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Fantasy and Monarchy

WooHooMan

Auror
In story world, monarchies seem to offer the following: fancy dresses, a clear target, and ready-made politics.

I think a big point you’re missing is the romantic iconography associate with kingship.

When worldbuilding, it can be very convenient to have a single character that can act as a representation for, not just the government but the entire nation and its culture.
And for a story, it can be convenient to say that the character inherently must mold themselves into the king role. I mean, that’s what the Lion King is about and I’m sure the creators of that movie had absolutely no intention of delving into politics or history.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
That's what I meant about the clear target. The single position, either as a target for rebellion or as a goal to be reached.

Romantic iconography? I'm pretty familiar medieval kingship and am at least aware of Scott's influence among English-speakers. Could you elaborate?
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
I have to admit my novels are sometimes heavy on politics because, well, it interests me. But I have avoided the medieval/feudal kingdom bit, at least so far. The closest would be my Donzalo sequence where I posited a setting similar to the Late Renaissance, with feudal institutions giving way to centralized governments and nation states, and standing armies being created to support more powerful kings. Indeed, that’s part of the political situation underlying the stories, with the France-like Sharsh and its king interacting with the Germany-like relatively fragmented Lama (fortunately, a mountain range prevents too much interaction).

It’s certainly seems true to me that monarchy is natural to many ages and environments. It can provide a certain stability and that, after all, is the main point of government—to create and maintain a stable society. The autocrat is a quick route to bringing an end to chaos. It is also true an autocracy has the tendency to be both the best and worst of governments, depending on who is currently at the top. Way back, Aristotle noted that democracy tends toward mediocrity, rarely really bad or really good, with things generally evening out. That does make it less fertile ground for epic stories.

In some of my stuff there’s no one higher than a village headman/headwoman or a tribal chieftain, and that’s perfectly workable too. There are so many models to learn from, to borrow from. Pseudo-medieval royalty? I might play with it yet but I’m not greatly tempted.
 

WooHooMan

Auror
That's what I meant about the clear target. The single position, either as a target for rebellion or as a goal to be

In my defense, it was vague wording. I assumed that was what you meant but I figured it would be worth expanding on since I think that’s the biggest appeal.

Romantic iconography? I'm pretty familiar medieval kingship and am at least aware of Scott's influence among English-speakers. Could you elaborate?

I’m not talking about history or a specific ethnicity. I’m talking about how the modern world sees the concept. There’s a romanticism to the idea of nobility. To some people, it represents a bygone age of ceremony and tradition. It’s more or less the same appeal that modern people have towards knighthood and chivalry.
I guess when modern political leaders are often characterized as hypocrites, opportunists and ideologues then it is easy to romanticize historical types of leaders as paragons or larger-than-life borderline-religious figures.

Most modern people don’t deal with aristocracy or are very well read on the subject so it’s easy for them to romanticize it, vilify it or dramatize it.
 

Aldarion

Archmage
Well, there you go, right there. "Run-of-the-mill" presumes a common understanding, which is a problematic assumption. I taught freshman Western Civ for thirty years, and even extracting a stereotype from there is problematic, since most people don't go to college. I can layer over that what I would call "run-of-the-mill" fantasy stories that involve monarchy. Still problematic, but it's the best I can do.

"Run-of-the-mill" is basically feudal monarchy, or rather, stereotype of feudal monarchy. Which means that you have king on top, who gives lands and titles to lords, who then give lands to landed knights, who themselves employ their own retinues... which means that not only the army, but the state itself, is a "retinue of retinues". "Irregular" monarchy would thus be any monarchy that is not (implied to be) retinue-of-retinues monarchy.

Though I should note that I very often see rather centralized states which nonetheless use (what is commonly understood to be) feudal terminology. Nohr from Fire Emblem Fates appears to be rather Byzantine (it is based partly on Roman Empire) even while using terminology that would be more in line with Holy Roman Empire. Perhaps the only feudal state in fantasy for whose authenticity I could stick my hand in fire is Empire from Warhammer Fantasy (there is also Videssos from series of same name, but a) it is not feudal and b) I still have not gotten around to reading it).

You'd have to explain a Roman king. Most (remember who I mean here) think only Roman Empire. At a stretch, they might know the Republic. They might know Sparta had kings, but likely their knowledge would stem from having watched (or read) 300. *shudder* And they likely would barely know "Byzantine" outside of having vaguely heard the word. So, explain everything? Or, rather, treat it as if your non-standard monarchy was a complete invention and like any other invented story element, explain only just so much as the story needs.

