To be (the royal we) or...you get the point.

[Ireth]

Royalty didn't figure in The Hobbit but Frodo and Sam could not have ruined Sauron's day without a lot of help.

You're forgetting Thranduil, King of Mirkwood, as well as Thorin, King Under the Mountain. Also Lord Elrond of Rivendell is at least nobility, if not royalty.

 

[Alexandra]

You're forgetting Thranduil, King of Mirkwood, as well as Thorin, King Under the Mountain. Also Lord Elrond of Rivendell is at least nobility, if not royalty.

Thorin's rank was not as intrinsic to the character as is, say, Tyrion Lannister's. Thranduil and Elrond were supporting characters, nobles yes but not key elements of the story. What made the dwarves interesting to both Bilbo and we readers was that they were adventurers and risk takers, not whether any of them had blue blood. Their quest required neither a royal presence nor seal of approval.

 

[Ireth]

Thorin's rank was not as intrinsic to the character as is, say, Tyrion Lannister's. Thranduil and Elrond were supporting characters, nobles yes but not key elements of the story. What made the dwarves interesting to both Bilbo and we readers was that they were adventurers and risk takers, not whether any of them had blue blood, and their quest didn't require a royal presence or seal of approval.

Maybe not, but Thranduil was a big part of the Battle of Five Armies and the events after that. And I wouldn't say Thorin's rank isn't very important -- the whole point of his quest is to take back his kingdom. It wouldn't have been the same story if he'd been just another exile from Erebor.

 

[Nobby]

Argh! Please don't fall into circular arguments, My question, when you ripped the life and soul out of it was simple!

Do you think that you would read a story from the little people's side.

 

[Alexandra]

Thorin may have wanted to recover his grandfather's pillaged treasure and take back his kingdom but I never got the feeling that his quest was everyone's quest. I saw, and still see, Bilbo and his crew as a group of thieves; I can almost hear Gandalf whispering to Bilbo, "So, do yu want to go and rip off a dragon?"

"Steal a dragon Gandalf, wouldn't that be very hard?" says Bilbo.

"Not steal a dragon dim, steal from a dragon... his treasure, you know?"

"Oh, wouldn't that be terribly dangerous."

"By the dwarves' beards, no," replies Gandalf, "they sleep almost all of the time."

"Almost all of the time, hmm..."

 

[Alexandra]

Do you think that you would read a story from the little people's side.

I'm saying we have—The Hobbit. There must be others, but likely not many.

 

[Ireth]

Thorin may have wanted to recover his grandfather's pillaged treasure and take back his kingdom but I never got the feeling that his quest was everyone's quest.

Well, this was addressed in the movie, at least. Balin showed great pride in following Thorin and calling him King, and I imagine the others did as well, particularly Fili and Kili. Thorin explicitly said that their quest was to take back Erebor from Smaug, not just steal his hoard right out from under him. Erebor is their home, not just some heap of rock with gold and a big flying lizard inside. They wouldn't have taken such a risk if it were anyplace else not sacred to their kind.

EDIT: Apologies for derailing the thread. I'll shut up now.

 

[Nobby]

@ alexandra, you know what I meant by small people

And Ireth, don't apologise!


The pair of you...you both awe me with your knowledge and the world is so much sweeter with that....

Do I have to kill this thread because the pair of you seem to be fighting a vendetta?

 

[Alexandra]

I echo Ireth's apology regarding derailing this thread but I did enjoy our exchange. Another time, another place perhaps.

 

[Ophiucha]

Do you think that you would read a story from the little people's side.

Yes. I tend to think they have more interesting stories, and with the right plot, they could be no less epic. Peasant uprisings and whatnot. It would depend on the time period (roughly, if not on Earth) how much leeway that gives you, and certainly there is a practicality to the medieval royalty/nobility being the protagonists (namely that they had the means to ever leave their home town), but there are always ways around that and always more interesting stories than the same old medieval fantasy that's been written a thousand times, too.

A lot of feminist fantasy novels take place with lower class characters. The reasons for this namely being that women had a lot more power within a household when they were poor, since everybody had to give their everything just to survive. Plus, you're already dealing with one sort of 'lower class' by tackling women to begin with, so why not take on the literal lower class along with it? The same is true of a lot of political fantasy, in fact. Socialist and communist-leaning writers often write about the poor because, well, that's sort of the centre of their ideology. A fair few of China Mieville's protagonists are middle or lower class.

 

[Alex Beecroft]

OK, I just would like to ask why so much fantasy fiction seems to be based on Kings and Queens, (or moreso unknowing foundling princes and princesses)

I enjoy fantasy but why is there regularly such a genealogical tilt to it? Or (and even worse, in my view) the grasping middle class desperation to claim royalty for itself. (IE horrible court advisers)

Is it because writers (more probably publishers) think that people want to be elevated to these levels?

Or is it that people just don't appreciate the "salt of the Earth"...

I think my point is that any society is unbalanced when it elevates one section to Godhood, or is this just me


Help and talk me down!

I think it's because, in pseudo-medieval settings at least, the salt of the earth don't have a lot of leisure time to devote to more than the job that keeps them fed. They probably know a lot about cattle rearing and cabbages, predicting the weather, when it's a good time to sow crops etc, and they're likely to have such talents as fishing, poaching, whittling, animal doctoring etc, which don't necessarily lend themselves easily to quests to save the world.

Kings and aristocracy on the other hand training which enables them to assert their own will - they are trained to use weapons/armies. In the course of doing their own job, they have to be aware of what's going on in the kingdom around them and in such kingdoms as surround theirs. It's their job to defend the kingdom against whatever threatens it, and it's their job to be aware of what that might be. Also they'll have the money they need to have weapons, horses, ships, spies and enough food not to have all their attention taken up by whether they're going to starve or not. And they have the time to go on long quests without having to worry about who will milk the cows every morning while they're gone.

