Compromise and Conceit

I just finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which is an excellent book about one of UK history’s more influential non-regal people, Thomas Cromwell. Wolf Hall tells the story of his early rise to becoming Henry the 8th’s chief advisor, with lots of reflection on his childhood, his past in Europe and his religious beliefs. In this version of the story Cromwell can speak many languages, worked as a mercenary for years and knows how to fight and kill, has memorized the entire New Testament, and is also a capable lawyer and accountant. He’s also funny, compassionate, loyal and caring, and in some ways too exceptional to be a real person, but he is an incredibly likable and engaging character to put at the heart of a complex story. I think I won’t be reading the next two books in the series, primarily because we all know how it ends (spoiler: he dies), and I don’t want to read hundreds of pages about a great character being undone by jealousy and treachery. It was bad enough in The Tudors! Which wasn’t even directly about Cromwell!

This post isn’t intended as a review of the book, which is great, but to discuss a phenomenon in modern literature and TV that I find simultaneously engaging and frustrating: the tendency of writers to put a character with modern liberal views into their medieval/fantasy fiction, in a way that unfortunately breaks the coherence of the setting. I don’t know if this is a bad thing, perhaps it’s an essential narrative tool when you’re trying to write a story for modern readers about a world they can’t relate to, but sometimes I find it really jars with the setting, and occasionally drags me out of it. Let’s start with Cromwell as an example, and then look at some other cases, contrast them with a narrative about a conflict of cultural movements, and discuss how jarring it can be.

Cromwell as liberal stand-in

Historically Thomas Cromwell played an important part in the broad sweep of Henry 8th’s religious and social policy reforms, including the dissolution of the monasteries, the introduction of new accounting and management structures for the Crown, and the implementation of the principle of royal supremacy (essentially the idea that the King should control the church). In Wolf Hall Cromwell is shown introducing the principle of royal supremacy based on his reading of certain Italian political philosophers, and he is also seen as generally being heavily influenced by more advanced thinkers on the continent. His role, along with Anne Boleyn’s, is played up a little more in the TV show The Tudors, and in Wolf Hall a lot of people are involved in the introduction of radical ideas to England. Nonetheless, Cromwell plays a central role in building the new intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of what will become the English enlightenment.

More personally, the Cromwell of Wolf Hall is a model of enlightened modern masculinity compared to the people around him. He is open-minded, compassionate, forgiving of others’ sins, and possessed very much of a live-and-let-live philosophy. He treats his children well, recognizes and values consent as it applies to women’s bodies, and for himself and his family he values love in relationships above expediency. Having come from a common background himself he values equality and sees humans as all essentially the same in god’s order, wants to see the Bible translated into English, and has many critical views of church teachings that are consistent with modern liberal ideas about freedom of religion and conscience. He respects others’ privacy and treats women as equals, even noting to himself that he would be more successful if he listened to women more carefully. He does not under-estimate women like Anne Boleyn and wishes that his own daughter could grow up to be the Mayor of London. The Jews have been expelled from Britain and are generally reviled, but he spends time talking to old Jewish women and trying to understand their perspective. He also has a strong sense of having been wronged by noblefolk, and wanting revenge on them. He opposes bullies, and is satisfied to see Thomas More executed partly because of his memory of being mistreated by him when he was a poor child. In these regards he stands out from the people around him, who discount women’s agency, enjoy bullying and reward bullies, and do not consider even the possibility of a world where all people are equal and free to believe what they want or express ideas how they want.

There aren’t really any points in the story where Cromwell doubts his right to be ascend to the levels he has reached, where he wonders whether his many actions against the natural order might be wrong, or doubts his rights and powers. He is a confident, committed representative of modern liberal values in a world where these values do not exist and will not exist for another 250 – 300 years. On many occasions it is difficult to recognize him as coming from the same world as, having the same superstitions and beliefs, or sharing any of the prejudices of his peers or the community he lives in. Mantel navigates these differences well by stressing his outsider status, his many years in Europe where he experienced many things, and his education and intelligence, but in the end he still retains this sense of being a man out of time, a person from the modern age who somehow got incarnated in 16th century Britain. Much of the pleasure of the story arises from the friction between his beliefs – which you, the reader, largely agree with and which seem very familiar to you – and the beliefs of the society he actually lives and grew up in. It’s fun, but it kind of doesn’t make sense.

