Hi Mythcreants,
I’m writing a political drama that’s meant to be protagonist vs society. However, the story opens with a king that wants to punish the protagonist because of a personal grudge against their family. The king dies less than a third of the way in.
I want to subvert the idea that simply killing one person will fix everything. How do I keep the audience from feeling duped when the king dies and show it’s a systemic issue? Do I replace the king with another antagonist, or would that just make it look like the problem is a bunch of individual people who are evil?
Anonymous
Hi Anon,
Mainly, you need to make sure the problem your protagonist faces isn’t actually solved by killing the antagonistic king. You want it to look like the king is the cause of the protagonist’s problem at first, but after the protagonist defeats the king, they should learn for themself that the root of the problem is deeper than one person.
You’ve made that harder for yourself by making the king motivated by a personal grudge. What you want is a system that inevitably produces more leaders that will do the same thing he did. So after one ruler is dethroned, up pops another one who’s twice as determined. This should force the protagonist to notice the system and start fighting the system instead of individual people.
For example, let’s say your protagonist is the local leader of a religious community that’s in the minority. The current king seems to have a huge personal bias against this minority religion and starts insisting that everyone has to follow the kingdom’s more powerful church, and those who don’t will be punished. The protagonist manages to stand up to the king, causing him to be killed or dethroned. A new monarch is crowned, someone who’s always been friendlier to this minority religion.
But as soon as this friendly noble becomes the monarch, they make an about-face, declaring the minority religion a threat to the kingdom’s security, so now things are worse than before. The protagonist discovers that the powerful church is deeply intertwined with the monarchy. The church influences who is chosen as monarch, but more than that, the church tells the populace that the monarch has the divine right to rule. A minority religion competes with the bigger church and in doing so, inherently threatens to reduce the influence of the monarch. That means people are more likely to become the monarch if they promise the powerful church they’ll get rid of competitors, but also once they are monarch, they have an incentive to get rid of minority religions anyway.
After that, the protagonist should change tactics, targeting the monarchy itself, the powerful church, the relationship between the two, or all of the above.
I hope that gives you some ideas. Your audience won’t feel duped as long as the protagonist genuinely believes the king is the problem just like they do, and once the king is defeated, the protagonist still has to face what is essentially the same threat. You don’t want to make it feel like the protagonist has wandered into a different story.
You’ll also want to avoid allowing the tension to drop too much once the king is defeated. I would look for a way to insert some tense foreshadowing to signal that something will go wrong soon or minimize the time between the king being defeated and the next antagonist popping up.
Then, make sure the protagonist learns the lesson you want your audience to learn, and that you demonstrate how the system is causing the protagonist’s problems rather than individual people.
Happy writing!
Chris
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One way, of course, is Authorial Endorsement
Have the POV character (if they’re trustworthy) or the omniscient narrator STATE that the problem is systemic, not merely “a bunch of individual people who are evil”
Of course, this might be difficult to do subtly; it might feel “anvilicious”. But I believe it can be done
Another option, though it might not be right for THIS story, is have a good POV character gain power, and learn the systemic problems that way, though this might just reinforce the “one good person” idea that you’re trying to subvert
Oh, and I do like this theme. All too often, stories seem to say “replace the evil dictator w/ a good dictator (preferably one w/ the right bloodline), and everything will be great”. I like your subversion of that
Thanks @Dave L; I had never seen it done before so I thought it was an interesting twist on a common trope.
There is more information in my comment below but (in regards to the systematic issues) I do have references to others in power taking advantage of their powers to enrich themselves. Hopefully, when characters affected complain about local lord using (equivalent) tax subsidies meant for (equivalent) healthcare workers (to treat those who could not otherwise afford it) in order to build a (equivalent) spa for the affluent that readers will realize what is happening without the narration going: And this was terrible. (Lol)
I’d say to also be cautious not to make it feel like the situation is hopeless and fall into deep cynicism. This setup could rapidly fall into a “no matter what you do, there’s always going to be someone worse to take it’s place; so better do nothing”. To make sure not to discourage your audience, it could be a good idea to quickly highlight some possible solutions or tool at your protagonist disposal (open rebellion, trying to gain more influence than the leading church, some kind of mcguffin, blackmail to discredit the current aristocrats, etc.). Kind of a way of saying to the audience “it may look grim and hopeless now, but there is still some hope, even if it is flimsy”.
