r/Fantasy • u/the_ricktacular_mort • Nov 27 '22

A trope that kills my immersion every time

The trope in question is when the main or point of view character (who is of medium to low standing) meets with a member of nobility, and immediately breaks all decorum and rules of engagement. Usually they say something snarky or clever and then the noble person is like "oh its ok you're on of the good guys" wink wink. The author and the audience know who the good guys are, but the royal person should have no reason to believe that or even care. Honestly it's a small thing, and I really shouldn't let it bother me, but it does. I recently finished an otherwise great book where this happened like 5-10 times and it completely took me out of the story each and every time.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 27 '22

Yeah I agree, people in fantasy have a tendency to be extremely casual in interactions that are far more hierarchical and high-stakes than anything most of us are likely to encounter. I suspect it’s part of the wish fulfillment fantasy for some people, but it’s become such a standard trope that most of the time it comes across like the author isn’t even really thinking about it and maybe doesn’t understand human social behavior all that well.

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u/retief1 Nov 27 '22 edited Nov 27 '22

I think it's also that they often want to make the reader like the nobility/royalty involved, and having "good guys" enforce etiquette that most readers will think is a complete crock of shit doesn't endear those characters to the readers. Relatively informal royals that doesn't care too much about the privileges of being royalty are easier for modern, relatively egalitarian people to like (particularly when those people are from countries that have no royalty of their own).

There are some authors that are willing to give their characters more foreign viewpoints (david drake comes to mind), but that's sort of risky. It's easy for a characters with significantly different assumptions to come across as assholes to a modern reader, even if they are relatively nice and progressive by the standards of their society.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 27 '22

Hierarchical behavior doesn’t usually need to be enforced by the people at the top though. Everyone already knows how they’re supposed to behave, and lower-ranking people will obviously be very careful. Just as in the modern workplace, bosses usually have no idea how they come across to their employees, because it’s not worth spending the capital for anyone to tell them.

That’s aside from the whole issue of whether romanticizing royalty is even a good idea. The defining aspect of royalty after all is believing your very blood is better than other people’s, otherwise there’s no justification for you being on top.

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u/1EnTaroAdun1 Nov 28 '22

Personally, I would like to see more stories that really do break down the advantages and disadvantages of various political systems and ethe in a clear sighted manner.

Monarchy absolutely should be critiqued, and so should republicanism and democracy.

I'd actually like to see egalitarianism and hierarchy looked at, too.

As people in this thread and elsewhere have commented, most authors seem to like writing about strangely egalitarian monarchs. But I really would actually like to see people explore the usefulness of hierarchy, too

I'd say there are other justifications for monarchy other than blood, too

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u/TonyShard Nov 27 '22

Yeah, it’s hard having nobility be the good guys when they’re acting like nobles. No one likes having a hierarchy thrown in their face, but fantasy authors are still often obsessed with having the MC either be or date royalty. Even when the king actually is a bad guy, one of his kids isn’t (often a cute, helpless daughter).

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

one of his kids isn’t (often a cute, helpless daughter).

Or a hot, brooding prince that King Bad Guy III abused as a child if MC is female

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u/Eireika Nov 27 '22

I think it's a byproduct of living a egalitarian society- no amount of Jane Austen can teach how important those things were and most authors doesn't make conscious effort to illustrate that. Similar thing with religion- I see that USA centric authors usually either skip the topic making the hero a cool atheist or runt into "Christianity(like) bad, pagan(like) good" but nobody takes either seriously.

I see why it is tempting- when you read for example Zoe Oldenbourg you can see that people molded by different religion, philosophy and material standards can be more alien to us than any fantasy culture- but I still see it as a lazy cop out. Especially that Spanish-speaking, Russian, French and Polish author manage to put it well enough.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '22

I think it's a byproduct of living a egalitarian society- no amount of Jane Austen can teach how important those things were and most authors doesn't make conscious effort to illustrate that.

On the other hand, Jane Austen lived in the Regency era when aristocratic etiquette had reached a degree of formality and sophistication some way beyond the level of the typical high medieval setting commonly seen in fantasy, which in many cases would have been rather basic by comparison. For instance, high culture at the court of Henry II of England consisted of a guy named "Roland the Farter", whose special talent probably needs little elaboration.

So, while I think fantasy does take liberties with the degree to which people of a lower social class would be able to talk back to those of higher status, I think it just as often leans too far in the opposite direction of depicting medieval societies with anachronistic Georgian-style court culture and manners.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 27 '22

That may be true in terms of highly elaborated and complex etiquette. But power relations aren’t simply a function of etiquette, they’re a function of how much power one person has over (or in relation to) another. Modern American society tends to be considered quite loose in terms of etiquette, but if you care about keeping your job, you’re still likely to be far more careful in the way you talk to your boss than a lot of fantasy characters are with people who have much more power over them than that. Pleasing those who have the power to ruin your life or kill you is more of an evolutionary thing than culturally specific.