Latter option would probably be better, but it still should be enough to not cause confusion. I like how Tolkien did it - you understand enough for needs of the story, and can discover a lot more if you go digging. Still, his "strictly as much as necessary" approach did lead a lot of people to wrongly assume that Gondor is feudal, for example. Though I guess it is not something most readers would care about, and for those that do, there are enough clues hidden to make it possible to reconstruct how government of Gondor functions.

"Barbarian" kings and knights makes me skid to a stop. You can argue equites has a long history, but using a term like "Roman knights" will need explanation except to a Roman historian. Knights to me means mounted warriors in Europe in service to an overlord, which means Carolingian or later, which means they aren't barbarians. Sure, most folks won't blink at the phrase, but I did so now I have to deconstruct it.

Barbarian is Roman term. Western European kingdoms were descended from groups which Romans considered barbarians, so they would be barbarian kingdoms - even though their political structure was (until Muslim conquests) far more similar to that of Roman Empire than to anything which they might have had in their own homelands. But feudalism specifically, if memory serves me, originates from structure of barbarian war bands combined with Roman practice of hospitalitas. So in this context, barbarian = feudal, as opposed to Roman bureaucratic state.

So then we get to run-of-the-mill kings (already covered) and knights. Most of the same observations apply. Most readers will have a certain understanding of that word. It's historically accurate for only limited times and places, and there are so many other possibilities--which is sort of your point (and mine)--but that's where the reader starts. If we're going to use the same word to mean something rather different (say, 13thc Lombardy), then we're going to have to explain. And that can get clumsy quickly.

Agreed. Again, Tolkien - his "knights of Dol Amroth" are lot more like Byzantine kataphraktoi in that they are not actually part of feudal society, but terminology is enough to invoke feudalism. OTOH, Dol Amroth itself may be personal property of Imrahil, and so knights of Dol Amroth would be his personal retinue - but note that Imrahil is prince of Dol Amroth, not prince of Belfalas.

OTOH, in my novel A Child of Great Promise (look at me, photo bombing Silverberg!), a secondary character is an elf chevalier. I deliberately don't use "knight". He's not human, so that signals a shift in understanding, and I use a different word. This sets up at least some expectation that were enountering something other than the stereotype. I don't make a big deal out of explaining; he's in scenes, and I let the readers form their own understanding. And if they want to picture him as "just like a knight but he's an elf" then that's fine. One thing I learned as a teacher is that all I can do is teach; the learning is up to the student and will happen in unexpected ways. I've found a similar truth in writing.

Yeah, I guess the only thing to do is to make sure story is internally consistent, and let reader draw conclusions himself.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I was only pointing out that "run-of-the-mill" is a phrase that presumes everyone pictures the same thing, more or less, when they see the term monarchy. The specifics Aldarion gave detail a particular flavor of monarchy that was really only in play in England. I won't got into the use of the term feudal except to say that as a political system it pretty much never existed.

The OP, though, was putting forward the notion that monarchy was a natural choice for writing fantasy, and there we agree. I'd go further and suggest the less clearly-defined the monarchy of a particular novel, the better. It leaves more room for different readers to have different understandings. The more one identifies monarchy as being of a particular type, the more likely some readers are to object because it doesn't fit their own preconceptions.

This argument can be extended. Thrillers and action novels do best when set under modern political systems with access to modern technologies. Post-apocalyptic socio-political settings tend just to be plain silly (e.g., Hunger Games), but again that sort of works. It lets most readers project whatever totalitarian or anarchic stereotypes they like.
 
I'm fascinated by the way we see fantasy when we think of it.

I'd wager, if you asked some random people on the street to describe what a fantasy movie or book is, you'd get very similar responses, and the vast majority of respondents would describe medieval European styled worlds that might also happen to have magic and/or non-human races. A pretty run-of-the-mill monarchy would probably figure into their image, although maybe not for movies like the Harry Potter tales which otherwise have medieval European trappings.

If you then asked, What about The Exorcist? or The Chucky movies? or What about The Walking Dead?, people would say they are horror, or horror-adventure, or whatever. I wonder how many would say Alice in Wonderland isn't fantasy but is....something else. Fairy tale? Heh, dunno.

Really, how you define fantasy will affect your impression of how well you think monarchy fits it.

Some of the random respondents might mention Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fantasies. Thanks to online streaming, these are far more available in the U.S., probably elsewhere also; and besides, Mulan is coming out soon-ish. These fantasies won't have quite the same sort of monarchy, although there will be similarities. I could enjoy a long discussion on the distinction between European monarchies and the medieval (or ancient) systems of government in these lands, and heck include ancient Persia and India and wherever. But...but. There are similarities, and especially when it comes to popular culture, even the differences that are expressed don't break the general mold or impression for the viewer. For the average viewer, an emperor is just a different kind of king and a samurai is just a different kind of knight.

