Oh boy, a catchy title that makes a massive generalization.
What I'm about to talk about probably isn't the worst trope in fantasy. But it's definitely one of the weirdest, especially in contemporary literature.
For some reason, fantasy authors just LOVE monarchies.
I don't get it. Pretty much every fantasy book that I've read (that involves succession or just a king, which is most of them) implicitly supports monarchies. Sure, they have the evil king Mazgarazoth, iron-fisted tyrant of the grim lands of Scary Sadness. But, opposing the vile blackguard is the good king John, who rules his lands with a soft hand and loves his subjects. He also somehow maintains the economy even though he takes pity and lets peasants not pay taxes, and also, quite luckily, is descended from a long line of similarly paragon rulers, and his son is virtuous and angelic, and will grow into a good king.
(If you couldn't tell, that was sarcastic)
(The "good king" is also often replaced with a rightful heir good king, who has to violently and illegally usurp the evil king to institute a similarly monarchical regime)
This exact sequence of event happens all the time. The Ranger's Apprentice series has King Duncan, the Lord of the Rings chronicle has Aragorn, even Egyptian Mythology has the rightful heir good king Horus beating back the evil king Set. Horus is kind of justified, though, seeing as he's an explicitly good god and therefore probably pretty moral.
Now, in case you didn't know, the reason this trope is bad is because monarchies are generally pretty bad. Sure, you'll have various good kings, but the fact that the ruler is determined by the very dicey process of genetic inheritance means that the king won't always be good. And if the king isn't good, or goes senile and appoints their favorite table to the position of chief baronial advisor, what are you going to do about it? Kill him? Whoops, looks like your peasant mob got killed by the king's elite royal corps (in Rome, the elite royal corps killed the emperor a whole lot, but we won't talk about that). Oh wait, some bloke from across the channel is offering his help! With his army, we can topple the aging tyrant! Wait a minute, we just instated a new tyrant, but French.
So yeah, monarchies are pretty bad; even if not for the aforementioned reasons, there's a reason why no more true monarchies exist. They just function worse than republics. You could say that the characters are just acting like they would in their time period. And you would be correct. But there's no reason for authors to pose those actions as explicitly positive.
That's it, please argue in the comments because it would be funny.
-Marco
Excellent generalization of a massive genre! I didn't realize how much I come across this issue until now, coming from a person who doesn't read very much fantasy. I look forward to your next controversial take.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you have said, usually in real life, specifically for monarchies, the first ruler is often the best ruler. This is why whenever a fantasy novel ends all I can think about is what would happen if the future generations of the ruler's are evil.
ReplyDeleteI agree, monarchy is a very common fantasy trope. To be honest, I'm not sure what the obsession with it is. Most people have been engrossed in it since we were just children with fairytales of princes and princesses, but what is it really that people find so fascinating about this? No idea, though I will say that when I was little a lot of the books I wrote involved royalty and I still find it kind of interesting.
ReplyDeleteYep. I think this is true because so much of fantasy is based off of the medieval aesthetic. With that medieval theme comes monarchies, knights, and folklore. Lots of fantasy takes stuff from Tolkien and he explored monarchy in his books.
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