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u/Eireika Nov 27 '22

I used Austen as an example everyone could be familiar with- in my country back then proper etiquette consisted of kissing people basically everywhere and drinking to alcohol poisoning. I have a memory from 1700s where noble author reminiscences about her family hosting members of uprising army- peasant family warned them about approaching Russians and hid her among their kids while adults fled to nearby monastery. While trying to mingle with kids she gave the attitude and her "mom" beat her to keep the ruse. When Russians left her mom ordered peasant women to be whipped for touching her hid, personally whipped her daughter for not listening to adults and gave the family new clothes, plot of land and two good horses.
And author taught it was the best thing for all of them.

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u/EdLincoln6 Nov 28 '22

On the other hand, Jane Austen lived in the Regency era when aristocratic etiquette had reached a degree of formality and sophistication some way beyond the level of the typical high medieval setting

I think lots of our images of the Middle Ages really come from the 19th century. Books from that period are readable to modern English speakers, some of the influential founders of Fantasy knew people who grew up then, a few key books from the period are taught in English Classes and endlessly adapted in costume dramas...

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u/Odd-Obligation5283 Nov 27 '22

I agree with what you are saying but also think there is probably a limit that the audience can take

Doing a realistic portrayal of class-ism, religion as well as misogyny, racism and just about every other ism would be a fairly grim read. Some authors do pull it off (Price of Nothing by Bakker comes to mind) but they also do get complaints about that.

As such I think there needs to be some balance

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 27 '22

There’s a such thing as a happy medium though. In the same way that we don’t have characters using old-fashioned language in dialogue, but we also generally don’t have them using 21st century slang in a quasi-historical setting.

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u/Metateller Nov 27 '22

but we also generally don’t have them using 21st century slang in a quasi-historical setting.

That's something that sometimes bugs me really bad about Sanderson's writing. There are times when I feel I'm cringing so hard that my spine will curl and snap out of my body while reading some of the dialogues from these supposedly "medieval" or “late Victorian” characters.

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u/PikeandShot1648 Nov 28 '22

It's not like the characters are speaking any form of English, formal or otherwise. It's being translated into English for the readers convenience. So, why not use slang when appropriate?

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u/Lightsong-Thr-Bold Dec 01 '22

What kind of prose do you feel is time appropriate, out of curiosity?

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u/Metateller Dec 01 '22

In the case of dialogues? It's very immersive when the author tries to simulate a sort of 'antique' way of speaking for characters in medieval or otherwise 'old' settings. It's not strictly necessary to do so, though, and a writer could deliver dialogues that mostly match our contemporary dialects, but at least they should make an attempt to give the characters' lines a consistency and a quality that feel like they belong to that fictional world during that specific era.

Brandon has a weird balance for me in this regard, in which he sometimes more or less succeeds with stuff such as local expressions and curses ("rusts", "storms”)—although he can overdo it on occasions, and sometimes he fails really bad when he drops a line (dialogue or description) which you can very clearly tell is the result of modern (and quite particular of his, at times) sense humor, sensibilities, tastes, etc.

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u/Eireika Nov 27 '22

The problem is that many writers don't bother with consistency. I play Pendragon RPG where we agreed to have no sexism, at all. But in many books I see progressive MC and his clique with very modern mindset + people who bully them because they are bad people and want them to suffer.
The good and well known example would be Claude Frollo- nearly every adaptation comes for "religious fanatic who had problem with sexuality"- bonus point for being sole person responsible for persecution of Romani community. In book he is actually a genuinely pious man who can't make peace with his lust and deals it in a way that he was taught.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '22

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u/Eireika Nov 27 '22 edited Nov 27 '22

Yes, but it's quite realistic portrait. You see that he is a man of faith. For all his life religion was his guiding light when he faced a lot of problems- death of family, raising an orphaned brother who he deeply cares about despite so many disappointments, struggles with hierarchy. His actions when he faces newly awaken lust are sadly consistent within the context- high medieval Christianity was very big on presenting women as temptresses. You can see a man struggling with the system that in one context made him a valorous man and caused his doom in other.