I strongly agree with this, and I *prefer* works with a lot of cynicism. This brand of “reel world” defeatism you’re referring to sends a poor message to the audience, makes the work feel like a waste of time, *and* isn’t actually realistic.
Somehow, in real life, humanity has managed to keep moving forward – and we haven’t been doing so in a world that makes it easy. Meaningful victories are rarely as simple as stopping one person, but that’s why we have to work at it, instead of giving into defeatism.
@BeardedLizard and @InsertANameHere
That is a very valid concern. I too have witnessed the Fantasy genre’s shift into grimdark and I can assure you my narrative will not follow suit. There is always hope, people can enact great kindness (even to strangers) and collective bargaining does wonders. Chris’ suggestion just means I can use Rule of Three:
(Dealing with first king) Protagonist: “Is there any way we can negotiate? No? Well, I didn’t want to do this …”
(Dealing with second king) Protagonist: “Do you remember what happened to your predecessor? Well I’m back and I brought friends (actually an angry mob).”
(Third [reluctant, chosen by the people] king at coronation) Protagonist: “This is an encyclopaedia. Do me a favour and look up ‘Constitutional Monarchy’. Also ‘Defenestration’ because if you don’t enact the first and I have to come back a third time, I will enact the second. Capisce?” He hires her.
There is more information in my comment below.
Hi, long time Mythcreants reader here.
I think you might like to be careful with the words you use to describe the two religious groupings. One is a “minority religion”, which is fairly generic, but you use the word “church” for the antagonistic majority religion, which is an overtly Christian word. I live in a country where Christianity *is* the minority religion and Christians are persecuted by the government in a system much like the one the author is describing. It was a little upsetting, therefore, to read this.
Please be aware that not everywhere is like the US. Many Christians are ostracised, imprisoned and even killed for their beliefs in other countries around the world. And not because they are being antagonistic, but, like the situation the author is describing, just because they exist and have a loyalty to a higher power the state doesn’t like because it’s not the state ideology.
I’d therefore recommend you use generic or invented terms to describe your religious groups to avoid causing unintended hurt/harm to your readers, and avoid painting the antagonistic religion as thinly-disguised Christianity.
A lot of SFF literature out of the US is overtly anti-Christian and I don’t think American authors realise that’s actually pretty problematic from a social justice point of view. Not everyone reading your work will be the rich white Republican you potentially think you’re targeting. And even fictional works can easily be used to spread or justify religious hatred.
In fact, this point would seem to be overlooked on Mythcreants. I’ve noticed other posts with a similar anti-Christian tone, even saw an older one that was openly mocking. Please do some more research about this if it’s a new concept to you.
All the writing advice on here is great, btw, not complaining about that!
Thanks, and happy to reply to questions in comments. (The only question I will not reply to is “where are you” because it may impact my safety. Thanks for understanding.)
I realize that it is easy to forget that America is not the world, and that a privileged majority in region might be an oppressed minority in another
What would you recommend to substitute for “church”?
I’d go with ‘sect’ normally, but I’m aware this, too, is a word which has gotten a bad reputation.
Perhaps simply use ‘minority religion’ and ‘majority religion?’
Religious organizations which hold extreme views and act hostile to other religions often have multi-word names in fiction. Use that and then shorten it to a single word.
For instance!
The Blessed Order of the Great Dragon – shorten it to The Order.
The True Teachings of Divine Enlightenment – shorten it to The Teachings.
Etc.
It is always a good idea to avoid words, terms and traits that are easily recognized as analogues for real world groups, religious or otherwise.
These are all great suggestions! And this is spec fic. So you can always create terms for your religious groups based on historical characters, invented religious activities or fictional deities related to your worldbuilding. (This would add depth to the worldbuilding too.)
It just struck me that in the article, the term used for the antagonistic group was not generic or invented, whereas the term for the protagonist’s group was. I’d maybe suggest avoiding this.
First, I like Chris’s suggestions…but (of course!) one thing: “ But as soon as this friendly noble becomes the monarch” — I suggest not *as soon as*. Rather, the ruler should use honey and sweetness, flattery, etc., to bring the protagonist into their confidences. What better way, on the ruler’s part, to get intel on his targets? Also, if the reader can figure this out, but not the protagonist…irony?
Second, doesn’t have to be religious groups, of course, though that sounds fun. Consider guilds, merchant associations, and the like.
Good luck!
@Paul C
There is more information in my comment below but we are of a similar mind-set; two different rulers with two different motivations / attitudes towards the protagonist.
