Do you think that there is a corelation between the glorification of monarchism in fantasy stories and the young people's interest in totalitarian ideologies and lack of respect towards democratic ideals?
>>25459405Get this. Children aren't dumb. They listen and they learn and if they keep seeing the chosen one hero hook up with the princess, marry into the royal family and prolong the feudalistic status quo, they're gonna accept it as the good outcome.
The disillusionment with bourgeois democracy is a direct result of bourgeois democracy's tendency to render itself obsolete by tending inexorably towards monopoly capitalism and the proletarianization of the very bourgeoisie who supported it. The proletarianized bourgeoisie, lacking the class consciousness to understand how they are being disenfranchised by the very system they have sworn their lives to, instinctively grasp towards the first alternative that promises to alleviate their immiseration, no matter how violent or thuggish.
>>25459405I mean, there could be, but I think monarchism is so prevalent in fantasy because it's such a "simple" form of government. You don't need to learn the intricacies of passing a bill if you just have one guy that can just make a decree. Also you can just made the king a bad guy, so killing him is an easy solution to the whole "forces of evil" issue.
>>25459420It must be laziness and ignorance. I find it fascinating how easily people living in our liberal democracies accept an authoritarian dictatorship in stories as an acceptable default.
no because young people aren't reading books
>>25459461When you are not an "insider" then any form of government feels authoritarian.
>>25459405Not really. Primarily because there’s very few fantasy books that actually take the Tolkienesque “virtue and nobolity by blood” type monarchism seriously, let alone the even more relevant “rule by divine providence” view. Fantasy on the whole doesn’t deal with faith and gods very well despite most settings having them, sometimes in a literal interventionist sense (and STILL the people in these worlds pay no heed to the “will of gods”?). Rather, the enduring bias of the liberal midwits that write fantasy is toward anachronistically and incoherently importing modern views on class, race, sex and religion, and the appeals to monarchy or power of blood and faith are nominal. Hell, even when faced with actual separate races, some of which are actually just monsters, there’s no willingness at all to make it a race issue, sometimes to the extent they want to redeem the monster races to show “they’re not all like that”. Even the posterchild of “orcs are racist”, Tolkien, is vague on the true origin of orcs and has the forces of evil fighting alongside regular humans. Even with demonic beings like the Balrog, the problem is presented like it’s the dwarves’ fault for being too greedy with their digging (I guess there’s a problem of evil Tolkien doesn’t really decide on how to engage, why does Eru allow them to exist). The easily picked fruit would be all the women fighters and rulers, the pseudo medievalism only goes so far. Again even Tolkien falls prey to this. It’s possible there is actual monarchistic medievalist fantasy but if there is it isn’t what sells and any honest attempt would read too alien for a mass audience.
>>25459405Monarchy is more attractive because humans are inherently sociopathic and want to subjugate others
>>25459420>I think monarchism is so prevalent in fantasy because it's such a "simple" form of governmentExcept in the medieval era it was already not very simple. Nor, really, is the more primitive type rule of kings (think pre-viking scandinavia) the model for fantasy monarchism (there'd be a hell of a lot more kings, gift giving would be the central social glue, few legalistic rules about the monarchy and a consensus building part of the rule, tings, no monarch is ever safe or alone in deciding). You're right though that fantasy monarchism IS simple, mostly because the authors don't really understand it beyond "guy on throne makes up the rules". > don't need to learn the intricacies of passing a bill if you just have one guy that can just make a decreeThis is precisely the problem trying to model fantasy monarchy though because really it isn't this simple. The power of the nobility won't stand for a rogue king, if there's a serious faith it will also have a lot of power (negotiating this conflict is a major part of the medieval era). You also have the beginning of common law as the intricacies of royal courts get more and more complex. From the bottom there is some form of voice of the people in assemblies, that will increase their power as the era moves on. Let's take GURM as a common reference point for someone giving a stab at including more complexity than "guy on the throne calls all the shots". He succeeds in having competing royal houses, and gets a little of the issues of diplomacy by marriage alliances in there. The houses are way too pure and stunted though. The faith of the Seven exists, and is the analogue for christianity, but lacks the real power and influence in the story that would mean, it's a mostly nominal faith (there are few characters at all that take faith seriously, from the lowliest peasant to the kings). Some of this he wants to handwave with the conflict between Targs and the church. The pagan faith existing in pockets is good (analogies get muddled by there actually being goblins and magic here), magic and heretical gods obviously have more real power and that /should/ mean people take superstition a lot more seriously than in our medieval world. But they don't, because GURMs atheism seeps in and makes a world with resurrections, dragons and world ending magic weather be generally apathetic about both magic and goblins. We learn very little about how taxation works after all, let alone any analogies to councils or the system of law. There's the maesters of course, which is some mix of a monastic intelligensia, and we do get a sense the various levels of interested parties all fight for power, which is good. But it's not exactly the nitty gritty realistic fantasy he (claimed that he) wanted to create.
>>25459405no
>>25459418Didn't the NEP nearly kill the Soviet Union and Stalin had to reign it in?
No, it's because real monarchism has skin in the game thus directly interacts with our moral intuitions.Monarchs fought wars and were exposed to risk to codify their legitimacy. Modern Democratic politicians are mostly sociopaths leeching the system.
>>25459405No.
There's simply more romance in monarchy. Think about it, would you give your life to replace a bad president with a good president? Of course not, you would just hope things go better in the next election cycle. That's good for a stable government, but not so good for a story about guys hitting each other with swords. Basically anything you can imagine a president doing, you can imagine a king doing in a much cooler and more decisive manner, and that's generally what makes kings better suited for fantasy fiction.
