If Dragons Then Royalty

[lea_hazel]

Royalty and nobility are one of the most common conceits of epic fantasy. Almost every fantasy novel takes place in a world comprised of a series of kingdoms, or similarly structured alternatives. Epic plotlines usually follow the royalty or at least high nobility of one or more of these kingdoms. This applies doubly when the protagonist is a commoner; gaining access to the higher echelons of society is part of their reward.

When I tried to think about fantasy novels (excluding contemporary, and even those have their vampire kings and fairy queens) that defy this convention, I thought first of A Wizard of Earthsea. I may be misremembering, since I read it in translation years ago, but I don't recall Ged or any of the other major characters being noble. A few other books came to mind, where characters sometimes deal with nobility but don't wind up discovered as the long-lost heirs to something, or receiving a noble title, or anything.

I can't think of many fantasies that don't take place in a royal hierarchy, though. For some people, the crowns and swords and other medieval trappings are a major part of fantasy's charm, but it's still a pretty diverse genre. Do people think non-monarchic systems are too much of a divergence for fantasy, or does it just not occur to them that there are other options? Like the title says: If dragons -- then monarchy?

Comments

(via metafandom)

[mullenkamp]

I was born in and live in the United States, in a Western democracy, and have dealt with that system my entire life (being a political activist in my spare time doesn't help). Fantasy, for me, is about escapism. I have absolutely no desire to read or write about my fucked up sort of system, or any fucked up system it was based on, in a novel about a fictional place--I prefer dealing with entirely different kinds of fucked up systems of government. Also, IMO, the more the average privileged white fantasy author starts getting outside the mold of what their own society came from, the more they potentially start getting into hinky issues of cultural appropriation that I'm just not comfortable with. I'll take a thousand pseudo-Euro kings and queens over some trifling assed noble savagey Wisdom of the Elders BS. As a brown reader and writer, I get a lot less angry when the former is done badly than the latter.

That's not to say I don't love politics in my speculative fiction at all--I do, very much so, it's my favorite kind, I mean my favorite SF novel of all time is Dune. But palace intrigue in monarchist systems, Constitutional or otherwise, is infinitely more interesting for me to explore both as a reader and a writer simply because of the fact that it's so much more different than my everyday experience (though there is a joke somewhere in here about that :P). I tend to write about magocracies, religious-flavored or otherwise, because I think bad ass queens with magic powers are cool. Intrigue between and within powerful families is really interesting to me, also (the standard Drow house system, for instance). But ultimately, I care less about the form of government in place and more about if it's done well. I would prefer a well-written US/Western-style democracy in a fantasy novel to yet another badly written feudal monarchy where it's obvious the author has no conception of how such a government would actually work (which, sadly, seems to be most mainstream fantasy authors).

As far as dealing with nobility vs. commoners, a certain amount of realism is good and desirable, but ultimately I'm just not interested in reading about a noble's daily life running the manor or a shopkeeper or a tax collector doing their thing. It's boring. Yes, there's a place for that in fantasy, but that's just not what I'm in it for. Even with a commoner hero, the most common sorts of fantasy conflicts--searches for magical macguffins, wars over territory or resources, Sealed Evils in a Can waking up, etc--sort of demand that The Powers That Be, nobility or otherwise, get involved at some point by their very nature, because no matter what system of government is in place, TPTB simply aren't going to let an average person get mixed up in that kind of thing with no consequences. Someone with the kind of power and ingenuity to find/get/control the magic bauble, or slay the dragon, or raise an army to fight the monsters? That's someone that's a threat to the people in power, even if they're ostensibly on the hero's side. TPTB have to get involved at some level for stories like that to remain believable to me, and too often they don't (or in some blatantly silly way). And that's just bad writing, IMO.

My favorite protagonists are the ones for whom the usual social expectations don't necessarily apply, regardless of their societal status. To use a video game example, the Mages and Grey Wardens of Dragon Age: Origins (which, incidentally, had probably the most realistic depiction of a pseudo-medieval European political system I've seen in any fantasy media in a long time). Mostly because there tends to be great fodder for conflict in that, with the traditionalist types. Quite honestly, the point where most stories end--the hero rising into the ranks of the nobility, or becoming king/queen or what have you--is where I think some of the most interesting stories actually begin, but that rarely tends to get explored outside of fanfiction.