Author: stevenattewell

How should be a fantasy set in the renaissance ?

Great question!

I’ve actually been thinking about this a couple years before I started getting into ASOIAF.

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Here are some things I think Renaissance fantasy should emphasize to set itself apart from High Fantasy or medieval fantasy:

  • Different geographies: High Fantasy/Medieval fantasy tend to be set either in rural countrysides (following the pastoral tradition) or vast, untamed wilderness (following the Romantic), largely due to Tolkein’s anti-modernism. The Renaissance very much was an era in which cities and commerce and finance were starting to become important, rather than just subsistence agriculture. 
  • Different societies: 

    High Fantasy/Medieval fantasy hasn’t traditionally interrogated class particularly well, and so you tend to get idealized images of happy peasants, rightful kings, and brave knights. (It’s only in recent years with the rise of deconstructionist fantasy that we’ve started to question this stuff.) But in the Renaissance, you start to see merchant families and guilds not just exerting political influence, but outright running city-states.

  • Different politics: rather than just kings and lords, “you’ve got various forms of Republics, mercantile city-states, and petty princedoms, all of which gives much more scope for ordinary people to do important things.”
  • Different cultures:  rather than an emphasis on the ancient and the eternal, there should be an emphasis on cultural change. “an explosion of knowledge, with a bubbling ferment of science, arts, literature, philosophy, history, political science, and a roster of geniuses whose human brilliance is much more appealing than the aloof [I think I was leaning towards alien or inhuman, without really putting my finger on it] other-ness of a Merlin.”
  • Cosmopolitanism: in part because of urbanism and in part because of increased trade, you have a lot more cultural diversity, so in my mind Renaissance Fantasy ought to involve a melange between many different cultures beyond Expies of white Europeans, with cities full of immigrant workers, foreign merchants and diplomats, imported goods and ideas, a sense that the city is part of a global network. 

Hopefully, Renaissance fantasy should help us move beyond repetitions of the Return of the True King by way of the Hero’s Journey, and allow us to tell other kinds of stories. 

SansaRamsey p2 How does marrying Ramsey get Sansa revenge? Ignoring his qualities, she’s still giving legitimacy to their theft of her family’s position, she’s supporting the reign of her family’s killers & continuing their name & bloodline. How does taking control of Ramsey & ruling thru him as her puppet (as I think LF implies) help her more thsn just bringing the knights of the Vale to conquer it for her own? Is there some aspect about dynastic marriages or the politics I don’t understand?

Can you explain the Watsonian rationale behind Sansa marrying Ramsey? Giving Jeyne/Arya worked because the Lannisters weren’t REALLY giving the Boltons a useful marital asset; they couldn’t gain anything by offering Jeyne elsewhere, but LF COULD have used Sansa’s hand for all sorts of other deals. The Boltons bring nothing but the North, to which Sansa has a better claim. Also, this marriage could COST the Boltons their southern support. Is the legitimacy from a Stark bride worth that? Continued

I don’t think there is a good one; LF’s idea of rallying the Vale behind rescuing Sansa is pretty implausible IMO. Honestly, this was an area where the show’s writing didn’t so much decline as start at the bottom and dig itself deeper. 

But yes, it is in the Boltons’ interests, because Roose pretty much discounts the southern support as being worth anything once he’s past the Neck.

Hey, so I was trying to make a political map of the North, but I am not sure about some things. Specifically,how should I map out the masterly houses like Glover and Tallhart, should I make their lands separate of House Starks, or a part of House Stark lands (masterly houses only cannot pass judgement or is there something else)? Do Stony Shore and Sea Dragon Point belong to Starks or does some vassal hold it in their name? Also, are Mountain Clan’s lands separate of Stark’s lands? Thanks!

Good question (and definitely send me a link to the map when you’re done)!

Re the Glovers and Tallharts: I would lean to separate, since they still have the right to tax and levy military support from those lands, and GRRM has talked about landed knights potentially being quite powerful. Maybe color them as alternating stripes between Stark grey and their own house color?

Re Stony Shore and Sea Dragon Point: WOIAF says that the Stony Shore was ruled by House Fisher, who became vassals of the Kings of Winter. We don’t know whether they survived the Ironborn incursions, but I would guess the lands are held by some vassal. Sea Dragon Point was once ruled by the Warg Kings before the Starks conquered them, but we don’t know who rules it now and whether they survived the Ironborn either.

Re the Mountain Clans: definitely separate. They are vassals of the Starks, but among the more independent given their distance and traditions. 

What is hegemonic ideological power, & why is it the 3rd face of power?

Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist theorist, coined the term “cultural hegemony” (although ideological hegemony also works) as the idea that the ruling class imposes the prevailing norms on the rest of society, which are then believed to be natural, inevitable, benevolent, etc. 

This makes revolution more difficult, because those oppressed by the system don’t yet see their suffering as injustice (as opposed to bad luck, or the will of God, etc.) and can’t imagine a world organized differently than it is. Hence why Gramsci argued that intellectual liberation was necessary for political liberation, or why E.P Thompson argued that class is a process of people creating a new world-view (rather than just a result of material forces). 

In a post a while back, I linked this idea to Steven Lukes’ idea of the three faces of power. Lukes talked about the three faces of power as decision-making power (formal state power), agenda-setting (the ability to decide what’s within the realm of legitimate debate, what is considered a “problem” and what isn’t), and ideological power (the ability to influence other people’s thinking, even when that thinking is against their interests). 

For example, we can see the third face of power in the fact that, even though Wat Tyler had seized London, he still felt that he needed King Richard to give the commons a charter of liberty and trusted that the King would keep his word that he would issue one and his word that Wat Tyler would not be harmed during a parlay. 

Describing Jon Snow as upwardly mobile is factually true, but in the context of the question (about upwardly mobile characters) his still starts from a place of privilege doesn’t it? In context of the NW this is even repeatedly stressed. But how is Gendry mobile? Joining BwB seems a pretty lateral move!

Almost all of us start from some place of privilege in some way – Gendry may be lower class than Tyrion, but Tyrion has a disability and Gendry doesn’t – so Jon Snow certainly has class advantages that many others in the Night’s Watch don’t, but he’s definitely below LC Jeor Mormont or Ser Alliser Thorne or Ser Denys Mallister

Moreover, social mobility doesn’t just apply to the very bottom and the very top; it’s a spectrum that goes all the way up (and all the way down, when we’re talking about downward mobility). So Jon Snow starts out as a bastard who will never inherit land nor title and becomes Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and will probably end up as (one of) the savior(s) of humanity. Hard to top that. 

As for Gendry, he starts as a bastard orphan, becomes an apprentice blacksmith, and is now a knight and has his own shop. That’s astonishing levels of social mobility for his society. 

Historical hypothetical: if aluminum production had been discovered earlier/been easier to do, could aluminum coins have been a commodity currency? If so, where in value do you’d think they’d be?

Well, they’re light, the metal is useful, so those are pluses.

On the other hand, aluminum does corrode and it’s probably too useful as a commodity to work well as a currency – generally not good if people keep melting down the currency in order to use the metal for making stuff.