The Laughing Cavalier is a 1913 adventure novel by Baroness Orczy, which revolves around Percy Blakeney, a foreign adventurer and ancestor of Orczy's famous character, the Scarlet Pimpernel. The story takes place in Holland in 1623/1624 and is partly inspired by Frans Hals' painting The Laughing Cavalier. in the novel, Blakeney is Frans Hals' adopted son and the man who poses for the painting of the Laughing Cavalier. Orczy wrote over a dozen sequels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney, his family, and the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, of which the first, I Will Repay (1906), was the most popular. The last Pimpernel book, Mam'zelle Guillotine, was published in 1940.