This post is a bit of a rant on my part, but I think there will be room for plenty of discussion at the end. I’ve noticed something of a trend in fiction, and particularly fantasy fiction, and I don’t like it very much. It has to do with how monarchies are treated, and in particular how different “ranks,” if you will, of monarchies are treated. Here’s the rundown:

The Empire is always bad. I cannot think of any good reason why this should be so, but it is.

A Kingdom is usually good.

An individual king may be bad, but if he is, the heir is good. Moreover, if the king is good and the heir is bad, the heir is almost never the king’s son, but usually his brother, uncle, or other collateral relative.

In the case that the king is good but his son and heir appears to be bad, he will be merely petty or arrogant rather than truly evil, and he will grow out of it just in time for Dad to die so that he can be a great king after all, which of course leaves the old king to die thinking he’s leaving his beloved realm to a total jerk.

Other ranks of monarchy(principality, grand duchy, sovereign county) are hardly used at all. A hint to my fellow fantasy writers from the resident royalist: Every independent monarchy is not a kingdom!

So do you subvert this clichés, play them for laughs, or just accept them and play them straight? Personally, I subvert them. In my current WIP, I have at least two more-or-less-sympathetic Emperors, the restoration of one of whom to his throne is a key plot point. I also have Princes ruling at least two small but independent countries on a peninsula called Aestia(tentatively; I’m reconsidering whether that’s a logical name, but that’s another topic for another thread).

A good trope to subvert, sir!

I think the bias comes from the political implications of the title Emperor--the reigning monarch of an empire.

"The term empire derives from the Latin imperium (power, authority). Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups) united and ruled either by a monarch (emperor, empress) or an oligarchy." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire

That an empire is a "geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups)" implies that these states and peoples were conquered. That's usually how it happens, anyway. I can't think of any political entity referred to as an Empire which did not acquire sovereignty over its many states and peoples by conquest. So, an Emperor has either forged or inherited a state which willingly suppresses the sovereignty (and usually oppresses the people) of the states around it.

From this perspective, one might argue that the only good Emperor is the one who dismantles his Empire, apologizing as he goes.

An exception would perhaps be in a situation where the imperial subjects across the world (who are well-treated, we must assume) realize the need to unite for protection or to accomplish some goal. In this case, the Empire would still have been an ill-gotten creation, but the good Emperor doesn't dismantle it because at present, nobody wants him to.

I use an Emperor (good), Elders (good), an heir (good female, actually), and then I have the king who is not petty, he's cruel. Although we understand where his cruelty comes from and what motivates him, which I think is essential if you are going to use an evil figurehead.

I chose this set up for a purpose. It would allow me to clearly depict the forces of good vrs evil. Now, the Emperor rules his people kindly, and he is an ally to the heir (long story on how the bloodline wasn't fully killed). The Elders of the Orphlins (they don't rule as a typical monarchy) have also sided with the heir. The kingdom as a whole is not necessarily good. There are good forces at work, but there are also evil ones. And there are others who just happen to follow along with the flow. One of my favorite characters in my second book in a soldier who does what he is ordered, but you can see the conflict it causes in him.

I think people use the evil monarch because it can so easily display the battle of good vrs evil. But like all cliché’s, you have to change it up a bit.

One reason you see a lot of bad kings and emperors is history.
Look at the kings of England, France, Germany. And the kings of Israel in the Bible after Solomon and David.

And look no further for emperors for some of the most evil men in history Caligula Nero Tiberius all Emperors of Rome.

Yeah, emperors indicate that one nation or people is exerting its will over a group of other people. Also, empires are large, and with size comes growing corruption.
And actually, my emperors are usually good, although they don't often show up because they are all dead when my novel is set.

This post comes late; sorry for that.

Anyway,



I have a favorable view of many of them. Of course, the thread isn't about why monarchs in fantasy are generally evil (they're not, in my experience), but why emperors get a worse rap than kings, while other ranks are left out altogether. For instance, why is there never a sovereign Duke? Historically, there were many sovereign Dukes. Some of the monarchs of Europe historically( and here I'm only counting independent monarchs or direct subjects of the Holy Roman Emperor):

The Dukes of Brabant
The Dukes of Burgundy
The Landgraves of Hesse
The Grand Princes of Muscowy
The Archdukes of Austria
The Princes of Monaco(still reigning)
The Grand Dukes of Luxembourg(still reigning)
The Counts of Tripoli(not in Europe, but a Crusader polity ruled by European monarchs)

and the list goes on. Kings and Emperors are not the limit of monarchies.



Yeah, Israel went pretty badly. Judah wasn't so bad. But those were kings, and kings usually get off pretty easy in fantasy. It's emperors we do all the hating on.

@Reiyen, cephron:

You make good points, but not all Empires work that way. For one thing, some empires (I think in particular of the Habsburg domain) were built primarily through marriage and inheritance, rather than conquest. Also, the idea that "one nation or people is exerting its will over another," which is generally considered bad, is considered very important in modern times. Historically, however, especially before the French Revolution, nationalism was simply not the force it is today. Moreover, in non-democratic governments, it is far less the case that "one people" is imposing its will even on itself, much less another race. Still, I can understand why, especially in a modern context, these facts do cause empires to be viewed negatively.

