#belgariad

[mask131]

The Tolkienesque Renaissance and the woman-wizard

A long time ago I made a brief post about my personal vision of a certain "Tolkienesque Renaissance" era within English-speaking literature, following/coexisting with the "Tolkien Subversion" era that was formed by Earthsea, Elric, The Black Company and other classics.

It was meant to be the first post in a whole series but I kind of got busy with other things... That being said I do want to make this post about one of the fascinating traits of the Tolkienesque Renaissance. A trait which seems to be overlooked or misunderstood today due to the very polarizing matter and the quick shifts occuring in our societies about this topic, but needs to be highlighted: the gender roles. Well more specifically the gender roles within the magic part of the fantasy world.

In 1985, Terry Pratchett created a talk/article which was forgotten for a given time, until it popped up on the Internet in the 2000s/2010s, and was more recently reprinted in book format (in posthumous anthologies of his talks, articles and essais) and even translated in other languages (the only French translation of this text dates from a few years ago). This text is called "Why Gandalf never married", and it is a very important mini-essay when it comes to the English-speaking fantasy literature because it highlighted very well (and in Pratchett's usual humoristic way) the gender "norms" within the Tolkien-model of fantasy ; but more importantly how this gendered system was carried on, consciously or unconsciously, by other authors in the fantasy genre.

I strongly suggest you go check out the original article, it is disponible for free on several websites, and I won't recap it here. But it made a point that many other analysists and historians of the fantasy genre relayed. The Tolkien model of the magic-use has magic lying within the hands of a men, and escaping the hands of women. In The Lord of the Rings the magic is the domain of the Wizards - which is an order of exclusively male entities. That's the Gandalf of the title. There is no female Wizard in the Tolkienesque world, and the closest thing we get to a female magic user within The Lord of the Rings is Galadriel - but Galadriel is in this specific plotline a secondary character with not as much importance or active power as the likes of Gandalf and Saruman, and she even denies herself that what she does is magic, carefully explaining that Elves merely consider what others call their "magic" advanced craft, technology and skills. Galadriel has the appearance of an enchantress, but in truth is not, and all the true magic relies within the male-only Gandalf.

And this model was carried on into a lot of the fantasy series and novels that followed the publication of The Lord of the Rings, even those that were created specifically to subvert the "Tolkienesque fantasy". In his article, Pratchett ranked alongside Gandalf as the celibate wizard-heroes of male dominance, Ged from Earthsea... by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is an author as far from woman-hating as the Sun is far from Pluto. And yet... Pratchett did point out that in the Earthsea series it is made extremely clear that only men can be true wizards, the "wizarding school" of this setting only teaches men, and when a woman has magical power, she is a secondary and weak witch with only a handful of simple abilities, unable to match any great "true" wizard. Even worse: when a woman actually shows some great talent and manages to challenge or outbeat the wizard... it is because she derives her power from malevolent sources and evil entities. It is true in Earthsea.

Or at least it was true. Indeed, we have to put things back in context: when Pratchett made this analysis, Earthsea was just a trilogy. Not just "a" trilogy, but rather a halted series: Le Guin had written the first three Earthsea books, and she wanted to return to writing more Earthsea but in her own words something felt wrong, she didn't find how to go on, she sense there was a problem with Earthsea though she could not identify what exactly... This is part of why the fourth book of the series was released 18 YEARS after the third. And the exact reason Le Guin was weirded out by her own series is precisely what Pratchett pointed out - and something Le Guin herself had to re-discover within her own work (Now I cannot claim that Pratchett's article actually helped Le Guin see this "gendered flaw" within her own novels, because I have no reliable source about Le Guin reading Pratchett's text or being aware of this talk - but given I heard it had quite an influence upon its release I do think it played a part in it). This is also why Le Guin returned to Earthsea by the late 80s: she had identified the problem in her own work, women were trapped in a gendered system denying them access to "true magic". And from "Tehanu" onward, she worked to - not correct - but improve this worldbuilding fact, for example by pointing out the inherent misogyny of her own world, by explaining the reasons that led to women being excluded of the art of magic, and by revealing that women and men are in fact equal in magic by nature but not by society.