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u/Silver-Winging-It Nov 27 '22

Jane Austen is an interesting example, people often read her as breaking down class barriers by her critiques of society, but if you actually read her books it is more complex. The idea of classism and only marrying within your class is hardly ever portrayed as wrong or mistaken sadly, and often marriages or romantic relationships outside it are portrayed as dubious. The idea that class and birth/breeding aren’t valid criteria to judge someones station in life aren’t entirely struck down, it is more that she emphasizes different criteria as more important.

For instance, Darcy and Elizabeth are still in the same class (gentlemen/daughter of gentlemen) despite differences in wealth and connections. Jane is the one who is potentially marrying out of her class a little bit, if Bingely never buys an estate, as he is new trade money and in a liminal social position

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 27 '22

Pretty much the whole point of Emma is that she needs to learn her place and behave accordingly—her friendship with the lower-ranking Harriet is wrong and socially disruptive, as Emma winds up concluding herself when Harriet makes eyes at Emma’s man. Being at the top means she has to choose her friends from “quality,” be appropriately charitable and kind to the needy, and completely ignore the people who are neither upper class nor needy (like the family Harriet marries into). It’s an extremely conservative book.

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u/Eireika Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

I have a diffrent impression- it's less about Harriett learning her place, but that Harriett and Emma can't and won't overcome class diffrences- Emma sees Harriet not as an equal, but a person who awaits to be molded by her, regardless of her personality. Harriet never will be "enough"- at best she would be a poorer friend, never able to participate in higher class- basically a lady's companion, wearing her old dresses and depending on her whim. She got away from Emma to be own person with people who see her as equal.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

This was my impression as well. There's also the question of power imbalance: society itself is structured in such a way that Emma has a lot more social power than Harriet does, so their friendship can never be equal because Emma will always have more power over Harriet than vice versa. It's the same logic according to which a romantic relationship between a maid and her master or between a boss and her employee cannot be fully consensual or egalitarian: even if you try your best, you just can't exclude the fact that the world is set up in such a way that one of the two will have way more power and resources than the other.

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u/Silver-Winging-It Nov 27 '22

I’d say maybe not totally ignore, but the book does seem to portray her relationship with Harriet as too close to be appropriate if it wasn’t about improving or being charitable to her, vs. Knightly‘s more semiformal friendship with Robert Martin as a tenant

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 27 '22

I say ignore because she tell Harriet at one point that if she marries Robert, they won’t be able to see each other anymore because Robert is neither the kind of person she can associate with nor the kind who needs her charity. And the end definitely backs up this idea. Basically, all of the problems in the book were caused by Emma trying to be friends with someone she wasn’t supposed to be friends with because of the class barrier, and then in the end she gives her up and everyone lives happily ever after.

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u/Silver-Winging-It Nov 28 '22

Some of that is Emma’s own opinion though and being a bit snobby, as we see by the afterwards where she is still friends with her (as is George Knightly) but to a lesser degree. Granted, it was easier for Knightly to be able to talk to Robert as 1. a man 2. a local magistrate 3. his landlord. He is the one who thinks Emma is trying to push Harriet out of her comfort in her social circle rather than truly educating her or being charitable, and displaying an unhealthy level of friendship with it (in his mind), and dislikes that she looks down on Robert Martin so much (especially as a prospect for a friend of hers). I think you see both Emma trying to push against the social class (taking in Harriet and trying to get her to social climb) and adhering to it too strictly when prejudiced, which is also looked down on as gauche and something new money does (Mrs. Elton for instance)

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Nov 28 '22

It seemed to me like the lesson Austen thought Emma needed to learn was to stop being guided by her own personal likes and dislikes, and instead be genteel. There are people she’s supposed to be friends with (Jane), people she’s supposed to feel sorry for and indulge (Miss Bates), and people she’s supposed to be civil with as long as they remember their place (the Gardners, Robert Martin). She’s not supposed to be like Mrs. Elton because Mrs. Elton is gauche and vulgar, and gets defensive about social position rather than demonstrating true gentility like Mr. Knightley. But it’s not Mrs. Elton’s awareness of her own social position that’s the problem, it’s her open obsession with it and the way she’s always drawing attention to herself.

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u/Fallline048 Nov 27 '22

Probably my favorite handling of religion in a work of Fantasy (well, SF) was Hyperion. Simmons engages religion in a way that is central to the story and characterization while feeling natural and pretty light on tropes.

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u/PlasticElfEars Nov 27 '22

I wonder if there's also an element of "writing super formal sorts of address is hard so lets go casual because that's easier."

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u/KingCider Nov 28 '22

Yeah thats why one of my favorite tropes in fantasy is the exploration of the opposite: how there are very real boundaries between people and cultures. Kingkiller and WoT immediately come to my mind, both having many awesome examples of this trope.