In general, I like fantasy tropes. I like my villains, I like my heroes and I like my bands of misfits (cough). Even the ones I don’t like, I can usually find some way to enjoy. And whether I like them or I hate them, I enjoy talking about them.
I seem to have a habit of drawing on the same sources for inspiration, but Pornokitsch’s review of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings left me more than a little interested in what he had to say, particularly about the trope of The Chosen One.
It’s been in nearly everything that’s had a right to call itself a work of Science Fiction or Fantasy: the thought that there are certain people who should lead, certain people who are blessed, certain people who are fit to rule…and the average working-class schmuck gets no particular say in who gets to be chosen. No, that’s in the hands of the Gods or Fate or Prophecy or (usually) the Author. It’s a well-worn classic, a venerable trope.
And I kind of hate it. For two big reasons. It’s a two-pronged hate. A hate fork pinning down a steak of spite while a bitter, dull knife saws away a fatty piece to stuff into my gob (the spite steak tastes like poo, too).
On a purely literary level, I think the idea of The Chosen One tends to diminish my favorite word ever: conflict. Conflict still drives a story and you can never stack enough of it on. The Chosen One (in its most common iteration) removes a crucial part of a conflict: the hero. If he’s been Chosen by Whatever, he can safely assume that he is right and everyone else is wrong, that he does deserve to rule and get the girl and exterminate the orcs and whatever.
Presumably, we’re involved in a book because we’re involved in the character. To be involved in the character, we need the conflict of his own morality. You’d think that in science fiction and fantasy, where people are routinely resorting to violence as an answer (if not the first answer) to solving their problems, there would be at least a moment when someone paused and thought “wait, why?” The answer to that question compounds the character’s conflict, which invests us further in him. Every dead orc from that point on is significant, further supporting the conclusion he’s reached, and we watch him abandon his ethos or fight to save it.
But in terms of philosophy, I sometimes wonder if the whole concept of The Chosen One isn’t a toxic one. I occasionally wonder if it’s right to put the concept of someone utterly infallible in all that he does out there, if it’s right to put up this concept that birth matters more than effort. Or, at the very least, if it’s right to put it out there without questioning it.
I was amazingly pleased to talk to N.K. Jemisin about this, someone who’s done more thinking about tropes, how they speak to our society and how we use them than anyone I’ve ever met. She put everything I had been thinking of far more eloquently and swear word-free than I ever could:
My quickie response: Chosen Ones are toxic if you think various flavors of authoritarianism are a problem. *I* do, but then my political views are decidedly left; I think rule by anything short of a large representative elected body is a problem. But there are a lot of folks in the fantasy readership who find a certain comfort and simplicity in concentrated authority. We all succumb to the urge to admire a strong, decisive leader, I think; the problem lies in giving that person too much power. Even the best-loved king is still a dictator, in the end.
And Chosen Ones who are “select people” or have some birthright to leadership are even more problematic, because then you get into eugenics. If some people are *meant* to be rulers, then that means some people are meant to be ruled — and the latter group can therefore never be allowed to have the power to self-govern. Why give it to them if they’re genetically or magically or psychologically less fit for leadership? And while you’ve got two divisions of people (“select people” and peons, patricians and plebians, whatever you want to call them), why stop there? If some people are especially fit to rule, why not decide that some people are especially fit only for combat, and some only for skilled trades, and some only for intellectual pursuits? And maybe some people aren’t fit to do anything but die, because they’re old or disabled, or because some of your industries (e.g., mining) are especially dangerous and you can’t spare anyone *valuable* to do that kind of work. You’ve just created a eugenicist caste system, whee.
And that kind of societal division is going to have to treat the non-ruler people as inferior, and enforce that message of inferiority, in order to keep them from getting any ideas about replacing the select people, especially when they’re hungry or tired of being sent off to war. So the members of the underclass become “lazy” or “craven” or “feebleminded” or whatever, while the ruling class becomes “hardworking” and “courageous” and “smart”. (Ever notice how we use “noble” as a synonym for “good” and “handsome” and so on?) So now you’ve got classism. Or maybe you can break it down by some other method than skill set; that would be more fair. So what can you use to divide people instead? Hmm. Well, some of them *look* different from each other… Aaaand you’ve just created racism, sexism, ableism, and probably some other “isms” I don’t even know the names of.