The Middle Ages offer two ways to do this: Excommunication and becoming an outlaw.
The former is typically thought of as a religious thing–and it was–but it must be remembered that we’re dealing with a society where being that religion was a requirement for membership in society. To give one example of this: Someone who has been excommunicated was outside the Peace of God, and thus outside even the mildest attempts to curtail violence during that time. It was not merely acceptable to brutally abuse such people, it was considered a positive good if you did so to make them convert. Remember, this was strong enough to make a king grovel before a pope; this was not a minor inconvenience, but essentially the end of a person’s life. A similar structure can be used in a fantasy world, with some modifications depending on the nature of religion in that world.
The second is the secular equivalent. It literally means someone is outside the law–outside its protections, meaning they had no recourse but to violence should anyone do anything to them. You were allowed to kill outlaws with immunity; in fact, one responsibility of men (age 16 and up) was to assist in capturing and/or killing outlaws. Obviously some–Robin Hood comes to mind–were able to survive, but most likely did not. This is easier to integrate into a fantasy world, since everyone is used to dealing with guards and the king as a ruler.
The death of the person who declared the protagonist to be an outlaw or the priest/pope who excommunicated them can highlight that it’s a systemic issue, because the death of the king doesn’t end either (in most cases). In both cases there is a formal process that need to occur to get the person back into society. Until that happens, the person remains outside of society. Minorities and other marginalized peoples had, as can be predicted, a MUCH harder time of getting those official processes completed.
Being cast out of a guild is a good suggestion, perhaps better than society-wide things like excommunication and outlawry. It allows you to show the social aspects in more detail. Killing an ex-mason wouldn’t be allowed, but ostracizing them would be. Remember, in some cultures you could only be the profession your father was, so removal from the guild meant removal from productive employment.
The New Friendly Monarch don’t even have to suddenly become evil one deliberately targeting the MC. He can privately be sympathetic, even shield him personally out of kindness while explaining that in public he has to bend to The High Priest because earning his ire would put his rule in jeopardy and that would mean rising support for more fundamentalist candidate. He may even initiate some reforms (freedom of religion for extra tax/separate dwellings) but meet with great resistance or see it becoming an almost dead law.
The good balance between realism, hope and cynism would be showing that reforms made some impact in long run but still didn’t uproot the society the way it was hoped.
I think this approach would be even better. A lot of good people often get dragged through the mud because they have to play to a deep-seated system in order to bring about some reforms, instead of “standing up to The Man” and either getting nowhere, or getting tossed aside and being replaced by a more reactionary individual.
I think it’d be helpful if fiction had more examples of leaders who had to acknowledge the realities of realpolitik (and aren’t framed as completely ineffectual as a result), instead of much simpler scenarios where the only thing stopping leaders from doing good things is their own desire to do them. After all, the problem here wouldn’t be the *leader*, but the *system.* Making the leader suddenly become antagonistic again would suggest that the problem would go away once a leader just chooses to *not* work with the religious faction.
The point is that systemic problems are that “a bunch of individuals are evil”. Replacing several individuals on power positions would solve a whole lot of problems, but the kind of people that care about that problems are not the kind of people that actively enforce a “solution” that involve killing people, while the kind of people that solve problems by military, economic or cultural violence are the ones that support such individuals.
Villain’s force is they are willing to do things that the hero wouldn’t, hence not being limited by morals or self preservation.
It’s not that simple. Systemic problems often involve not just bad individuals, but a system designed to entrench immoral or unethical ideology in those who might get into power. That’s what makes them systemic – the individuals are as much a symptom of the system as the cause.
Take slavery in the United States, for example. It wasn’t just a result of a bunch of bad individuals – racist ideology entrenched in the nation meant that powerful white people were often disinclined to see Blacks as humans rather than livestock. Given that many of these powerful people derived their wealth from slavery, they had every incentive to continue to propagate their racist ideology.
Replacing a few individuals here might have facilitated some change, but the racist ideology was deeply entrenched into the system. The system granted political capital to the slaveholders, derived from the very people who were victimized by it. Any individual would have to work against a system designed to stop the people who wanted to change it from doing so.
Editor’s note: I’ve removed a comment here because it went beyond the debate of systemic vs individual and into the realm of presenting slavery as something that just happens.
For the record, that isn’t true. A number of factors lead to the horror that is enslaving other human beings, but one of those choices is always human choice, both systematic and individual.
