In April, HBO will be introducing a new medieval fantasy series, Game of Thrones, based on the novels of George R. R. Martin. One of the producers jokingly described it as "The Sopranos in Middle Earth," but I actually think it's more like "The Wire in Middle Earth." After reading the first two books of Martin's series, I'm very much looking forward to HBO's adaptation.
Generally, Nordic-inspired fantasy worlds don't appeal to me. Lack of diversity is part of it, though by no means the only part. While Martin's world is more diverse than say, J.R.R Tolkien's, most of the story line takes place on a part of the world that is recognizably Northern European in inspiration. It's the moral complexity of the Martin canon that I find appealing.
Most fantasy writing takes the term literally, painting an alternative universe readers might prefer to dwell in, hence the ab-flex male protagonists and their female companions in armored bikinis. Martin offers no such comfort. The world he creates resembles less a world of magic than a world in which magic has ceased to exist. The lives of the poor are full of toil and famine, the lives of nobles are naught but blood and iron. Honor is suicide, while treachery offers a small hope for survival. Undefeated warriors die from minor wounds becoming infected, cowards quietly flee fields of battle with their lives and honor intact. Martin's world is populated by some obvious Shakespearean analogues and fantasy archetypes, but the latter ultimately end up subverting type in ways that prove interesting beyond simply defying expectations. Everyone loves Legolas. But what if a child caught Legolas sleeping with his sister and he decided to toss the kid off a cliff to keep him quiet? And so on.
Like The Wire, the impulse to pick heroes and villains gives way to despair over the dumb, arbitrary cruelty of the system all the characters remain subject to. One's talent for working the system is more important than commitments to abstract principles, and characters who adhere to society's rules aren't necessarily good, and those who reject those values altogether aren't necessarily evil. While feudalism, for obvious reasons, is a much less urgent target than the drug trade, and Martin's work isn't what I'd call political, there's something deeply recognizable about this statement, given by a major character accused of forsaking his vows as a knight:
So many vows...they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other.
Something that always bothered me about Tolkein and the worlds inspired by his work is their inability to manifest anything resembling this kind of moral complexity. The "white hats" are allowed their quirks and foibles, but there's never any question but that Mordor is the true existential threat, and its minions are one dimensional and entirely incapable of redemption or even really independent thought. Orcs, goblins, Uruk-hai -- they're all just monsters. Martin has created a bleak fantasy world where there are monstrous deeds and few actual monsters, which is to say, one enough like our own that few of us would want to actually live in it.
Also there are zombies. Knights vs. zombies? I mean it doesn't get much better than that.