Most fantasy novels elide all this by making their Chosen Ones “good rulers” or “blessed by [deity]” or somehow superior, or by making the people-to-be-ruled somehow happy to be stuck in a system they can’t control, and happy to have yet another (good) dictator. But most of the fantasy novels we’ve heard of are British or American, and most British and American people are unexamined or enthusiastic classists, so most of us *don’t* have a problem with it. It’s what we’re used to. As long as there are writers and readers who feel this way, the Chosen One narratives will still have a place.
For those who do have a problem with it, though, there’s also room for Chosen Ones to be reimagined. For example, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Chosen One who was ugly, lazy, physically unfit, or dead stupid, who stayed that way to the end, and was the *good guy* (since he’s usually a “he”; another thing to be reimagined). Closest I can think of is Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant, who was a rapist, but I stopped reading the damn book after that scene so I don’t know what happened to him. Rothfuss did a Chosen-ish One who gave it all up to become a bartender, but I suspect (haven’t read the second book) that’s a temporary condition. My soon-to-come “Dreamblood” duology has Chosen Ones who are given power because they’re schizophrenic or sociopathic; it’s the source of their magic (as long as they don’t have a psychotic break). I’m sure there’s other ways to play with the concept.
It *is* discouraging. But that’s all the more reason to question it with fiction, for those of us who are writers and have the power to do so. 🙂 I mean, yeah, Chosen Ones are problematic as hell, and it’s creepy and depressing that the fantasy readership rewards this narrative with bestseller sales without seeming to question it. That’s because the fantasy readership is *conservative* at its core — tradition-obsessed, change-resistant, and more than a little bigoted. And yeah, if you want to be a bestseller, then to some degree you have to cater to this core.
But I think it’s possible to cater to this audience while also poking a finger at its shortcomings and saying, “Yo, your fly is unzipped, might want to do something about that.” I get all kinds of shit about having written epic fantasy stories with female protagonists, protagonists who aren’t white, etc. — but that doesn’t stop me from writing them. It didn’t stop me from trying to publish them, though it took me awhile to do so. So if the inherent creepiness of the “Chosen One” narrative disturbs you, then try writing an epic fantasy in which the creepiness of the Chosen One *is* questioned. Brandon Sanderson did a little of this in his “Mistborn” trilogy, although IMO he short-circuited his own message by revealing that the Lord Ruler — supposedly the “Chosen One” of his own legend — really *wasn’t* the Chosen One. So ultimately Sanderson ended up affirming the idea that Chosen Ones are proper and true, you just need to make sure you’ve actually got the *right* Chosen One before you stick the guy on a throne. But if Sanderson hadn’t pulled his punches at the end of the first volume, his trilogy could’ve been a devastating excoriation of the very idea of a Chosen One. No reason another author can’t tackle the same theme in a more daring way. *I* would certainly love to see it. 🙂
So, in general, we agree that there’s a lot of room for reimagining. And one can’t help but wonder if the time is right to reimagine by beginning to question, to theorize and maybe even to let the reader be let down by The Chosen One. Conflict is never a bad thing in stories, new ideas are what the genre is all about.
I want to quote a LOT of the above discussion for agreement – the two of you had a fascinating discussion and really covered a lot of the bases (if not all of them).
BUT this bit really stood out:
“That’s because the fantasy readership is *conservative* at its core — tradition-obsessed, change-resistant, and more than a little bigoted. And yeah, if you want to be a bestseller, then to some degree you have to cater to this core.”