[Note: I do wish to say that it is not an inherently bad or evil thing to have a "gendered" magic system within your fantasy work. The entire point of the fantasy is that you can do everything and anything and explore any possibility. You can have a magic system where only one gender can have magic ; you can have a magic system where spells are bound to a specific age ; you can have magic system where only rocks can perform magic because flesh cannot stand it - in itself, it is not a bad thing... The problem here that Pratchett denounced was how a specific gendered-model of magic bearing misogynistic traits within it was spreading around and becoming an untold law of the fantasy genre, to the point even feminist writers applied it without realizing it.]

Pratchett completed his trio of "male-dominated and somehow misogynistic" magic systems by adding to Gandalf and Ged the figure of Merlin from the Arthurian romances and epics, as one of the main cultural influences of magic within fantasy... but also one of the roots of the unconscious misogyny that was growing within fantasy. Because in the Arthurian world, not only is Merlin the most prominent wizard and enchanter, he is seen as the "source" and "true bearer" of magic, with the two famous Arthurian sorceresses, Viviane and Morgan, being explicitely his students - women learned magic from a man. And not only did they learned it from him, they both used it in a bad and negative way. Morgan to become a wicked witch and the enemy of the heroes ; Viviane to betray her own mentor and trap the wizard forever (with in many versions this being seen as a selfish action, some authors even pushing it as far as making Viviane one of the instruments of the Arthurian downfall). Of course there are very interesting talks, debates and analysis to have about this strange triangle of magic-users - especially since one of Merlin's gifts was prophecy and foresight, and it is implied that he knew what he was doing when he taught these women magic, somehow accepting that his lessons would be used against him and his work... But that's a talk for another day and it doesn't change how it influenced mid-20th century fantasy in a bad way.

As such, from Merlin to Ged passing by Gandalf, Pratchett made this conclusion: in English-speaking fantasy as it existed in the mid 80s, "true" wizards were men, and magic belonged to the male gender. And when a women practiced magic (if they could even practice magic), they were either depicted as weaker and inferior to men, either as evil antagonists corrupting magic or using it for nefarious purposes. Hence "Why Gandalf never married".

This talk is also very important to understand the very origins and building of Pratchett's own brilliant parody-deconstruction-reconstruction of the fantasy genre, his "Discworld" series. In his Discworld books Pratchett prepared several entire plotlines to explain, dissert and explore the gendered cliches and normative stereotypes of magic in fantasy, with the archetype of the male-magic through the Wizards and of the female-magic through the Witches. "Why Gandalf never married" was created in 1985... two years before Discworld's third book "Equal Rites", which is a brilliant parody of these same gender norms as a girl becomes fated to become a Wizard and fights for it, in a cloistered world where women can only hope to be Witches and nothing else.

Now, all of that being said, I return to my point about the Tolkienesque Renaissance. And I will claim that this "movement" actually inherited Pratchett's point or was conscious of it because, interestingly, all these revivals of the classical Tolkien-like fantasy worked very hard to break the gender norms of magic, and have prominent female magic users not depicted as evil. Mind you, they never went as far as Le Guin or Pratchett did in their own work, and in fact several of these works came to be criticized by later generations for being themselves too-gendered, too-cliche, or even misogynistic... However I do believe that it is important to highlight how these works, which might not fit our own modern gender equality or our modern view of women, still were a first step forward, a certain breakthrough, in a fantasy landscape where women were either denied magic or locked withn the "wicked witch" stereotype.

The Fionavar Tapestry series has one of the main female characters becoming The Seer, a benevolent and respected magic user. She is not of the same "type" as the wizards of the setting and lacks a magic as powerful as them, but is still an heroic supernatural character on which the story focuses. There is also an exploration of the gendered norm by having a Council of Mages from which women are lacking (and coming with historical explanations about the role of women in relationship to them) clashing with an all-female order of priestesses of a Great Goddess (a conflict which itself also is echoed by a gendered pantheon of Great Gods and Great Goddesses working in mysterious ways towards each other).

The Belgariad makes a clear effort by "doubling" the typical wizard-mentor into a duo, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, with Polgara being a powerful magic user equal in strength to Belgarath and working alongside him, but staying a benevolent and heroic character (though there is a dark side to her, from her stern and harsh personality, to a worldbuilding prophetic element about her possibly turning evil).

