Fantasy lit and its obsession with the monarchy

Arthur is one of the most important symbols in Britain, and he was a king who was linked to the land. If the land was dying, so was Arthur. He needed the Grail.

He was the ultimate figure of kingship, wasn't he? Maybe this kind of precursor is then unconsciously repeated in the fantasy format?

Okay, maybe I'm wrong, but for a moment, I thought I had touched on a much deeper and far more philosophical vein...then it disappeared!

Phil

A lot of this "obsession" has to do with the predilection of fantasy novels to focus around Medieval situations. The typical witches, sorcerers, dragons, and such, and all the superstitions that existed in medieval times. I'm not talking about the hero so much as the setting. Even when the hero is a nobody, in many fantasy novels everything takes place in a country ruled by a monarch, where there are warriors (who use medieval weapons), magic-workers (Sorcerers, witches, etc. who usually fit the medieval superstition), minstrels, scholars, peasants, etc. I sometimes get frustrated when I read about some "kingdom", like Valdemar, where they have all this "high-tech" magic, but they haven't even discovered gunpowder, so they still use bows and arrows! (yet they have discovered birth-control pills and modern plumbing ) I mean, it seems to be a rule that they can't be any more advanced than the medieval period scientifically, because after that everyone stopped believing in witchcraft and dragons and such. Well, of course an industrial revolution would interfere with heroic quests...

One interesting exception I have noticed is The Ancient One, by Thomas A. Barron, which takes place in a modern Oregon forest, and takes the heroine back in time to a Native American legend, where there is some monarchy, but it's certainly not a medieval realm.

In that case, I suspect that you would love Anne McCaffrey.

How could anyone possibly not love a book with dragons and flamethrowers?!?

In the old days, kings and royalty are pretty much the only folk who could afford high quality weapons and have the time to use them. The rest of the people stayed on the land, miserably like Russian serfs, or happily like, err... I can't think of any happy peasants. (uphold the class struggle!! establish the dictatorship of the proletariat!! down with the bourgeousie (did I spell that right?)!!)

So royalty can afford adventuring, have the weapons, and have the time. I can't remember the last time I had an adventure; I'll end up like a Baggins. I mean before Gandalf came along.

Say, Bilbo Baggins wasn't royalty was he?

Frodo and Bilbo were neither royalty nor peasants.
Not royalty because the Shire had no royalty.
And not peasants because they had so much money that they didn't really need to grow their food, although they still chose to.

You guys should read "The Dragon and the George" ( www.amazon.com ) if you want something very unconventional; the hero is a human trapped in the body of a dragon in another time-period by a scientific accident at a college where he used to work.

that sounds like a movie I once saw: "Flight of Dragons".