mix of Romeo and Juliet and Joan of Arc fighting to change the country and give freedom to the people. In reality, it was not like that. It never really is.
Historically, Struensee and Caroline Matilde were not even in love. They were not real-life Romeo and Juliet. Rather, they were using each other to gain what they both wanted: power. In fact, the couple reflected what everyone else in their segment of society wanted: power. Like all the other inbred degenerates at the top of society - the smug upper classes, the nobility, the aristocracy, the wealthy merchants - Struensee and Caroline Matilde were no different. They all wanted power, and in order to get it, they would exploit and use each other as disposable cutlery.
Like contemporary life in the greatest pyramid scheme and zero-sum game of late capitalism, and our postdemocratic, hyperpolitical moment, there are no real winners: the rich and powerful don't care, as long as profit is to be made on ecological collapse and social and racial injustices. The characters in this game are no different in their blind will to power.
—description from the designer