The Wheel of Time seems to avoid the topic entirely by completely reversing the norm: all magic-users are female, the male magic-users were all wiped out, and if they exist they have to be deprived of power else they will become evil. Now we still have a more nuanced approached in terms of moral since the Aes Sedai mix in one go the all-benevolent Gandalf-like figure with the manipulative and dreaded wicked witch - but the gender treatment and balance within "The Wheel of Time" has been debated and discussed a LOT so I won't go further into this.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn literaly has a female Gandalf in the character of Geloë - who also has a few elements of Baba-Yaga in her most positive incarnations. There's still a bunch of evil witches throughout the series outgrowing in number the rare positive female magic users, but Geloë stands out as the big powerful helpful witch of the "hero's party".

As I said, these characters are of course not perfect. There are things to be said against them in a more modern light, or they might be judged as not good characters at all... But it doesn't change the fact that Geloë, Polgara and Moiraine are quite important in the history of fantasy as breakers of a system that was imposed by Merlin, Gandalf and Ged - and while they cannot answer the question of "Why Gandalf never married", they are proofs that "Gandalf can be a woman".

[best-nun-tournament]

Round 1, Match 23

Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire) vs Torak (The Belgariad)

Propaganda under break

Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion Lannister

Cersei HATES Tyrion. Hes not a big fan of her either on account of her absolutely hating him. Cersei (and her twin Jaime, who is actually a good brother to Tyrion) were born a few years earlier than Tyrion, and blames him for "killing their mother," because she died in childbirth. Everyone in their family (except Jaime) hates Tyrion because he has dwarfism, but Cersei hates him more than anyone else and has wanted him dead since childhood. (spoilers beyond this point for the books and show both) When Cersei's son is killed, her immediate instinct is to blame Tyrion and throw him in jail. She does everything in her power to have him killed.

------

The incest for starters. The fact that Cersei doesn’t see Tyrion as human. All the backstabbing. And that they made their own family problems everyone else’s tragic backstory and present out of their own lust for power

------

here's a quote from one of tyrion's chapters: "When your sister cries, you were supposed to comfort her... but this was Cersei."

Torak

They stole an orb from their eldest brother and caused a centuries long war between his people and the people of his brothers. (They are all gods).

He's also just kind of a dick

[mellowmagpie]

the beglariad inspired dungeon synth album is straight bangers

[glasses-rex]

More Belgariad character art, this time of some of the queens! I absolutely adore them, and wanted to hash out how I imagine them on paper. The clothes are only semi-historical— I took inspiration from English women’s fashion of about 1066-1200 according to John Peacock’s “Costume: 1066 to 1990s” (and remembered how much I love all the various medieval head coverings) but also exercised a fair amount of creative license since they are characters from a fantasy world.

[wolfiso]

I saw someone recently describe a book series I enjoyed as a teen (The Belgariad) as "aggressively heterosexual."

and on the one hand, Yes.

Absolutely.

But on the other hand, these were published in the early 1980s, and what I loved best about them on first read through was how much they absolutely dripped with familiar fantasy tropes. You saw the large strokes of plot telegraphed from extremely early, so the details could be the delightful surprise without making me as a reader feel like I failed to understand what was happening. It was unashamedly built on so many familiar tropes, and doesn't back down from its own foreshadowing. I can't think of a single "Waht a Tweeest!" moment that wasn't repeatedly foreshadowed.

But back to the aggressively hetero thing

There weren't any characters with much room for a queer reading from where I was at thirteen, but the hetero romances were pleasingly varied.

Farmboy and princess tsundere? Check!

Middle-aged co-parenting and mutual pining? Check!

Doomed courtly love? Check!

The zealot and the harlot? Spicy check!

Old Man Widower still quietly pining for his late wife? Check!

Bonus: probably ace horseman who only needs the chaste comfort of the herd and his vengeance? Check!

I know my neighborhood of the internet champions new authors and underrepresented perspectives, and so do I, but this old series is such a comfort read for me. If you get the chance, give it a try.

