Wednesday, August 27, 2014

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part Five: The Source (an IWM post)

Imagine you're a kid. Your father is a landowner and a knight. Your older brother is obviously being groomed as the heir, which is normal and natural. He is, actually, a knight in his own right. You, however, are not being trained as a second, a backup, which would also be normal and natural. You're being trained to take care of horses and muck stalls and do the upkeep on your brother's gear, but that's about it. Sure, you'll get to be a squire, but you can tell there's some... difference; you're just not sure what it is. Clearly, your father loves you, and it's not a matter of favoritism; your brother is held just as accountable for wrongs as you are. But there is something... something that sets you apart. Or is that just wishful thinking?

This tournament comes up, and your brother is going to take part. He's even one of the favored knights. But something happens. The morning of the tournament, there's a problem with your brother's sword. He's livid. Stomping around. He demands that you find him a new one. And that's where everything changes...

* * *

Raise your hand if you know where this is going.

Raise your hand if you knew you were going to have to jump over to Indie Writers Monthly to read the rest of this. Now, go!

9 comments:

  1. I saw this in the Disney movie "Sword and the Stone". The young Arthur desperate to find a sword pulls the sword from the stone and races back to his brother. :-)

    Anna from Shout with Emaginette

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  2. Crystal: I saw you there :)

    emaginette: That's from White's The Once and Future King.

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  3. I think you're right about the source of fantasy.

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  4. TAS: I'm surprised no one went there while I was doing the series.

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  5. Indeed. Going back any further is tricky, too, as that story's origins - either historical or literary - are not very clear.

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  6. TAS: And the older stories we know of, like Beowulf or Gilgamesh, do not follow the model. Although both of those do have "the descent" in them.

    I'd be surprised if there was not an actual person that the Arthur stories came from. There are too many of them, and they are too pervasive.

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