(Untitled)

[ursulav]

Goddamnit, I've run through like five variations, the memory of "Find/Replace" looks like an annotated encyclopedia of chivalry, and the only one I LIKE is "paladin."

Mark Twain was right. Damn him

Comments

[diatryma]

Have you read Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion? Her paladin is sort of accidental.

[ursulav]

I have not!

[whiskerwing]

*gasp* Blasphemy, woman!

Get thee to a library!

Read Deed of Paksenarrion!!!

[brenda_ea]

At once!

Actually that's the title of the omnibus - the individual books of the trilogy are Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold. By Elizabeth Moon. Amazing books - prepare to be sucked in...

[diatryma]

I don't have as much paladin connotation as you do, but it seemed logical enough, and while there is some prissiness, it's not *prissiness*-- it's just how she is. I haven't read the books in a while, but I recommend them.

[brownkitty]

Paks is a paladin as a real person. She gets bored, she gets hungry, she gets tired, she gets scared. She looks a little cross-eyed at other people's religions. She wants revenge, and she hurts. She sometimes misses the blooming obvious but in a plausible way. And she has a major crisis or two.

She's NOT holier-than-thou.

[whiskerwing]

Also, since I am obviously bored at work, and you deserve a little bit of a notification of what you might be getting into with the book, Paks is a three-book series that's often published as one giant doorstop.

It's a heavy book, mentally and emotionally (and physically), and meanders across the "epic fantasy" scale without committing the common sins of introducing seventeen main characters, and even manages to do it without forcing the main character to fall into an angsty romance with anyone.

Not light and fluffy, not terribly comedic, and definitely not delightfully absurd.

But it's still one of my favorite books, and it's one of those that's enjoyable throughout and makes you feel like a better person for having read it.

[almeda]

I loved it for making DnD-style spellcasting priests seem ordinary and workable.

[whiskerwing]

I agree -- I loved it for taking regular fantasy and bringing it down to earth. How magic was used to heal people, and not -just- in the pursuit of massive battles of good vs evil.

It takes the extraordinary and rubs a little bit of mud and dirt on it, then takes the ordinary and shines it up and says that "THIS too can be noble."

=]

[diatryma]

Indeed! She's accidental, and more true to the devoted warrior archetype than your typical D&D paladin. Wasn't much impressed with the prequel books or whatever they were.

[derakon]

"The Legacy of Gird", I think you're talking about, and I agree, they're not as good. Part of the problem there is that they had to essentially tell the story of founding a religion, and the beginnings of religions are almost always too fantastic to accept if you don't have faith.

[eliyes]

Let me echo the reccommendation, and also say this: don't stopat the end of the second book! I suggest getting the trilogy omnibus. :3

[rohantm]

I commented about this more at length in the last entry, but Paks is a good example of showing rather than telling. She is a paladin in the classic RPG sense, but it comes out through her actions, and in fact she is actually surprised when someone calls her one.

I think if you want to handle it semi-realistically, your paladin is going to be called different things by different people. The clergy or his order might be the only ones who call him by the title of paladin; peasants and townspeople are just going to see a knight or warrior, depending on the garb (a holy symbol won't necessarily make him stand out; there were plenty of crusaders with crosses on their armor); and also the character may think of himself completely differently, as in the case of Paksennarion.

Also, to complicate things, medieval folks seemed to love using multiple names for things. So there's no reason that he wouldn't be called a paladin in one breath and a holy warrior, or one of the myriad other suggestions you have had, in the next-- even by the same