[troistetesdechien]

Source

[tellusd20]

Belgariad - Cherek by Dominic Chan

[ajaneofmanytalents]

Characters I wish I could introduce to each other:

Pheris Erondites and Eugenides, from Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series

Mags, from Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series

Diana Hyde, from Theodora Goss' Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series

Silk and Velvet, from David and Leigh Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean pentologies

the goddess Aphrael, from David and Leigh Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli trilogies

Call it the Convention of the Sneaky Bastards (affectionate) :)

[lasalegarce]

Torak pondering on the Orb

+ bonus Zedar being a peeping Tom

[deadchovsky]

not nearly enough discussion online about how homoerotic zakath and garion were in demon lord of karanda, and that's a shame honestly.

[kingsdaughter613]

Aldur and his Owl Totem, from the Belgariad.

[mask131]

As I said in a previous post, one of the main strengths and virtues of the Belgaria, and what made it such a success at the time, was how it subverted the typical "Tolkien archetypes "that had become prevalent thanks to the LotR copycats. (I spoke about this in my Tolkienesque Renaissance posts).

It showed how you could reuse the "Tolkienesque formula" and the tropes popularize by Lord of the Rings... while still switching, twisting, reinventing what had already turned into cliches and stereotypes. Yes, now the Belgariad series seems like a cliche because we are used to modern fantasy... But you have to put this back in the context of the 80s. The time of the early D&Ds. In fact, comparing The Belgariad and the early stages of D&D is quite revealing - you should try, if you have time.

But just to highlight the way the Belgariad subverts the "Tolkien mold" some highlights (WARNING, spoilers):

The Orb of Aldur VS The One Ring. Both magical items sought after by the God of Evil, and key to his destruction - but the Orb has to be preserved and used against the God of Evil, not destroyed. Both are sentient items of ungodly power that can easily corrupt their owner into becoming world-destroying tyrants... But whereas the Rings willingly corrupts out of evil, the Orb of Aldur is actually just trying its best to please its owner and grant its wishes, simply lacking a sense of scale and not realizing the consequences of its divine powers. (Oh, an army is following you and you want to escape? LET'S SPLIT THE CONTINENT IN HALF, an endless chasm should stop them)

Belgarath vs Gandalf. Both nearly immortal magic-users, who have wandered the earth for a very long time, are some of the strongest magic forces around and appear as elderly, grumpy bearded men who act as a mentor figure to the hero and guide to the protagonist-party. But Belgarath, unlike Gandalf, is a human being, and his human nature is shown in full force. He is far from being perfect - he is notably lustful and a drunkard. He had once a family, and still has a daughter. Becoming immortal and wandering the earth for millenia, seeing empires rise and fall, and the bad guys committing atrocities, and idiots being idiots, left him bitter, cynical and filled with anger and disdain at many things in the world. And his fight against the bad guys is something personal, vengeful and filled with rage.

Polgara vs... no one. As I said in my previous posts, about the Tolkienesque Renaissance and the "woman-wizard", Polgara was one of the first attempts in fantasy literature at the time to subvert this sexist cliche that had installed itself in the post-Tolkien fantasy, and that Pratchett denounced several times (in his article "Why Gandalf never married" or his novel "Equal Rites"). Because Polgara was one of the rare powerful female magic users of the 80s to be A) just as powerful and a full equal to the male magic user ; and B) a good person on the side of the heroes. And it was quite a BIG step to have a literal "female Gandalf" back in the 80s.

Zedar vs Saruman. Zedar is just like Saruman a wizard (sorry "sorcerer" because another Tolkien subversion, in this world "wizard" is an insult) who betrayed his order to follow the local Evil God. But unlike Saruman he is not a great mastermind trying to cross everybody: he is almost a ghost of a character who keeps fleeing in front of the heroes, and when we finally see him, we discover not an arrogant bully, but a broken and sad man who deeply regrets siding with the Evil Overlord, because as it turns out, becoming the minion of an evil deity is like being in a VERY abusive relationship.

The Disciples of Aldur vs The Istari. The sorcerers of the Belgariad are also five magic-users part of an order who all appear as old bearded men... One heroic one, one betraying one, one weirdo an two coming as a package deal. But here, the idea of the Istari is played around: the reason they have their power is because they are human beings who became the personal disciples of the god of magic, and the reason they all look like old bearded men is precisely because Aldur, their god and master, looks like this, and his divine influence ended up "shaping" his disciples in his likeness.