 

[Alex Beecroft]

Argh! Please don't fall into circular arguments, My question, when you ripped the life and soul out of it was simple!

Do you think that you would read a story from the little people's side.

Of course, if it was interesting.

Aren't there lots of "Farm boy turns out to be the chosen one" stories out there, though? In those, the farm boy generally has to leave the farm to have his adventure. Do you mean you would like to see the characters stay on the farm and never come into contact with other social strata, or is it OK if the characters end up interacting with the aristocracy as long as the MCs grew up on the farm?

 

[Jabrosky]

My current story's protagonists are definitely of royal descent. One of them is a queen consort for one kingdom's ruler while her half-sister is queen-regnant (that is, a ruling queen) of another kingdom.

A female friend of mine once told me that while there were plenty of stories with princesses or other rich damsels for protagonists, there were comparatively few in which the heroines were fully fledged rulers of their respective civilizations. Personally I find the idea of a female protagonist bearing responsibility over a whole kingdom really appealing.

 

[Alex Beecroft]

A female friend of mine once told me that while there were plenty of stories with princesses or other rich damsels for protagonists, there were comparatively few in which the heroines were fully fledged rulers of their respective civilizations. Personally I find the idea of a female protagonist bearing responsibility over a whole kingdom really appealing.

Queens definitely do not get enough press. I'm writing a historical fantasy set in the 18th Century at the moment. My characters will be passing through the Austro-Hungarian empire ruled by Empress Marie-Theresa and going to Russia ruled by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Neither of whom were the classic 'evil queen' which seems to be the only way you get it in Fantasy.

 

[Jabrosky]

Queens definitely do not get enough press. I'm writing a historical fantasy set in the 18th Century at the moment. My characters will be passing through the Austro-Hungarian empire ruled by Empress Marie-Theresa and going to Russia ruled by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Neither of whom were the classic 'evil queen' which seems to be the only way you get it in Fantasy.

Holy crud, that trend still persists? I would have thought fantasy would have progressed beyond that by now.

 

[Alex Beecroft]

It may be in my mind because I was watching Once Upon A Time last night and thinking about Snow White and the Huntsman. I'm wracking my brains now to think of any books with important queens in them at all and coming up blank except for Galadriel. (Who at least isn't evil.)

Oh, Elizabeth I of England tends to feature relatively well in anything set in that period, although she's usually more of a cameo appearance than an MC.

 

[Nobby]

Good grief! How this has evolved!

How did this turn into a sexist royalist argument LOL

My point was, {deep breath} would anyone read about a group of people living in a fantasy world who were both male and female, but neither king nor queen?

(Nor chosen! No, not even by ancient prophecy!)

 

[Alex Beecroft]

My answer is still "yes, but it would depend on what they were doing." If they were, for example, defending their village against a dragon, that sounds interesting and I would read it. If they were using their newly discovered magic for promoting crop growth, killing their neighbours cows and forecasting who would be their future spouse (which is historically the kind of things peasants have tried to use magic for,) then I would suspect it was likely to be a bit soap-opera-ish and probably not read it. Leaving the village to encounter the weird tribes over the hill? Yes. Leaving the village to spend three years learning to become a tanner in the village next door? Probably not.

Basically what I'm saying is that I don't care whether they're royalty or not. I just want them to be involved in an interesting plot.

 

[wordwalker]

My answer is still "yes, but it would depend on what they were doing." If they were, for example, defending their village against a dragon, that sounds interesting and I would read it. If they were using their newly discovered magic for promoting crop growth, killing their neighbours cows and forecasting who would be their future spouse (which is historically the kind of things peasants have tried to use magic for,) then I would suspect it was likely to be a bit soap-opera-ish and probably not read it. Leaving the village to encounter the weird tribes over the hill? Yes. Leaving the village to spend three years learning to become a tanner in the village next door? Probably not.

Basically what I'm saying is that I don't care whether they're royalty or not. I just want them to be involved in an interesting plot.

Agreed... although, it isn't entirely that the plot just has to be flashy enough to be "gaming without thrones." We readers all have our own tastes in plots (dragons? yay!, spouse-forecasting? could be, cow-killing? could go all kinds of ways), and we also know that some authors are better at making some kinds of plots interesting.

 

[Nobby]

"Gaming without thrones." Ohh, you wit you

@ Alex Beecroft.

And of course tales focused on royalty never get "Soap-opera-ish"

I'm working on a story that is trying to point out the effects (major and minor) that the "traditional" fantasy tales seem to ignore...

Example: Two neighbouring fiefdoms go to war. Lord So and So sends his armies to fight Lady Such and Such, so one, the other or neither of them have a shot at claiming destroying or generally mucking about with something that no doubt seems important to them- just something. The Crown? A mystical artefact of such immense power as to make petty matters of serfs meaningless? Who knows!
Surely not the poor sods getting ready for fighting! Both sides chuck armies at each other, both armies contain people who probably KNOW each other and these cannon (dragon, demon) fodder actually being people, not just markers on a jewelled game table, find an excuse to put the boot into somebody on the other side who has done their family wrong over the price of that there pig fifteen seasons back.

Add to that that both of these armies have to be fed, armed and resupplied and that presumably somebody is staying home to mind the crops and mine the ore to smelt the steel to...you get the point.

Wouldn't it get to the point where the lowliest sod with a shovel thought to himself...You know what, screw em all, I'm getting nothing out of this but a bad back.

And if you think a peasant revolt is funny, just remember this, at this point all the High and mighty Lords and Ladies have all of their horses and all of their men way over there...

Ooof. Out of breath

Does that sound worth reading LOL