Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his enforced twelve-year-long separation (1893-1905) with Ada, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the pyramids of Ladorah:

He traveled, he studied, he taught.

Describing the discovery of a secret passage that leads from the Onhava Palace to the Royal Theater, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a game of chess played by Monsieur Beauchamp (the Prince’s French governor) and Mr. Campbell (the Prince’s Scottish tutor):

In his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) says that conchologists among the kings can be counted on the fingers of one maimed hand:

According to Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Samuel Shade (the poet's father) had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton:

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Shade's poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”).

According to Professor Hurley (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, the Head of the English Department at Wordsmith University), Samuel Shade (the poet's father) had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton:

Describing the king’s escape from Zembla, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions lazy Garh, the farmer's daughter who shows to the king the shortest way to the pass:

In a conversation at the Faculty Club a visiting German lecturer from Oxford says that Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) resembles King Charles whom he and his Swedish wife saw at a Sport Festival in Onhava (the capital of Zembla):

The three main characters of VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus, seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name).

One of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), Jakob Gradus (Shade’s murderer) is the son of Martin Gradus, a Protestant minister in Riga: