My Glorious Days

"Shade, on Kichikuou Rance's version of My Glorious Days."

- For H scenes. I thought it should exude the feeling of a king.

About
My Glorious Days (我が栄光, Waga eikō, alternatively titled "My Glory" or "Our Glory") is a recurring music track that is used throughout the Rance Series. Commonly thought of as the title character's theme music, it is generally played whenever Rance achieves a notable conquest in his adventures, sexual or otherwise, and is occasionally referred to as his "Brutal Theme" as a result. First debuting in Rance II, it has since become synonymous of the franchise as a whole, and is closely associated with its overall themes and content.

The song itself is an altered version of Auferstanden Aus Ruinen, the East German National Anthem. The earliest versions of the track were simply sped up versions of the anthem, giving it a much more upbeat and rambunctious sound than the original. More recent versions utilize different instruments and arrangements of the anthem in order to make themselves relate more specifically to the qualities of the game in which they are featured in. For example, Rance Quest, which heavily parodies the Dragon Quest series in its presentation, uses a chiptune version of the track as an allusion to the music of 8 bit-era role playing games, and Kichikuou Rance, which revolves around Rance becoming the king of Leazas, prominently features swelling trumpets and drums in order to sound more similar to a royal procession. In addition, softer and more somber versions of the track are occasionally used during scenes in which Rance is meant to be acting in a more emotionally-vulnerable manner. Canonically, the theme first played when Rance violently stole the virginity of Princess Lia Parapara Leazas after uncovering and foiling the kidnapping ring that she had been running. This audacious action is directly responsible for catapulting Rance from being a powerful-yet-unknown adventurer to The Continent's greatest hero, as it is what caused Lia, who had never been punished by anyone prior, to fall madly in love with him, earning him her entire country's loyalty in the process. Because of this, the track is generally seen as being symbolic of Rance's already massive ego swelling to titanic proportions with feelings of invincibility and conquest. This is supported by the "Collapse" ending of Kichikuou Rance, which occurs if Leazas Castle falls against an enemy attack, and features the statement "So long, my shining days" in reference to the track.

Once a mainstay of the series' erotic scenes, the track has been used much more sparingly since the release of Rance Quest, and generally only appears a select few times per game. Notably, the series' final entry, Rance X, only uses its version of the song during the end credits.

Trivia

 * My Glorious Days was created by accident. During the development of Rance II, TADA, the director of the Rance series, sent a recording of Auferstanden Aus Ruinen to DragonAttack, the musician that Alicesoft had outsourced to produce the game's soundtrack, to use as reference material for the song that would play during erotic scenes. DragonAttack, not recognizing the track, misunderstood it to be a rough draft of an original composition and as a result only lightly altered it for the final version. As East Germany still existed at the time of Rance II's release, TADA was made very nervous at the possible backlash it would receive for using a country's national anthem in such a context, but went through with it anyway due to the game's fast-approaching deadline.
 * During the development of Rance 5D, the first game in the Rance series to be released after a lengthy hiatus, TADA planned to not include My Glorious Days in any capacity, claiming to have grown tired of it after having used it for so long. He was eventually persuaded to change his mind and continue using the track by Shade, the game's composer.