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that Guinevere was an adulteress, that King Arthur did have an
incestuous affair with his half-sister, Morgan le Fay, and other
improprieties.
Another hundred years slip by and we come to Papa Tolkien, who
was probably even prissier than Queen Victoria. Have you ever
noticed that there aren't any girl Hobbits? There are matronly lady
Hobbits and female Hobbit puppies, but no girls. The Victorians
maintained the public fiction that females don't exist below the
neck.
Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and
Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts
for inspiration - and there are a lot of those texts. We have King
Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in
German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish;
Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights
on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage
medieval romance for all we're worth.
Operating by trial and error mostly, we've evolved a tacitly
agreed upon list of the elements that make for a good fantasy. The
first decision the aspiring fantasist must make is theological. King
Arthur and Charlemagne were Christians. Siegfried and Sigurd the
Volsung were pagans. My personal view is that pagans write better
stories. When a writer is having fun, it shows, and pagans have
more fun than Christians. Let's scrape Horace's Dulche et utile off
the plate before we even start the banquet. We're writing for fun,
not to provide moral instruction. I had much more fun with the
Belgariad/Malloreon than you did, because I know where all the
jokes are.
All right, then, for item number one, I chose paganism. (Note that
Papa Tolkien, a devout Anglo-Catholic, took the same route.)
Item number two on our interim list is the Quest'. If you don't
have a quest, you don't have a story. The quest gives you an excuse
to dash around and meet new people. Otherwise, you stay home
and grow turnips or something.
Item number three is 'The Magic Thingamajig' - The Holy Grail,
the Ring of Power, the Magic Sword, the Sacred Book, or (surprise,
surprise) THE JEWEL. Everybody knows where I came down on
that one. The Magic Thingamajig is usually, though not always, the
object of the quest.
Item four is 'Our Hero' - Sir Galahad, Sir Gawaine, Sir Launcelot,
or Sir Perceval. Galahad is saintly; Gawaine is loyal; Launcelot is the
heavyweight champion of the world; and Perceval is dumb - at least
right at first. I went with Perceval, because he's more fun- A dumb
hero is the perfect hero, because he hasn't the faintest idea of what's
going on, and in explaining things to him, the writer explains them
to his reader. Don't get excited. I'm not putting Garion down. He's
innocent more than stupid, in the same way Perceval was. Actually,
he's fairly clever, but he's a country boy, so he hasn't been exposed
to very much of the world. His Aunt Pol wanted him to ~be that way,
and Polgara has ways to get what she wants.
Item number five is the resident 'Wizard' - Merlin, usually, or
Gandalf - mighty~ powerful, and mysterious. I scratched that one
right away and went with Belgarath instead, and I think it was the
right choice. I've got a seedy old tramp with bad habits - who just
incidentally can rip the tops off mountains if he wants to. I chose to
counter him with his daughter, Polgara, who doesn't really approve
of him. That sorcerer/ sorceress (and father/daughter) pairing broke
some new ground, I think.
Item six is our heroine - usually a wispy blonde girl who spends