All of the points above are why I personally enjoyed reading The Belgariad. You can literaly take it as a fun take on the Lord of the Rings-copycats. Not high literature, not great literature, unfortunately carries with it some of the problems of 80s American fantasy with it... But you know, for a Tolkien fan, it can always be a fun read as a "spot the differences and similarities, and see through the narrative what the author tried to say or highlight about Tolkinesque cliches".

[And then came the Malloreon which... *sigh*

In all honesty, the only virtue of the Malloreon as a sequel is that it extends and adds to the worldbuilding, and works at fighting the unfortunate trope of "Good White guys from the West vs Evil swarthy Easterns" that the Belgariad inherited from Tolkien and DID NOT THINK OF SUBVERTING. The Malloreon does explore this "evil East", the variety and complexity of its population, shows that not all of them were behind the Evil overlord, that they existed before and after said Evil Overlord came - in fact said God of Evil literaly destroyed a lot of thriving cultures in his attempt at complete continental domination ; and we get to see the various religious, cultural and phlosophical currents making a vast tapestry ot countries.

And that's more exploring of the "evil East" than Tolkien himself ever did, so kudos for that! But unfortunately it has to arrive in what is obviously a very bad sequel series that is badly written half of the time, has the characters reduced to caricatures, has such an obvious plot contrivence and deus ex machinas because the Eddings didn't know how they could logically lead their story where they wanted to, and where the Eddings old-fashioned sexism rears up its head alongside the first hints of the vaguely pedophile-like vibes I got from later Eddings books...]

[best-nun-tournament]

Round 1, Match 22

Andrew and Ashley Graves (The Coffin of Andy and Leyley) vs Belzedar (The Belgariad)

Propaganda under break

Andrew and Ashley Graves

Both ate their parents after breaking into their new home. Also there's some demon summoning they did, literally selling their victim's souls to the demon they made a deal with. Notable quote from Ashley: "We offer you that guy's soul!"

Ashley - overall a horrible person, implied undiagnosed sociopath who threatened her brother's girlfriend, emotionally manipulates and actively provokes her brother, recently began murdering people she doesn't like, cannibalizes people she murders.

Andrew - enables his sister's worse habits (when he thinks it doesn't involve him), uses plausible deniability by blaming his sister for his actions (despite the fact that he had the freedom to ignore her ideas in many cases), also a cannibal.

Belzedar

They turned traitor against their adopted brothers in a war of gods and magic.

It's suspected in universe that before their betrayal was know, they convinced one of their brothers to commit suicide.

[psybomb]

David and Leigh Eddings!

Who was your gateway fantasy author?

Tamora Pierce

Mercedes Lackey

Dianna Wynne Jones

Naomi Novik

Other (tags)

I was not an awkward teen who wished they could do magic

[glasses-rex]

I’ve just finished reading the Belgariad for the first time and loved it, so here’s some messy doodles of what I think Garion, Silk, Barak and Ce’Nedra look like. I didn’t realise that Garion was meant to have sandy hair until like Book 4, so here’s freckly brown-haired Garion instead.

Also first post, woo!

[wolfiso]

I saw someone recently describe a book series I enjoyed as a teen (The Belgariad) as "aggressively heterosexual."

and on the one hand, Yes.

Absolutely.

But on the other hand, these were published in the early 1980s, and what I loved best about them on first read through was how much they absolutely dripped with familiar fantasy tropes. You saw the large strokes of plot telegraphed from extremely early, so the details could be the delightful surprise without making me as a reader feel like I failed to understand what was happening.

But back to the aggresively hetero thing

There weren't any characters woth much room for a queer reading from where I was at thirteen, but the hetero romances came in such variety!

Farmboy and princess tsundere? Check!

Middle-aged co-parenting and mutual pining? Check!

Doomed courtly love? Check!

The zealot and the harlot? Spicy check!

And more!

Bonus: probably ace horseman who only needs the chaste comfort of the herd and his vengeance? Check!

I know my neighborhood of the internet champions new authors and underrepresented perspectives, but this old series is such a comfort read for me. If you get the chance, give it a try.