Now, a lot of fantasy, and yours is no exception, deals with the idea of nobility. It’s a very old tradition in fantasy going back a thousand years, to have the idea of someone of common upbringing that rises up to the leadership position.
Oh, further than that.
And your structure is quite similar to the King Arthur structure.
It’s not only an ancient structure like that. It’s in places like, oh, say a country that has a tradition of the common man born in the log cabin and rising to the White House. You know, anybody can be President. And in recent years, anybody has been.
It’s an old tradition, and it’s not just American. I’ve seen it in Japanese and Chinese mythology and African mythology. In Asia and Africa, more often the fellow who’s the commoner who aspires to greatness gets punished for it by the gods. It is more—I should say, not exclusively—but more of a European and Middle-eastern tradition that the common man can challenge the gods, the entrenched powers, and conquer, or at least work out some sort of rapprochement .
And yeah, I work with that. I’ve tried to mine myths from every country and every continent. And reverse engineer them, of course. The Arthur myths, the Arthur legends, are easily recognizable in the books. I tried to hide them to some extent, but frankly Arthur is, I believe, the most recognizable legend in the United States. More people know about King Arthur than know about Paul Bunyan or Davey Crockett or anything that we have out of our own culture. But the others—myths from Africa and the Middle East, Norse mythology, Chinese mythologies—those things I could bury more deeply, more easily, because they’re not very much recognized here.
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