Here Be Dragons (33 page)

Where Middle-earth is largely a world of nature, the world of Mc-Killip's
Ombria in Shadow
is one of culture, and its conflicts are played out on this cultural stage. In the power struggle, the characters move between the city's zones, their transitions marked by the use of natural imagery. Where the three other authors offer new ways of perceiving the nature–culture duality of the actual world, McKillip takes it to an extreme where nature as a domain is omitted altogether. Her world is the world of urban culture, a social space where nature performs on the edges. It is a world that may yearn for the natural but does not need it; nature is just a representation—for transition, for hope, even for itself—not absent, only symbolic and, ultimately, ornamental.

Each of the four cities offers a new world to its readers, and as an integral part of each world we find an alternative to the traditional nature–culture opposition of the actual world. Even so, they have one thing in common with the actual world: they maintain a division between people and their environment. This division is not necessarily unbridgeable in fantasy worlds, however, and that is the subject of the following chapter.

T
he previous chapters discussed divisions that are, in one way or another, mainly peculiar to fantasy—either because they do not exist in the actual world, such as polder boundaries, or because, as in the case of the nature–culture division, they can be constructed differently in a fantasy world. This chapter addresses a division that a contemporary reader would generally take to exist in the actual world but that fantasy frequently bridges: the division between people and their environment. Michael Moorcock points out that “our oneness with nature” is a constant theme in epic fantasy and that “[m]any of the writers emphasize the existence of a deep bond between humans and their world. It is the persistent element in a large proportion of modern work.”
¹
That “deep bond” may actually be even deeper than Moorcock suggests. While a person can act upon, and be acted upon by, his or her surroundings, the actual world requires some sort of physical intermediary for the action to have any effect. In a fantasy setting, a change in someone's state (physical or otherwise) may result in, or from, a corresponding change in the surroundings. This is the case with various nature spirits, for instance; a dryad would suffer and eventually die from the axe blows that felled her tree far away (in C. S. Lewis's
The Last Battle
[1956]), and a water god's body would be begrimed by all the trash that is dumped into its river (vividly illustrated in Hayao Miyazaki's film
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
[2001;
Spirited Away
]). There is an implied identity between the spirit and its natural abode, even if they may be physically parted. Other connections do not necessarily imply such identity, even if a direct link is present. A frequent connection between land and people is expressed in the direct links that exist between many fantasy rulers and their realms, and it is this connection that is explored here.

This chapter consists of four parts. It opens with an overview of how rulers may be connected both politically and directly to their realms. Then follow two examples of ruler–realm relationships that provide central
themes for their respective novels. The first example is the Fisher King figure, the wounded king who is linked to a land that has somehow been laid waste—a common motif in fantasy fiction and, in many ways, a typical way of presenting the direct link between ruler and realm. The application of wasted lands and wounded kings varies from the obvious to the oblique—as exemplified by Malebron of Elidor in Alan Garner's
Elidor
(1965) and Théoden of Rohan in J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings
(1954–55).
²
Tim Powers uses this trope as a major plot element in
Last Call
(1992), placing it at the center of a complex of related myths in a primary world where the mythical controls the mundane. The second example demonstrates how the ruler–realm link can be used in a more idiosyncratic manner. In
Tourists
(1989), Lisa Goldstein uses the connection between ruler and realm to inscribe a conflict between two kings, and their supporters, on a country. In her novel, the kings are symbolized by different shapes, and the power struggle is expressed in terms of various kinds of palimpsests, turning the physical landscape into a kind of writing.

The fourth and largest part of the chapter examines the landscape connected to Dark Lords. The “landscapes of evil” do not constitute the most common example of direct links between rulers and realms; but especially in portal–quest fantasy, the Dark Lord and the dismal land that surrounds him
³
offer the most evident connection. After an overview of early instances of evil landscapes that capture the main characteristics of the typical Dark Lords' realms, three such realms are discussed in detail: Sauron's Mordor from
The Lord of the Rings
is set in relation to Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul and Robert Jordan's Shai'tan, and their respective lands, to illustrate how the link between ruler and realm can also provide a useful focus in a comparative reading of presentations of evil in fantasy.