Well, samurai are not knights, they're samurai. But do they fulfill the same basic role in a fantasy tale? What about emperors and their thousand different local officials vs a European king and his vassals? And so on and on.
 
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pmmg

Myth Weaver
I think might fall into the categories of traditional fantasy and alternative fantasy. If you asked people on the street you might get some adult answers.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
When we here talk about average reader, typical, person-in-the-street, I think we implicitly mean "not us." I suspect our stereotype of the average reader is about as accurate as the average reader's is of monarchy or of fantasy itself. <g>

To return again to the OP, monarchy is fine as a setting for pre-modern fantasy. It can work for urban fantasy, but I think an author would have some additional work to do. Ironically, post-apocalyptic fantasy seems once again to be amenable to monarchies. I'll reiterate that this isn't so much about the political system itself as it is simplicity and focus in the storytelling. The child of destiny nearly always winds up or aims at becoming a monarch. Nobody wants to be destined to be a CEO. That's not likely to change any generation soon. A monarchy also gives the writer a ready-made political system whose parameters are widely understood, even when misunderstood in historical terms.

Some types are simply popular. The rogue, the thief, the assassin (though that latter grates on my historian nerve). Then there are guilds, which however absurd, fill a storytelling need so neatly, they aren't ever going to go away.
 
When we here talk about average reader, typical, person-in-the-street, I think we implicitly mean "not us." I suspect our stereotype of the average reader is about as accurate as the average reader's is of monarchy or of fantasy itself. <g>

What if it's exactly the opposite? What if my first thoughts, when I think of fantasy, are of medieval European culture(s) and monarchies? Because, yep. I know, intellectually, that the term fantasy has more scope. But my first thoughts are of these tropes. They're also what I like the most. So what if it's a matter of projection and not of setting up a straw man?

But here we run into problems of dealing with expectations and knowing our audience, right? Or is that something not worth much consideration? (I can see the answer going either way...)
 
The rogue, the thief, the assassin (though that latter grates on my historian nerve). Then there are guilds, which however absurd, fill a storytelling need so neatly, they aren't ever going to go away.

Assassins + guilds pop up in John Wick also. Heh. Is it a fantasy...an alternate history fantasy?

But I think this line of thought involves, again, the issue of roles, and whether some of the variety or differences are sometimes just the same roles dressed up in different finery.
 

Aldarion

Archmage
skip.knox Can't quote, for some reason software blocks me...

Anyway, what I detailled is more-or-less what I have seen usually referred to as a feudal monarchy. I should also note that it is not only English system either: in medieval Hungary (which all my explanations are actually based on, unless it is Byzantine Empire or otherwise noted), crown also gave away incomes (lands / estates, but also revenue streams from e.g. mints, mines and so on) to magnates in exchange for their military support. You can read this, or if you want more detail, From Nicopolis to Mohacs. "Retinue of retinues" was pretty much the rule; magnates kept standing armies (banderia) under arms, and when king called them, they came with their banderia. King himself maintained a royal banderium, and all the banderia together formed the military power of the kingdom. Of course, since magnates were often not interested for war until their own possessions were threatened, it proved more practical to instead request monetary contributions and taxes, and use those to pay for mercenaries. Sigismund thus established standing garrisons in border forts as early as 1390s, and Matthias Corvinus also established a standing field army in 1458 (the "Black Army"). But banderial system was never abandoned, and after 1490 came to again form the basis of military power of the kingdom.

Of course, this ties back to what I wrote in the post linked to in the OP: central government was dependant on magnates for administration and military alike. This in turn meant that king would find it hard to enforce his will, and had to look for allies against magnates: minor nobility and cities, both of which felt threatened by large nobility. As a result, a balance of power developed, with king reliant on cities and minor nobility to balance out magnates, but magnates likewise unable to remove the king due to a) said support from "lower" sectors of society and b) needing him for their own needs. Consequently, it was rare indeed to find a tyrant king during Middle Ages: proper tyrants started appearing only as state began centralizing again, losing competition in the process.

This decentralization also means that monarchy - or even just premodern state in general, but feudal monarchy in particular - is an ideal basis for a politically varied setting. As I may have noted, cities in Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Hungary, or - for non-monarchical basis - Roman Republic, could have quite diverse / heterogenous political systems. Republic of Dubrovnik, after all, was technically a part of Kingdom of Hungary until 15th or 16th century or so, though in practice it was more of an ally. But even cities in kingdom proper enjoyed significant rights, including the right to elect their own magistrates.
 
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