Sadly, very true. And the “chosen one” narrative seems inescapably tied to the literature of escapism. I think I made a cheap crack about high fantasy being distilled into “when my real mommy comes, things will be different!”. It applies quite nicely – tales about people that are born special, treated badly (that is, like an ordinary person), do their special thing, go back home to show off how special they’ve become (another mandatory chapter in the escapist epic), then ride off into the sunset with other special people.
What’s fun is going through all the classic high fantasy texts and showing how the Chosen One gets the *whatever* over the infinitely more deserving sidekick or villain. Frodo vs. Sam is a great example, but Aragorn vs Faramir is another one from the same book. Belgarion vs. the generations of Rivans that were trained to rule… It doesn’t matter that someone was raised as a stableboy and spent their formative years wandering around as a grumpy hobo – they are Chosen, so pass them the nuclear suitcase.
I’ve heard talk about escapism, but I think that’s kind of selling the issue short. We see plenty of well-to-do series that don’t revolve around escapism, such as Abercrombie’s work in which people tend to be punished for heroism. I’d say that might be going too far in the other direction, but it’s there.
The thing is, we can’t be all about escapism and complain in the same breath that the mainstream literary genre doesn’t take fantasy seriously.
Pingback: Tweets that mention Sam Sykes » The Chosen Jerk: Jam Session with N.K. Jemisin -- Topsy.com
Pingback: Why does the narrator have to be special? « I acquire books. I read them. I judge them.
The problem of the Chosen One, is a problem with traditional Epic Fantasy. Or with any offshoot of the genre which depends on the existence of good and evil as anything other than abstract philosophical concepts.
People may believe in such in the real world – generally we call this religion or superstition – but only in works of fiction can this be made concrete beyond a shadow of doubt.
By giving good and evil literal, literary personification, many troubling questions arise. Be it via the agency of gods, mystic forces, or the characters themselves, the complexity of motivation is bleached by the caustic effects of certainty granted by the presence of higher/lower powers in the text.
I’m not talking about the beliefs of the characters themselves – for this follows on the pattern we see in real life – but those of the reader. If gods exist beyond question and emerge as characters as real as any others, if good and evil are locked in a visible titanic struggle which is spelled out on the page – moral (and a great deal of dynamic) uncertainty is either entirely gone or greatly diminished. Homer might manage this, but his gods were of a very different type – more akin to the dynastic squabbles of human tyrants than battles between ultimate good and evil.
For myself, I’m more comfortable where such forces are only definitively extant in the minds of the characters – rather than made literal truths by the author. With rare exception. Gods and monsters can still operate, but their lines of ethical causality are more ambiguous, as is any certainty behind their ultimate existence.
This gives a freer hand to the author to build ethical agency into the characters themselves rather than have it dictated by what faction they are aligned with in the greater universe.
E.
Spot fucking on, Sam & N.K.. I did not get deeply into specific conventions the last time I wrote about epic fantasy, but I do want to talk about the issue of the politics of The Chosen One in the future. The Chosen One rules and triumphs solely thorough Divine Right, which I think resonants with Ms. Jemisin’s second paragraph. It assumes that the system is “those born to rule, do; those not, cannot.” It’s wishful imperialism, really.
This is a big part of my own novel-in-progress, where one of the main characters, Tahl the Relentless, is a Chosen One who acts like it, much to the dismay and pain of those around her (including her revolutionary compatriots). I’m exploring the political implications of someone acting like the Chosen One is a much greyer moral universe. So, your conversation is not just relevant to a larger conversation about the genre, but also quite enlightening to me. Thank you both!
Pingback: Discussion on “The Chosen Hero” « Angela Benedetti
I think by its very definition Fantasy is a form of escapism. We are escaping from the life of reality. In reality morality, ambiguity, decisions with unknown consequences, chaos and the overall general feeling that life is not very special, makes us enjoy a story where – someone’s life is special. Its not very challenging mentally, but it is the reason most people enjoy it.
Personally I like the idea of a completely normal human – someone who is mentally lazy, morally unexamined, who just wants to make ends meet suddenly gets thrust into a role where they have to make a series of decisions that change the course of the world. The equivalent of a call center rep suddenly being forced to change the world.