The liberal stand-in as observer and agent in medieval fiction

This character, who I think of the as the liberal stand-in, is a super common character in stories about medieval or pre-medieval times. There are many examples in fiction and cinema, and they are often the most-loved characters in the story. Let’s consider some examples:

• Tyrion Lannister in the (TV version of) Game of Thrones, a man who respects the weak and the bullied, who “drinks wine and knows things”, who always has the most rational and intelligent solution to a problem and often approaches problems in ways that go against the superstitions and prejudices of the people around him.
• Peter Grant, the detective in the Rivers of London series, who attempts to scientifically understand the magic he uses, and is a liberal and left-leaning, open-minded man in one of the most close-minded, racist and backward elements of British society (the police), who attempts to apply modern scientific reasoning and western liberal values to the society of fey and magical creatures that are older than most of human history
• Robin Hood in the original Errol Flynn movie, who educates Maid Marian in the reality of life among the poor and degenerate of England, and attempts to introduce more liberal values of equality and peace
• Merlin in the Mists of Avalon series, who has many views about religious freedom, compassion, equal treatment of others and rational inquiry that are completely at odds with the people around him
• Drizzt Do’Urden, the dark elf of legend, who is a rebel against the racial evil of his own people and wants to build a better life for himself in a world of magic and superstition[1]

Often the liberal stand-in is not the main character, though sometimes their liberal conflict with the world around them is the central theme of the story (e.g. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court). For example, the main character of The Mists of Avalon is Morgana le Fay, who is a vicious, spiteful, incompetent little monster, and Merlin offers us precious respite from her stupidity.

The liberal stand-in should be distinguished from characters who reject the moral codes of the world they live in but do so out of selfishness, laziness, or because they are the actual evil person within the framework of the world’s ideology. For example, Cersei Lannister does not maintain her incestuous relationship with her brother because she thinks people should be free to love whomever they choose: she knows it’s evil and wrong and she just doesn’t care, because she’s evil, and we repeatedly see evidence of her viciousness and evil to confirm that her motives are selfish, not ideological. Similarly, most stories about Henry 8th present his changes to the religious structures of England as being motivated by a selfish reaction to the constraints placed on his power by Rome, not by any real ideological commitment to building a freer and more equal religion. He is usually portrayed as a selfish man with the power to ignore his society’s rules, not a man who has an ideological objection to those rules. I think these characters often exist to remind us of the fundamental backwardness of the society we are reading about, or to explain the rules of that society to us from the perspective of the people who fully accept them. The liberal stand-in, in contrast, is there to help us feel comfortable navigating those worlds, to help us enjoy them without feeling dirty for being part of them.

The liberal stand-in plays a dual role in many of these stories, simultaneously driving the narrative forward by solving problems in ways others can’t and listening to people the other characters won’t, while also interpreting the world for the reader/viewer. They offer an entry into the world that is sympathetic to the basic principles of the modern reader/viewer, while also understanding (but rising above) the narrow-minded superstitions and prejudices of the people around them. Sometimes this sympathetic role is essential for the reader/viewer to remain engaged with the setting, which can be so horrible, grinding or cruel that without the hook of this character we might give up hope on the society and walk away from the story. Tyrion, in particular, plays this role, offering us respite from the misogynist violence, the bullying and the hatred that permeates his fallen world.

I think I notice the liberal stand-in very quickly now when they appear. They often annoy me, because they stand out like dogs balls from the rest of the characters and make me think “oh, here is the guy who’s going to explain how everything works to me, in language I understand!” Sometimes I wonder if they’ve been put there by the author to remind us that the author doesn’t believe any of this shit, and sometimes I wonder if the writer needed them more than we do. In big movies I wonder if they’re partially put there to ensure that the setting is palatable to the producers, who are likely to be very conservative. Sometimes the liberal stand-in makes sense (e.g. Tyrion!) and sometimes it makes no sense at all – Merlin should be the most alien thinker of all the characters in The Mists of Avalon, not the most modern!

The persistence and ubiquity of this character in literature going back 50 years makes me think that they’re an important part of fantasy writing, a role that is difficult for writers to avoid and that may be necessary to help readers to engage with the setting. Maybe they play a role as a kind of circuit-breaker or pressure release, to help readers navigate settings morally and personally as well as to guide readers through them. But sometimes they can be a very frustrating, reality-suspending impediment to enjoying the story!

Liberal stand-in or culture clash?

I once read a theory that Hamlet’s madness should not be interpreted as a moral flaw or as a tragedy brought about by his personal desires. Instead it should be seen as the consequence of the conflict between the enlightenment and medieval thinking. In this interpretation of the play, Hamlet represents modern British sensibilities of Shakespeare’s time, which was heading towards the enlightenment, and in the play he is a reaction against the medieval worldviews of his contemporaries, and the backward role he is expected to take on as a prince, which conflicts with the enlightenment principles he learnt at University. The play can then be seen as an allegory or a morality play about the changing religious and cultural perspectives of England at that time. The play is generally believed to have been written in around 1600, when Britain was definitely heading into the enlightenment and when principles of medieval rulership were being rejected, under the reign of Britain’s first formally-recognized female queen[2]. Many aspects of traditional medieval culture had been rejected, and Hamlet was a personification of that conflict between old and new. In this interpretation of the play, Hamlet could be seen as playing the role of liberal stand-in for 17th century British readers of a story about 14th century Europe.

