The Chosen Jerk: Jam Session with N.K. Jemisin

In general, I like fantasy tropes.  I like my villains, I like my heroes and I like my bands of misfits (cough).  Even the ones I don't like, I can usually find some way to enjoy.  And whether I like them or I hate them, I enjoy talking about them.

I seem to have a habit of drawing on the same sources for inspiration, but Pornokitsch's review of Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings left me more than a little interested in what he had to say, particularly about the trope of The Chosen One.

It's been in nearly everything that's had a right to call itself a work of Science Fiction or Fantasy: the thought that there are certain people who should lead, certain people who are blessed, certain people who are fit to rule…and the average working-class schmuck gets no particular say in who gets to be chosen.  No, that's in the hands of the Gods or Fate or Prophecy or (usually) the Author.  It's a well-worn classic, a venerable trope.

And I kind of hate it.  For two big reasons.  It's a two-pronged hate.  A hate fork pinning down a steak of spite while a bitter, dull knife saws away a fatty piece to stuff into my gob (the spite steak tastes like poo, too).

On a purely literary level, I think the idea of The Chosen One tends to diminish my favorite word ever: conflict.  Conflict still drives a story and you can never stack enough of it on.  The Chosen One (in its most common iteration) removes a crucial part of a conflict: the hero.  If he's been Chosen by Whatever, he can safely assume that he is right and everyone else is wrong, that he does deserve to rule and get the girl and exterminate the orcs and whatever.

Presumably, we're involved in a book because we're involved in the character.  To be involved in the character, we need the conflict of his own morality.  You'd think that in science fiction and fantasy, where people are routinely resorting to violence as an answer (if not the first answer) to solving their problems, there would be at least a moment when someone paused and thought "wait, why?"  The answer to that question compounds the character's conflict, which invests us further in him.  Every dead orc from that point on is significant, further supporting the conclusion he's reached, and we watch him abandon his ethos or fight to save it.

But in terms of philosophy, I sometimes wonder if the whole concept of The Chosen One isn't a toxic one.  I occasionally wonder if it's right to put the concept of someone utterly infallible in all that he does out there, if it's right to put up this concept that birth matters more than effort.  Or, at the very least, if it's right to put it out there without questioning it.

I was amazingly pleased to talk to N.K. Jemisin about this, someone who's done more thinking about tropes, how they speak to our society and how we use them than anyone I've ever met.  She put everything I had been thinking of far more eloquently and swear word-free than I ever could:

My quickie response:  Chosen Ones are toxic if you think various flavors of authoritarianism are a problem.  *I* do, but then my political views are decidedly left; I think rule by anything short of a large representative elected body is a problem. But there are a lot of folks in the fantasy readership who find a certain comfort and simplicity in concentrated authority.  We all succumb to the urge to admire a strong, decisive leader, I think; the problem lies in giving that person too much power.  Even the best-loved king is still a dictator, in the end.

And Chosen Ones who are "select people" or have some birthright to leadership are even more problematic, because then you get into eugenics.  If some people are *meant* to be rulers, then that means some people are meant to be ruled — and the latter group can therefore never be allowed to have the power to self-govern.  Why give it to them if they're genetically or magically or psychologically less fit for leadership?  And while you've got two divisions of people ("select people" and peons, patricians and plebians, whatever you want to call them), why stop there?  If some people are especially fit to rule, why not decide that some people are especially fit only for combat, and some only for skilled trades, and some only for intellectual pursuits?  And maybe some people aren't fit to do anything but die, because they're old or disabled, or because some of your industries (e.g., mining) are especially dangerous and you can't spare anyone *valuable* to do that kind of work.  You've just created a eugenicist caste system, whee.

And that kind of societal division is going to have to treat the non-ruler people as inferior, and enforce that message of inferiority, in order to keep them from getting any ideas about replacing the select people, especially when they're hungry or tired of being sent off to war.  So the members of the underclass become "lazy" or "craven" or "feebleminded" or whatever, while the ruling class becomes "hardworking" and "courageous" and "smart".  (Ever notice how we use "noble" as a synonym for "good" and "handsome" and so on?)  So now you've got classism. Or maybe you can break it down by some other method than skill set; that would be more fair.  So what can you use to divide people instead?  Hmm.  Well, some of them *look* different from each other…  Aaaand you've just created racism, sexism, ableism, and probably some other "isms" I don't even know the names of.

Most fantasy novels elide all this by making their Chosen Ones "good rulers" or "blessed by [deity]" or somehow superior, or by making the people-to-be-ruled somehow happy to be stuck in a system they can't control, and happy to have yet another (good) dictator. But most of the fantasy novels we've heard of are British or American, and most British and American people are unexamined or enthusiastic classists, so most of us *don't* have a problem with it.  It's what we're used to.  As long as there are writers and readers who feel this way, the Chosen One narratives will still have a place.

For those who do have a problem with it, though, there's also room for Chosen Ones to be reimagined.  For example, I don't think I've ever seen a Chosen One who was ugly, lazy, physically unfit, or dead stupid, who stayed that way to the end, and was the *good guy* (since he's usually a "he"; another thing to be reimagined).  Closest I can think of is Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, who was a rapist, but I stopped reading the damn book after that scene so I don't know what happened to him.  Rothfuss did a Chosen-ish One who gave it all up to become a bartender, but I suspect (haven't read the second book) that's a temporary condition.  My soon-to-come "Dreamblood" duology has Chosen Ones who are given power because they're schizophrenic or sociopathic; it's the source of their magic (as long as they don't have a psychotic break).  I'm sure there's other ways to play with the concept.

It *is* discouraging.  But that's all the more reason to question it with fiction, for those of us who are writers and have the power to do so.  :)  I mean, yeah, Chosen Ones are problematic as hell, and it's creepy and depressing that the fantasy readership rewards this narrative with bestseller sales without seeming to question it.  That's because the fantasy readership is *conservative* at its core — tradition-obsessed, change-resistant, and more than a little bigoted.  And yeah, if you want to be a bestseller, then to some degree you have to cater to this core.

But I think it's possible to cater to this audience while also poking a finger at its shortcomings and saying, "Yo, your fly is unzipped, might want to do something about that."  I get all kinds of shit about having written epic fantasy stories with female protagonists, protagonists who aren't white, etc. — but that doesn't stop me from writing them.  It didn't stop me from trying to publish them, though it took me awhile to do so.  So if the inherent creepiness of the "Chosen One" narrative disturbs you, then try writing an epic fantasy in which the creepiness of the Chosen One *is* questioned.  Brandon Sanderson did a little of this in his "Mistborn" trilogy, although IMO he short-circuited his own message by revealing that the Lord Ruler — supposedly the "Chosen One" of his own legend — really *wasn't* the Chosen One.  So ultimately Sanderson ended up affirming the idea that Chosen Ones are proper and true, you just need to make sure you've actually got the *right* Chosen One before you stick the guy on a throne.  But if Sanderson hadn't pulled his punches at the end of the first volume, his trilogy could've been a devastating excoriation of the very idea of a Chosen One.   No reason another author can't tackle the same theme in a more daring way.  *I* would certainly love to see it.  :)

So, in general, we agree that there's a lot of room for reimagining.  And one can't help but wonder if the time is right to reimagine by beginning to question, to theorize and maybe even to let the reader be let down by The Chosen One.  Conflict is never a bad thing in stories, new ideas are what the genre is all about.