LINKING RULERS TO REALMS: AN OVERVIEW

Whether by finding the rightful heir, identifying a suitable candidate for the empty throne, or curing the ailing king, the restoration of the sovereign is a ubiquitous motif in fantasy literature, particularly that of the portal–quest variety. It may be the object of a quest or simply an unintended result; it may even be a minor side effect of the story's general resolution. Whether central or peripheral to the story, whether a recurring theme or a final twist, restoring the ruler—the
proper
ruler, the ruler
who will make everything well—is part of many fantasy stories' happy ending. While little has been written about the proper rulers themselves, scholarship paying attention to the happy ending has often included them as a matter of course, so critical thoughts about the ending provide a natural starting point for the ensuing discussion of fantasy rulers and their realms.

Tolkien considered it near compulsory for “complete fairy-stories” to end happily after a eucatastrophe (an unexpected turn for the better),
⁴
and the fourth and final part of John Clute's model of “the grammar of discourse of fantasy” is “healing/return.”
⁵
The happy ending is only part of a larger framework that fantasy literature shares with folktales, or
Märchen
, as Brian Attebery points out in
The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature
.
⁶
He introduces Vladímir Propp's analysis of the folktale as a possible means of understanding the structural organization of fantasy stories.
⁷
A point Attebery does not make, but that is worth observing in the current context, is that although Propp never discusses his hero in terms of being the rightful ruler, the final event—or “function”—of his morphology is the hero's wedding and award, for instance of a large portion of the kingdom.
⁸
The restored ruler in a fantasy story does not have to be the hero, but weddings and coronations are certainly common (although, as in Propp's morphology, not mandatory); Clute describes the eucatastrophic ending as being “where marriage may occur, just governance fertilize the barren land, and there is a healing.”
⁹

The above begs one fairly obvious question: what is so “happy” about an ending in which the proper ruler is restored? Clute's description, in all its brevity, offers an answer. With the proper ruler follows healing: the worst is over and things will get better.
¹⁰
The restored sovereign promises an end to tyranny and suffering. Marriage, just governance, healing: we find all three elements in the final volume of
The Lord of the Rings
(with the revealing title
The Return of the King
). Aragorn is the true heir who emerges to claim a throne that has remained empty for centuries; his governance promises to be nothing but just, and he heals the land by removing enmity and banditry, as well as by repairing the environmental damage done by Sauron.
¹¹
Despite having won the throne primarily by virtue of his bloodline, Aragorn proves to be an able and just monarch with great political acumen.

There is something more to the relation between the sovereign and his land than political skill, however, and this something, this mysterious link between ruler and realm, explains why the restoration of the
sovereign heals the land. That kingship entails more than politics has been noted by other critics. “Most portal-quest fantasies associate the king with the well-being of the land, and the condition of the land with the morality of the place,” Farah Mendlesohn claims in
Rhetorics of Fantasy
;
¹²
and in
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
, Diana Wynne Jones offers examples, proposing that

many Kings have a curious relationship with the patch of land they happen to be entitled to rule. If they are absent too long or failing in their duties, crops will not grow, cattle will die, and there will be general bad luck. Countries where a formerly good King develops a serious personality problem will in sympathy evolve a malign microclimate, entailing drought in winter, snow in summer, and rain during the harvest.
¹³

The nature of the “curious relationship” is not restricted to the cases brought up by Mendlesohn and Jones; but no matter what form it takes, it is different from the political rulership of, for instance, Aragorn. The sovereign is in one way or another connected directly to the land and affects it immediately rather than through intermediaries. I have therefore chosen to call this association, this “curious relationship,” the ruler's
direct link
to the realm.
¹⁴
Fantasy plots can be constructed around variations in direct links and their combinations with the political power (or lack thereof) of the rulers, as can be seen from the examples that follow.