The hero don’t have to be a “bad” person. Just be one of us. And it should be very clear that there was no “chosen” about them except that they chose to do things that led them deeper into circumstances that had wider and wider impact.
Escapism, of course, is not at all a bad thing, but is that an excuse to make a book shallower by removing the deeper parts of the conflict? I mean, don’t we read to see the good guys triumph, not to experience a leisurely day in the life of their moral infallibility?
Excellent, yes. The idea of a “Chosen One” also necessarily involves the idea of someone doing the choosing — presumably someone who knows where all the cards lie, someone who gets everything right all the time. Someone who decides who are in and who are out, who are chosen and who damned. And that notion itself is corrosive.
Seems to me the most honorable way to use the notion of a “Chosen One” is that the choosing is done after the One has passed away. If the One has lived a fruitful and good life, then he or she has in a sense been “chosen” by history or luck or fate or character or genes or what have you. But it’s not the kind of thing that can — or should — be known in advance.
That said, I recognize the power of the trope.
Of course. And this could always be a trope that could be among the most available to explore if someone simply asked: “Wait, who put you in charge?’
Sara brings up a good point. There is a difference between a protagonist, who could be a normal person at the start, who goes on to save the world, and a Chosen One tapped by a prophecy within the story. When I see the word ‘prophecy’ in a book description, I avoid it like the plague, because it’s just been done so much in fantasy that I cannot find joy in it.
But I still enjoy books about people who stand against their oppressors, as long as their action rise from the events and situations of the story, and not an obviously external device.
Pingback: Not all heroes are created equal « Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog
I find that the “Chosen One” also comes alongside the desire that the good guy always has to win and that nothing good can come from lower/baser desires such as selfishness, greed and hate.
One of my favorite movies is Arlington Road, when I first watched it I found it was such a well balanced and cleverly written work that really made me question all the other movies I’d seen.
We always just accept everything we’re told because we don’t know any differently and the same comes from the Chosen One as well. We, and those within the stories, just accept things as they are told because a “higher authority” that we put some measure of trust in says it’s so.
Pingback: The Key, 31 January 2011 |
There’s Carrot in the Discworld books. By all signs the hereditary lost heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork, and he knows, but he’s staying low as a policeman. He’s not even the head of the police.
Harry Potter was at least somewhat deconstructive, with a prophecy that could go two ways and needed some self-fulfilment by Voldemort anyway, and Harry’s special powers being a result of his mother’s sacrifice and interaction with Voldemort.
The RPG Exalted deconstructs this massively by design.
Hodgell’s Jame isn’t thrilled at being the messiah, or happy about the racial-class system their god has set up. OTOH, the race-class system exists, whether she likes it or not; the Kendar want to serve, and the Highborn have power to command. As with Exalted, sometimes you can’t choose to not have power, only how you’ll use it.
Also,”If he’s been Chosen by Whatever, he can safely assume that he is right and everyone else is wrong, that he does deserve to rule and get the girl and exterminate the orcs and whatever.”
I can’t think of anything offhand that fits this model of infallibility, let alone agree that it’s ubiquitous. Sure, there’s lots of protagonists with magical powers or strength, and lots of royalism, and intersection thereof, but always right? What are these books of which everyone speaks? Not Tolkien, Prydain, Narnia (unless you count Aslan, who’s Jesus, Rowling, Dark Materials, Hodgell, McKinley, Cherryh. I don’t think Pern or Darkover. Lots of these books don’t even have protagonists in charge of much of anything, let alone infallible rulers. Is there some ocean of Chosen One fantasy I’ve not read?
This is engaging and extremely well-stated, but then again, I expect that from you and N. K. who are all kinds of awesome. I’m all for re-imagining. It’s why my “chosen girl” is a freak in Victorian society.