I am the one who submitted this question (Chris can confirm: in the original query I referred to the king with the term ‘Proxy Antagonist’). First I want to thank Chris for answering my question and promptly as well.
My main concern was avoiding the same pitfall as ‘The Hobbit’ book (no disrespect to Tolkien): the narrative is setup that the dragon is the main antagonist that Bilbo and the dwarves will be facing then it is randomly killed by a secondary character about two-thirds of the way into the story and they are facing a war and an orc with a grudge and an army. (I have my issues with the films but at least they introduced these elements before they became relevant.) I am not Tolkien nor do I have name-recognisability that will engender goodwill with the reader which is why I focused on this issue except, because of the (necessary) character-limit when sending in the question, I did have to strip out a lot of nuance.
My through-line is “People with (any sort of) power SHOULD use it to help those they have power over and not to abuse and misuse it for their own gain”.
The suggestion of replacing the king with another antagonist is very helpful. It certainly assists in deconstructing the “replace the bad king with a ‘good’ king and everything will be fine” trope (also rule of three). Even though the former king was replaced, the role of monarch has too much power, no oversight and an enabling royal court so of course it backfires immediately. After the second king is ‘dealt with’, (I don’t want to give the entire plot away but) his successor does fit the “good king” mould (willing to enact change) but has to contend with the royal court (and their very sharp knives) who are (violently) opposed to losing any of their powers or privileges.
The kings and the royal court are not the only ones abusing and misusing their power. For example, the rest of the kingdom’s aristocracy and gentry aren’t any better than the royal court: back-stabbing, power-hungry, misusing tax revenue to enrich themselves, etc. The (non-oppressed) mages (instead of acting as this setting’s doctors since their magic is very healing based) tend to either find a wealthy patron or remain in academia. The dominant religion (since the first king gutted his predecessor’s social programs) provides charity so long as the person seeking charity is a member of said religion or willing to convert. The military acts with very little oversight and takes advantage of the ethos ‘might makes right’ even against people from the same kingdom as them.
However, instead of both kings being motivated via a form of bigotry, I am thinking of having them have two different villainous motivations in regards to the protagonist. The first king wanted the protagonist destroyed while the second king sees them as ‘useful’ and initially attempts to use and manipulate them.
I realize I made it difficult on myself with the original king’s motivation. My protagonist’s character arc is “you don’t have to be personally affected by cruelty to oppose it”. They are relatively young (and a little self-centred) and grew up in relative privilege too (middle class) so many of the above abuses did not or barely affect them. They are initially very blasé about societal ills until the king decides to misuse time, money, manpower and resources to satisfy a petty, personal Sins of the Father grievance against the protagonist whose only crime is being the king’s “enemy’s” only surviving descendant. Their arc goes: “the king shouldn’t oppress me (I didn’t do anything)” to “the king shouldn’t oppress people” to “those with systematic power shouldn’t oppress others (especially those without power)”.
Feel free to ask questions (though I cannot guarantee I will answer all of them).
Ah, I see. From what I read so far, at least, this seems like a multi-layered and well-considered approach. I really like this, because it approaches the issue both from the perspective of the individual position (no check on bad individuals, prone to abuse by fickle leaders) and on the system backing it (leaders who would otherwise be good are pushed to comply).
I’d be very interested in reading this story, since it’s rare to see deep consideration regarding oppressive systems in fantasy.
Not that I get the impression that you’re doing this, but one thing I’d be careful to avoid is presenting all of the followers of the majority religion as corrupt, bigoted, or mindlessly compliant. Religion is often demonized by spec fic, which can be alienating to those who are either religious, or grew up in or are part of a religious community which doesn’t match the most shallow stereotypes typically seen in fiction. Not that I don’t think religious groups should be antagonists – they have plenty of traits that are well-suited for it – but I’d avoid painting them with broad strokes.
Hell, it’s not even just a matter of good people and bad people – the example you gave of alms to the poor if they’re willing to convert is perfect for showing those who believe they’re doing the poor a great service by encouraging them to convert.
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I hear your concerns re: religion. For the corruption issue, I am mostly focusing on the ‘political entities’ (royalty, nobility, gentry) than the religious ones but I understand your wariness. Since the setting is inspired partly by the tail end of the early modern period (late 1700s), religion was very much a significant part of most people’s lives (how the week is structured, holidays, etc.) which is why I couldn’t not include it but it is mostly there for world-building flavour.