The political aspect of a ruler's rule is different from his or her direct link to the realm, which becomes evident when Aragorn is compared to Arren, from Ursula K. Le Guin's third Earthsea novel,
The Farthest Shore
.
¹⁵
At a first glance, the two characters have a great deal in common: they are distant relatives of the previous kings; they ascend the throne after the threat against the world has been removed; and their rule is supposed to heal conflict-torn societies. Both characters are brave and noble enough to carry out various heroic exploits (including a trip through a realm of death), and in both cases, the restoration is not the novel's central quest but an immediate result of it. Despite all their similarities, however, there is at least one major difference: while Aragorn takes the throne by virtue of his royal ancestry, Arren is crowned because he fulfills an ancient prophecy. Arren thus becomes king by historical necessity, by predestination rather than inheritance.

Despite being destined to become king, Arren is predominantly a political leader. Like Aragorn, he heals his land by just governance, primarily
introducing social stability rather than fertilizing the barren land. In this way, he is the almost total opposite of the Childlike Empress of Fantastica in Michael Ende's
Die unendliche Geschichte
(1979; transl.
The Neverending Story
[1983]), a story that revolves around the restoration first of the ruler and then of the realm. The Empress is directly connected to her realm to such an extent that discussing ruler and realm as separate concepts is almost meaningless; ruler and realm are metonyms for each other. Her disease and the Nothing that destroys Fantastica are aspects of the same affliction and have the same source; both also have the same cure. When Bastian gives the Childlike Empress a new name, Fantastica is saved along with her. At the same time, she is not a political leader.

The Childlike Empress—as her title indicates—was looked upon as the ruler over all the innumerable provinces of the [boundless] Fantastican Empire, but in reality she was far more than a ruler; [rather] she was something entirely different. […] She was simply there in a special way. She was the center of all life in Fantastica.
¹⁶

The Empress never exercises any political or military power; her governance is not just or unjust, it is nonexistent. Bastian (and the other people who have attempted to make themselves Emperors of Fantastica) cannot understand this metonymic relation, cannot realize that while the provinces of Fantastica can be conquered, it is impossible to become Emperor. The Childlike Empress and her realm are two sides of the same coin; each is the other, the two always linked. Bastian can rule politically, but the Empress does not rule her realm, she
is
her realm. She is as closely tied to Fantastica as is imaginable. A similar unity between ruler and realm is found—on a smaller scale—in Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-master series (1976–79), where rulership, or “land-rule,” comes with a total awareness of the realm, if only for a moment. When the land-rule is passed on to Prince Morgon of Hed, he briefly sees “every leaf, every seed, every root in Hed”; he even feels himself to
be
every leaf and seed.
¹⁷

Metonymic relations between realm and ruler are uncommon, however; political power is generally combined with some direct link to the realm. For instance, despite the insistence of the murdered king Verence of Lancre that the land and the king are one,
¹⁸
the sovereign in Terry Pratchett's
Wyrd Sisters
is quite clearly a political figure. Lancre is explicitly divided into people and “kingdom” (meaning not only the geography but also all its animals and plants, as well as its history),
¹⁹
political power first and foremost meaning power over the people. The direct
link between realm and ruler only means that the king of Lancre must care for his kingdom; it is, as the witch Granny Weatherwax explains, like a dog, which “doesn't care if its master's good or bad, just so long as it likes the dog.”
²⁰
The usurper, Felmet, might not be popular with his subjects owing to his policy of killing people and burning down their cottages; but the kingdom takes offense only when he cuts down its forests out of sheer dislike for them. (
Wyrd Sisters
draws heavily on the life and plays of William Shakespeare, in particular
Macbeth
.) Feeling unloved by its king, the kingdom seeks help from the witches to have him removed. The happy ending is achieved when Felmet is replaced by the Fool, who clearly favors just governance and a healing of the land (even the possibility of a wedding is hinted at). The importance of caring for the kingdom above any political claim to the throne is emphasized when it is revealed to the reader that the Fool has no actual right to the throne, although this is only known to the witches.
²¹
Political power might be more visible; but throughout the story, the direct link remains a vital plot element and is, ultimately, what being Lancre's ruler is largely about.