Thank you for this; and to me your discussion illuminates one interesting thing about Frodo in the Lord of the Rings — the chosen one for exactly the opposite reason from the one that you grapple with here; chosen because he was weak and innocent, chosen because the quest was impossible, and in the end he did fail; failure was inevitable and foreshadowed. And in his failure, victory all the same. An amazing twist on the trope.
@DamienRS
Half the books you cited are what they’re talking about. If you view the Potter books from the Snape’s point of view, for example, they’re all about a snotty kid who never does his homework, breaks the rules constantly, and thinks his friends and house are better than everyone else, never mind his dead father, who was actually quite appalling but was a pureblood wizard who owned a famous artifact by birthright. Rowling did some interesting work in Book 5 when the prophecy could’ve applied to two kids, and Voldemort made it apply to Harry by treating him like it did, but otherwise it follows the traditional chosen one structure pretty nicely.
And Aragorn gets to waltz into Minas Tirith because he’s got a sword, and the Pevensie kids get to rule Narnia because they’re human, etc. etc. Ask Faramir and whoever was the ruler before the White Witch if they like not being Chosen.
Going by the books, I think Faramir was quite happy to not be Chosen, yes. Denethor and Boromir, not so much. Aragorn soft of it… he’s also the side plot, in a sense. And not a lost heir, but one of a long line that had always known it was the heir, but didn’t step forward, until Aragorn spent much of his 88 years serving Gondor covertly. He’s a healer too, and it’s not clear whether it’s because of his sacred royalness or because he knows more lore than the locals.
I don’t think of most of these as infallible, though, especially Harry Potter, who isn’t particularly superpowered, or a ruler, and Snape’s perspective is somewhat incomplete.
Now, I can think of a whole lot of fantasy where the protagonist has unexpected magical powers. Not so much of it making them infallible or getting away with crap choices or being in charge without merit.
“That’s because the fantasy readership is *conservative* at its core — tradition-obsessed, change-resistant, and more than a little bigoted.”
The publishing culture is conservative at its core, it’s not like fantasy readers are uniquely hidebound and regressive. High fantasy is still patterned after Tolkien because publishers buy and sell and promote what (they think) works.
I think it’s really goofy to lay all that on the readers. There are plenty of people who probably would read high fantasy who don’t because of exactly the conservative tropes that this conversation mentions. A lot of those readers are probably among the audience who’ve made urban fantasy explode in recent years.
I recall a trending topic on Twitter once called #DearPublisher, in which various readers offered their messages (usually negative) to publishers. Chief among these was “please publish new things.” This quickly stroked the collective cat and it was quickly retweeted to the point of smothering.
My own editor quickly responded with #DearReader, and stated “if you want new things, quit buying the same old things.”
I’m not of the opinion that Publishers are wildly out of touch and Readers are immovably set in their ways. As you say, the eruption of Urban Fantasy is a good indicator that many readers were ready for a change. But the fact that epic fantasy (where most of The Chosen One trope comes in) tends to praise the same stories is a little hard to deny when you consider the market out there.
A good recent deconstruction of the “Chosen One” trope is Lawrence Watt-Evans’ Annals of the Chosen, where the titular characters are called “Chosen” but turn out to be chosen in a much more mundane sense — they were picked by their predecessors who were picked by their predecessors, in a non-infallible way, and there’s no guarantee they aren’t going to mess up horribly. Another is China Mièville’s Un Lun Dun.
Pingback: I’ve been wandering around the reading/writing/publishing blogosphere again… | On a Pale Star
Interesting discussion! I am not a huge sci-fi/fantasy reader myself, but I have read a decent share of it.
Not to be cliche, but I of course compared your argument to my favorite fantasy series, Harry Potter. I think Harry Potter handles the “chosen one” trope a little differently, perhaps, because he is not presented as infallible. He keeps trying to do everything on his own, be the hero all on his own, but then one of the constant themes of the book is friendship — he is screwing up when he tries to go it alone, because he really needs his friends — they are just as important to the success of his mission as he is.
Pingback: The Key, 31 January 2011 « The World SF Blog