Do history and fantasy belong together?
by Dirk Strasser
The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
—E L Doctorow
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
—George R R Martin
Don’t let anyone tell you that history and fantasy don’t belong together. They are a match made in heaven, or Elysium or Valhalla or Valinor. Good historical fiction resuscitates the past, filling its lungs with human breath. Good fantasy deepens the colors, intensifies the experience and exalts the sense of wonder. Much of fantasy has a flavour of the past. And the past is more than a foreign country, it’s a foreign world.
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| Goethe's Arrival in Elysium: Franz Nadorp, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
And don’t let anyone tell you that both history and fantasy have no relevance to the modern world.
The current theory of how major conflict occurs in the modern world, the Clash of Civilizations, states that people's cultural and religious identities will be the main source of conflict and that wars in the future would be fought not between countries, but between cultures.
My historical fantasy (or histasy) novel Conquist is essentially about a clash of cultures. It starts with the clash between the Spanish conquistadors and the Inca, but the clash intensifies when they both come into contact with two fantasy races, the duende and the ñakaqs. History is a way of understanding that not all cultures value the same things and the potentially devastating repercussions of that misunderstanding. Adding fantasy cultures into the mix brings the conflicts into razor-sharp focus.
Conquist starts with a declaration of the Spaniards all-encompassing obsession with gold. The first words Cristóbal de Varga writes in his diary are:
We conquistadors suffer from a disease whose symptom is an insatiable thirst for gold. Unlike other fevers, ours cause those innocent of infection to die. I know this, yet I still write these words in the fervent hope that my name will echo with Francisco Pizarro and Hernán Cortés.
This was inspired by a quote from the historical conquistador Hernán Cortés:
You see, my men suffer from a disease of the heart which can only be assuaged by gold.
The conquest of the New World was driven by the Spanish lust for gold, and the Inca, unfortunately, had a lot of gold. There was a deep cultural misunderstanding from the very start. The Inca valued its aesthetic beauty as a piece of jewellery; they had no conception of monetary value so they couldn't understand when the Spaniards melted their gold ornaments into bricks.
Cultural clashes are jarring. They can either result in a knee jerk reaction to double down on your own values and beliefs, or they can force you to reassess your assumptions and strip your values and beliefs to their core. Cristóbal de Varga experiences both of these reactions. In one of his early scenes, he wants to gauge the accuracy of the new crossbow that his cousin has made by killing an alpaca. He totally dismisses an Inca belief when his cousin makes him aware of it:
“Let’s make certain there’s no chance involved.” He raised his nose in line with the bolt. “Do you see the white one…there in the middle of the herd? That’s the one I’m aiming for.”
“The Incas believe the white alpacas are sacred.”
“Don’t worry. After we skin it, the Incas won’t be able to tell the color of its coat.”
During his first intimate encounter with the Incan Princess Sarpay, Cristóbal begins to appreciate the Inca concept of wealth and how they could run their sprawling empire without a monetary system:
“Do you know what makes Incas wealthy? Influence. The person with the greatest number of followers is the wealthiest.”
“Which makes the emperor the most powerful Inca.”
“Of course, and it makes our gods Inti, Mama-Kilya and Viracocha the most powerful of all.”
“I don’t know much about your gods.”
“No, but you know the true wealth of followers. Your conquistadors follow you across mountains in search of Vilcabamba. But they’re not enough for you. You want more followers. You want to rule what remains of the Incan Empire.”
The largest cultural clash often lies in the clash of religions. The Spaniards, by decree of the Holy Roman Emperor, are on a divine mission to convert pagans to Catholicism. Padre Núñez is charged with that conversion and is obsessed with the baptism of the Inca, ñakaqs and duende into the Church. He reads the legally binding Spanish Requerimiento, issuing a demand that people who have no understanding of the language recognise the authority of the Pope and Emperor:
“If you do not do this, then with the help of God we shall come mightily against you, and we shall make war on you everywhere and in every way that we can.”
First contact with the fantasy races ends in disastrous cultural clashes for the conquistadors. The Spaniards are faced with the unrelenting secrecy and stubbornness of ñakaqs, and the role darkness and suffering plays in the innately artistic lives of the duende. The story of their interactions is a deep misunderstanding of the other’s values.
One of the key questions that I wanted to explore in Conquist is what happens when established religions come into contact with a fantasy world. Both devout Catholics and Inca, who worshipped several gods and honoured ancestors, are faced with strange beings that they need to assimilate into their belief systems. Cristóbal and Sarpay both come to the conclusion that their fates are no longer in the hands of their deities, and that they must rely purely on their own decisions.
At dusk on the first day the conquistadors entered the new world, Cristobal makes a striking transition:
As a blood-red moon hung in the sky and the wind howled around the assembled soldiers, Cristóbal was no longer certain that God could hear his words.
Much later Sarpay says:
“Our gods have abandoned us. I can see that now. We haven’t entered the abode of Inti and joined our great Incan ancestors. Inti showed his contempt when he shined his light through the mist and exposed us to be butchered like animals.”
As George R R Martin says, there is something old and true in fantasy.
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Thanks, Cathie, for the opportunity to do a guest post on a fascinating topic.
ReplyDeleteDirk
You're very welcome, Dirk. You've shared a really interesting aspect.
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