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Comment by wrp | Hacker News Reader

Nemo was originally written as a Polish aristocrat. When you consider that, all aspects of his description in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) make sense. By the time Verne wrote The Mysterious Island (1875), his ire had become more directed toward the British rather than the Russian empire, so he changed Nemo to be an Indian prince.

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Nemo was indeed originally written as a former Polish rebel against Russian rule, but Verne's publisher objected on the grounds that this might offend Russians[1], and so the published version of Twenty Thousand Leagues had no mention of national origin or ethnicity for Nemo.

[1] Both because the Russian market was important for sales of French books -- and government censorship in Russia was a strong possibility -- and because the publisher supported France's ongoing negotiations with Russia for a potential alliance, and worried a book promoting anti-Russian themes might make the negotiations more difficult.

The change about Nemo's origin must have been done before finishing "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas", because already in that there were expressions of his discontent with the British Empire, above any others, I think towards the end of the novel, when he attacked some British war ship (an attack that was used to convince the more reluctant of the prisoners that they must escape from the submarine).

That novel has been published in episodes scattered over more than a year, so it would not be unusual if towards its end Verne had a different vision of the story line than when he had started writing it, one year before.

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