Religion is a tricky thing to write about and I realize that every member of a religion is not a monolith. There are always varying levels of adherence, etc. even within members of the same family. For example, religious leadership contains those who felt it was their calling (the Bishop from Les Mis), (given the era) those who found it to be a suitable career (P&P Mr. Collins) and those who sought it out because it gives them authority over others.
As for mindless compliance: the majority of members of the (current) majority religion still have various fun and harmless traditions and what-not that date from the previous local religion which the religious leadership had been trying to forbid or change unsuccessfully for centuries.
I promise I will not demonize something that millions (billions?) of people are involved in (and find comfort from) but I am not going to shy away from the fact that organized religion is made up of people, people can be messy and sometimes that can lead to some not so great outcomes.
The ‘alms to the poor’ situation is an example of why having charities run by religions (instead of social programs) is only good on paper because of these exclusionary tactics. Even then, there are different levels of adherence depending on the church leader in question, ranging from “convert immediately” to “and you promise you’ll convert later” to plausible deniability “they came asking Us for __; I just assumed they were already a member”.
Yeah, that all makes sense. That’s a reasonable perspective to have. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I wasn’t comfortable with people writing about religion – I absolutely love seeing it in fantasy when it’s given more substance than just various patron gods, or a benevolent goddess versus a god of evil.
I brought that particular pain point up for two reasons. The first is that, as mentioned, it’s common for progressives to demonize religion. Some progressives see religion as antithetical to progress. They often liken all religious people to the worst stereotypes of proponents of Abrahamic religions. Some of them (at least the very worst ones I’ve spoken with) feel that they’re justified in being hateful to all religious people purely on that basis because religion is a choice.
A lot of this stems from those people having only superficial knowledge of faith. To many, faith seems to be as simple as just following words in a book attributed to an imaginary man in the sky, akin to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. They believe that they can’t get through to people of faith because faith simply precludes reason, rather than because their representation of faith is a straw man that’s useless for trying to relate to religious people. This is exacerbated because they feel that religion is in the same boat as things like fascism, and because, by nature of being the “logical” party, they also “logically” know what someone else’s faith amounts to. I feel that, for some, progressivism is about getting a high from attacking something that’s “obviously” wrong, as opposed to an effort to make a meaningful difference. That attitude, ironically, would not be unlike that of religious zealots.
As someone who considers myself progressive, I always feel disgusted when I see this from people I would otherwise agree with. I don’t like to be associated with that kind of thinking. It’s exactly the kind of closed-mindedness I stand against. I don’t think you’ll make connections with anyone by painting them as an enemy without even bothering to understand them. Many of the religious people those people demonize want the same things they do for society, and don’t think dogmatically zealous and inflexible adherence to reactionary ideals based on excerpts from books written by men millennia ago are an integral part of their faith. Some of those who do hold those ideals can be convinced to abandon them by people who try to relate to them.
I can go on here, but I think my point is clear.
The second reason is that I became more conscious of this when I realized that, completely unintentionally, not only did my own story have a strong anti-religious bent, it came off (at least to me) like wish fulfillment for a disillusioned teenager from a religious household, which was *definitely* not what I wanted. This happened because, despite the antagonists being justified in wanting a change to the world order, I was mainly showing their beliefs in ways that were relevant to their nature as antagonists.
Given that the MC escapes their organization after being indoctrinated by them since early childhood, one of several things I did to fix it was having him keep many of his beliefs instead of rejecting everything he was taught. In the end, I felt this was a major improvement, since it creates conflict as the MC works to decide what to keep and what to discard. I also think it’s a bit of nice buildup to have the MC pray before a major battle.
My own example is to say that, if a religion is integral to the antagonists, it’s very easy to only have it in focus when it relates to how your antagonists are opposing your protagonists, or why your protagonists must stop your antagonists. This means that, even if you don’t mean to, you might be showing that there’s nothing more to them and their beliefs than evil that must be stopped. This is more of a problem if the religion can easily be likened to real-world beliefs (which might make it seem like a statement on those beliefs), or if it’s the only religion shown in the work (which might make it seem like a statement on religion in general).
Overall, I find religion a very interesting subject, and wish it was explored more deeply in fantasy. I enjoyed taking a purely cold, analytical look into the religions that became the most dominant in the world, and seeing how they all had common traits which facilitated their dominance (and that of the associated cultures). I used that analysis in my own work when thinking of how a relatively new religion could shape a society to enable it to overtake a previously dominant neighbor.
I could give you a breakdown of those traits, if you want, but it’s a bit of writing, so I’ll end that point there for now.