Kind of true.
Charles Stross, a popular sci-fi author, wrote this on his blog (the same blog where he posted about the Unicorn Academy):
"My problem with high fantasy is this: I come from a nation [the UK] that has a real, no-shit monarchy and aristocracy. Consequently you get to learn about this stuff in high school, and see its stilted echoes on the TV news every week. Monarchism, the default political stance of high fantasy, sucks. We have a term for its latter-day incarnation: we call it "hereditary dictatorship", and point to North Korea for an example. From the point of view of most of the population, your typical fantasyland is not a utopia. Anything but! And to make matters worse, the traditional format of a high fantasy novel is that some source of disruption threatens to destabilize the land; it is up to the hero (usually it is a 'he') to set things right and restore the order of benign tyranny to the world. Fantasy, in short, is frequently consolatory, and I don't get on with it."
Actually it's definitely true. And it's not hard to see why. I imagine the bards of the Middle Ages didn't get too far with anti-monarchy messages. Not to mention, it's not as though kids in the Middle Ages went to school and learned about fifteen different kinds of governments. I imagine benign tyranny seemed like pretty much the only option at the time - aside from, you know, harsh tyranny.
Still, I'm proud to say that my fantasy novel-in-progress, though it is very much high fantasy in a lot of ways, is about environmental sustainability, conflict resolution, and technological and political revolution. Cos I'm not a medieval bard.
"My problem with high fantasy is this: I come from a nation [the UK] that has a real, no-shit monarchy and aristocracy. Consequently you get to learn about this stuff in high school, and see its stilted echoes on the TV news every week. Monarchism, the default political stance of high fantasy, sucks. We have a term for its latter-day incarnation: we call it "hereditary dictatorship", and point to North Korea for an example. From the point of view of most of the population, your typical fantasyland is not a utopia. Anything but! And to make matters worse, the traditional format of a high fantasy novel is that some source of disruption threatens to destabilize the land; it is up to the hero (usually it is a 'he') to set things right and restore the order of benign tyranny to the world. Fantasy, in short, is frequently consolatory, and I don't get on with it."
Actually it's definitely true. And it's not hard to see why. I imagine the bards of the Middle Ages didn't get too far with anti-monarchy messages. Not to mention, it's not as though kids in the Middle Ages went to school and learned about fifteen different kinds of governments. I imagine benign tyranny seemed like pretty much the only option at the time - aside from, you know, harsh tyranny.
Still, I'm proud to say that my fantasy novel-in-progress, though it is very much high fantasy in a lot of ways, is about environmental sustainability, conflict resolution, and technological and political revolution. Cos I'm not a medieval bard.