What about the Roman Emperors? I think they are the main reason why Emperors are used as the evil bad person.

Star Wars.

That's probably why.

It may also have to do with Western stereotypes of other civilizations, especially Eastern cultures like Japan and China, which had emperors.

This has some really good thoughts so far.

I haven't done much with kingdoms in fantasy (yet!), but the "council" of Jye in Zoriah had very rigid rules and was considered "bad" by the people because there were so many unnecessary rules.

Yeah, that would explain it ... there were a disproportionate number of spectacularly bad Roman Emperors (and they even called them emperors because a run of spectacularly bad kings before the establishment of the Republic made them swear never to let a king rule over Rome again), who ruled over "the whole world" (as far as the historians of the day and subsequent periods were concerned).

Hmm. I don't know all the Roman Emperors, but while there were certainly some bad ones, I can think of several good ones too. Marcus Aurelius, for example; his name is almost synonymous with "good monarch." And, of course, Constantine the Great, to whom all Christians owe a great debt, though some of our brethren like to blame him for everything wrong with the world today.

Well, that's the odd thing. What an emperor actually is is quite specific: a ruler of the Roman Empire or another monarch (such as the Austrian Emperors) who claims a rank equal to those emperors. Prior to contact with the Christian monarchies that rose out of the Roman Empire, the concept of "emperor" would be meaningless in an Eastern country. The Japanese word tenno, for example, actually means something like "Heavenly Sovereign." So while that's probably true, it's somewhat ironic to say the least that we exported the concept of "emperor" to those nations and then tainted the concept based on our stereotypes of them.

Ah, yes, that cliche. I try to avoid using cliches in every way possible, since I sometimes have a tendency to use them. But with the whole government thing, I use a different government for each race. The Aeloo have a council, the Toxati use a system similar to the United States, and the Sheniolaens practice tribalism.

And generally speaking, the Roman empire was bad. Soldiers were cruel to the citizens, robbery and beggars were common, and the rulers had a tendency to be rather insane. Still, the Roman Empire did have its bright side, with hearings for citizens and the roads made it not a truly evil place.

And the word itself sounds bad, for an unknown reason--at least to me anyway. But it'd be nice to see an epic empire which wasn't evil for a change.

The Romans brought law and order to barbarian tribes all over Europe, and their legal code remains in large part the foundation of Continental legal systems. They constructed an infrastructure for communication and trade without which it is doubtful Europe would have been Christianized anywhere near as quickly. The Roman Emperors were also instrumental in calling the first several Ecumenical Councils and sorting out orthodox Christian doctrine. Roman culture, including poetry, literature, mythology, and philosophy, is an absolutely inescapable and defining part of the West. We owe them our alphabet, our planets, most of us probably owe them our religion...



The word doesn't have a bad ring to me. I look back rather favorably on the two Empires which most spring to mind for me-Roman and British.

Tropes exist because they work, which means you can often follow them successfully if you have a well-written story. As many people noted, there may be historical reasons why these particular tropes exist.

All the same, I think it's a very good exercise for writers to identify tropes to help better their writing. Intentionally avoiding a trope can often be a very good launching point for creating a unique story, as can inverting or taking a fresh spin on a trope. I think you have a great point about the other types of monarchies and sovereigns being lesser-used; it would be wonderful to have some variety and experiment with the other political set-ups.

I treat emperors the same as any other type of ruler: Some are good and some are bad.

(Reviving a weeks-old topic.)

After some consideration, I think that there are two main reasons for the trope of "the emperor is always bad":

First, an emperor has more influene over "world-wide" conditions than a mere king; a good emperor (unless you modify this with nuances) will likely cause peaceful conditions (which many fantasy authors would consider utterly uninteresting), while a bad one has more scope for his evil. In our own history, Augustus could simply impose the Pax Romana, unlike the kings of Assyria and Babylon, while if one of the Israelite, Assyrian, Babylonian, or Egyptian kings had been as spectacularly bad as Nero his people could have asked a neighboring nation to remove him (and one probably would have even un-asked).

Second, until the 20th century, most of the enduringly-"world"-famous rulers with reputations as spectacularly bad were emperors: Nero, Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, ... I can only think of a couple of kings (well, one king and one ruling queen), and they're less widely known: Athalia and George III. The proportion of good to bad rulers of a given class is largely irrelevant; what matters to the endurance of this trope is the ratio of rulers with enduring fame as good rulers (which are rare because moderately-virtuous competence is apparently not memorable---who now remembers the King Louis of France who was so famously pious that the Catholic Church canonized him? Though he was handicapped by sharing a name with so many other kings) to spectacularly bad rulers with a lasting reputation.

Now that is a good point.



On the other hand, Henry VIII, John of England, Ahab of Israel...



May he rest in peace. But that's another discussion...



King St. Louis IX! And I remember him! But I see your point.

Are Henry VIII or John infamous beyond the English-speaking world?

And I deliberately omitted Ahab because while he was a tyrant and an evil king, he wasn't incompetent or "spectacularly bad" on the same level; he succeeded in promoting Baal worship partly because his reign was generally a period of great material prosperity for Israel, for example. Remember that the accounts in Kings and Chronicles are concerned with the king's, and the nation's, spiritual condition; economic issues were secondary unless (as in times of famine) they intruded on the main concern.