However, there is another type of story that he could represent, which does not necessarily require a liberal stand-in: a story about a clash of cultures, in which an old ideology is being superseded or crushed by a new way of thinking. In this story we don’t necessarily need a liberal stand-in character, because the clash of cultures themselves enables us to understand and sympathise with one or both cultures. The model of this to me is the role Uhtred plays in The Last Kingdom. The narrative of this story is Uhtred’s efforts to restore his lands, but the broader context is the clash between christian and pagan culture in England. The pagan culture is represented by the non-christian Danes, not just Uhtred but also Brida, Haesten, those insane Welsh dudes, etc. On the other side is Christian culture represented by Alfred the Great, Aelswith and various priests and advisors who all hate Uhtred. The clash of cultures is personified in the fractious relationship between Uhtred and Alfred, where they consistently fail to understand each others’ perspectives and beliefs[3]. The Danes in this story have many beliefs that we modern viewers might hold, such as their willingness to allow women in battle, their sexual licentiousness, lack of genuine concern about homosexuality, etc. but they’re also wildly different from us. They have a might-makes-right kind of viewpoint, maybe a bit of human sacrifice, pretty hazy about concepts of consent and conscience, and are deeply superstitious. Neither of the cultures depicted in the story are cultures we modern liberal viewers can be comfortable with, but in the tension of their conflict we can learn about them and enjoy the frustrations and challenges the characters face, without necessarily requiring a specific character to guide us through it. If there is a liberal stand-in in the Last Kingdom I don’t think it’s Uhtred so much as Father Beocca, who advises Uhtred on how to negotiate his conflicts with christendom, regularly counsels restraint to angry Alfred, and helps us the viewer to comprehend what’s going on. I’m not sure he fully counts as a liberal stand-in, but he’s the closest we’ll get.

Is the liberal stand-in necessary?

It’s strange to me that so many fantasy stories are unable to imagine a world with more modern or liberal politics than the actual politics of the middle ages. There’s no special reason that a society with no christianity, without even a monotheistic spiritual background, and often with magic to replace technology, should be so socially and politically backward as the societies we so often read about in many fantasy stories. I wonder if this is because the typical modern western writer can’t envisage real conflict occurring in the societies they grew up in, and so they imagine that if their fantasy world had more modern or less hierarchical politics it would not have the stirring conflicts between good and evil that often form the basis of the stories in fantasy worlds. As a result we get presented either with settings drawn directly from archaic social structures, or with classical medieval settings built around monarchist, patriarchal and violent societies. Maybe it’s a failing of our own understanding of our own history? I’ve written before about the stunted imagination underlying some of the settings we are used to reading, about the misogyny of Game of Thrones, which is well beyond any real world equivalents from our history, and about how the economics and demographics of these settings have to be twisted to support the depth of misogyny and hatred that are imagined for some of them. Things are better now than they were 10-15 years ago when I wrote those essays, but the choice of settings and the conservative politics of those settings remains a problem. I think the liberal stand-in is necessary in these settings in order to give the reader a little breathing space to get away from the politics that the writers seem to assume is essential to the setting. But is it really necessary to construct these settings in this way? Can we just imagine societies with medieval tech, magic, monsters, and polytheistic beliefs in which the politics is fundamentally liberal, or at least different? Why do we need wizards to be accompanied by kings? Why do knights have to always ride through landscapes where women can only be goodwives or whores? Is it possible to construct a bigger vision of different pasts than just the crabby, narrow-minded, monarchic shitshow that Thomas Cromwell got beheaded for trying to improve slightly?

If we did imagine fantasy settings with more diverse social structures, maybe we wouldn’t need the liberal stand-in. Maybe we could enjoy them without needing an interpreter or a guide to tell us it’s okay to be part of them. Maybe we could have more sense of fellow-feeling with the ordinary people of those worlds, and enjoy their superstitions and limitations without feeling like we are secretly soiling or demeaning ourselves. Things are better than they were when I started this blog, but it would be nice if fantasy could abandon the politics of kings and knights and inquisitions and whores, and build worlds we did not feel so morally and emotionally alien in. Then we might not need the strange, slightly out of place liberal interpreter to guide us into and out of those worlds, wouldn’t experience the jarring sensation of suddenly reading about a guy just like us who feels as out of place in the world as we do. Instead of liberal guides, in 2025 let’s try and build worlds that are less anachronistic!

fn1: I confess it’s been a very very long time since I read these books!

fn2: It’s worth noting that a lot of the changes that happened during Henry 8th’s reign, some of which directly benefited Elizabeth or made her job easier, were enacted precisely to stop Elizabeth’s reign from coming to pass. Henry wanted a boy, who would grow up to be a king, so that neither Elizabeth or his formerly-legitimate daughter Mary would succeed him, because the idea of a woman inheriting power in England terrified everyone, including him. It was only his dismal failure to produce a male heir (which was apparently entirely the fault of his six wives…) that led to the kind of reforms that enabled Elizabeth to be so successful, and those cultural changes I think to a certain extent must have helped to lay the groundwork for the English enlightenment that Elizabeth’s reign ushered in.

fn3: To me the final conversation between Alfred and Uhtred as Alfred is dying is absolutely splendid theatre, and Alfred is one of the greatest supporting characters of the genre. What a legend that actor was[4]

fn4: Helped by the fact that he looks so much like Brett Anderson from Suede