The most famous of these night stalkers is Grendel from Beowulf. A surprisingly human monster that wreaks havoc on the mead hall of Heorot, Grendel is a descendent of Cain who loathes humanity and all the joy, festivity, and revelry he sees and hears from the hall each day and night. This loathing is born of envy, however, not a fundamental hatred of community. Grendel despises that which he can never have. In his monstrosity, a level of humanity is found.

Grettis Saga, our other literary text, follows the life and deeds of Grettir the Strong as he goes from hero to villain. The turning point of his life can be seen in his fateful confrontation with the draugr Glamr. Glamr’s story is fascinating on its own because even in life he was a disagreeable man who found himself on the edges of society. He held to pagan ways while most of Iceland had already been Christianized.

While working as a farmhand, Glamr does battle with a night stalker of his own, eventually vanquishing it, but dying while out in the snow. By the time his body was found, it was too late. He was accursed and his body could not even be dragged onto hallowed ground. Glamr returned in the night to terrorize his former employer at Thorhallsstead, gaining a fearsome reputation.

Upon hearing these stories, Grettir travels to Thorhallsstead to rid it of the draugr. Here, we see a clear difference between Beowulf and Grettir. In his battle with Grendel, Beowulf was clearly superior to his opponent, while Grettir is outmatched by Glamr. In the end, however, Grettir bests the draugr and as Glamr lies in the snow, his eyes catch the glint of moonlight and, for the first time, Grettir is paralyzed with fear. Just before his death, Glamr speaks a curse over Grettir:

You have expended much energy, Grettir, in your search for me. Nor is that to be wondered at, if you should have little joy thereof. And now I tell you that you shall possess only half the strength and firmness of heart that were decreed to you if you had not striven with me. The might which was yours till now I am not able to take away, but it is in my power to ordain that never shall you grow stronger than you are now.

Nevertheless, your might is sufficient, as many shall find to their cost. Hitherto you have earned fame through your deeds, but henceforward there shall fall upon you exile and battle; your deeds shall turn to evil and your guardian-spirit shall forsake you. You will be outlawed and your lot shall be to dwell ever alone. And this I lay upon you, that these eyes of mine shall be ever before your vision. You will find it hard to live alone, and at last it shall drag you to death.

With this, Glamr falls back dead and Grettir is left with the consequences of his recklessness and his dealings with evil. After his battle with Glamr, Grettir is eventually outlawed. His great strength and abilities that had once made him a hero, now made him a monster.

Our final text, Historia rerum Anglicarum by William of Newburgh, is not a work of literature but is instead a historical chronicle. Within the text, William discusses five episodes of strange occurrences in towns across Britain. The dead return and terrorize the living, including a foul priest and an abusive husband. These revenants range in severity from simple nuisances to existential threats to entire villages, bringing pestilence and crop failures with them.

Each of these stories is written as a historical event, not a work of fiction. They detail the ways these communities survived the assaults of the revenants and how they eventually put a stop to the terror. This often required them to step outside what would normally be considered acceptable or ethical, including the cremation of the revenants to prevent their continued hauntings. Cremation was, for many centuries, banned due to its connection with paganism. It was understood as a denial of the resurrection of the dead on the last day. Facing their destruction, however, the villagers turned to these unsavory means to end their afflictions.

Through these stories we can see examples of how evil often acts as a contagion. Philosophically understood, evil has no being in itself. It is a privation or an absence of the good, not something with its own unique or independent existence. In this way, we might imagine it as an ever-expanding chasm, a maw that draws things and people into it through corruption and the slow march of entropy.

In Glamr, we have a man who chooses to live on the outskirts of society. When he is confronted with evil, he himself becomes a monster. The very same sequence occurs with Grettir. Though Grettir does not become a draugr, he is diminished and brought to villainy as a result of his meddling with dark forces. A favored Nietzschean aphorism among edgy teenagers is relevant here: “Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze longingly into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

This is not to say that battling against evil is necessarily doomed or that we inevitably fall victim to darkness when we face it. Rather, it means that the reckless pursuit of evil will eventually overtake us. It is very easy to become what we fight against if we do not have a moral center anchoring us. Our weakness can become their strength. In the opening of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell recalls an encounter with real evil. This reflections ends with a rumination on the risks of a profession where one’s primary task is quarrelling with evil:

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don’t want to confront him. I know he’s real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it’s even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willing to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothing but you do. If you aint they’ll know it. They’ll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. I think that maybe I never would.

It’s an interesting connection that both Grettis Saga and No Country For Old Men reference eyes in the corruptive nature of evil. Glamr tells Grettir that his eyes shall haunt the man for the rest of his life while Sheriff Ed Tom Bell felt the eyes of the prophet of destruction upon him, frightening him out of the battle altogether. Both of these, of course, are joined by Nietzche’s aphorism of the abyss gazing back into us. Eyes are often referred to as the windows of the soul, and evil in these examples is depicted as a robber creeping through them to steal our resistance from us.

There is true evil and darkness in the world, and the willingness to confront it may involve virtue and courage, but it can just as well involve the fall from grace. In a sense, this is reminiscent of the Lough Foyle Colloquy between St. Columba and the mysterious youth of unknown origin. After their strange conversation, Columba is asked by his followers what was said between them and Columba refuses to tell them even a single word, stating that mortals ought to remain in ignorance of some things for our own benefit. It has been theorized that the youth was some unfallen human, an angel, or perhaps even the devil himself. Regardless, the encounter was deemed dangerous by Columba.

There is a sense that interaction with the Other, the Strange, is also dangerous to an extent but that is a topic for another time. For now, we’ll focus on how the encounter with darkness can blind us to the light, or at least dim our sight. We might understand it as a gradual callousing of the spirit until our conscience no longer recognizes that we are committing or engaging with evil, but there are more radical ways to frame it as well. With Grettir, the curse laid upon him by Glamr is itself sufficient to bring him into full corruption.

Beowulf himself does not become a monster, though we do see him eventually meet his match in his battle with the dragon. His battles do prove fatal. Grettir clearly falls victim to this cycle, his heroism inverting and leading him to destruction and the loss of his status. We do not know what ended up happening to all the villagers in the revenant episodes of Historia, but we can grasp that they did not become monsters likely because their actions were anchored to their faith and the defense of their communities.

Inside of us all are monsters like Grendel and Glamr. Each one of us feels the siren call of the destructive prophet. It is not folly to battle evil, but it is folly to assume that we are immune to its wounds and influence. Taking heart and pursuing what is right, for just reasons and for something greater than oneself, may be a shield against the abyssal gaze. It is not by our strength that we overcome darkness as the light does not originate within us.

If we remember that when its eyes land on us, we will not blink.

This is a difficult balancing act and, overall, I would say that Dark Souls III does it well. It is a worthy successor and conclusion to the trilogy with plenty of references (almost too many at times) to the original game as well as several to Dark Souls II. Mechanically, Dark Souls III owes quite a lot to the second game of the series, but lore-wise it certainly takes more from the first.

As with the last two posts, we’ll go over the absolute basics of the game’s lore and narrative so that a discussion of its themes can be more fruitful. Countless ages have passed between the beginning of the trilogy and the start of Dark Souls III, and the Fire has been linked by innumerable would-be heroes. And once again, the Fire is fading and the Undead Curse has returned.

Prince Lothric was appointed to be Lord of Cinder so that he might link the Flame and continue the Age of Fire for a bit longer, but he refused. He chose instead to let the Fire die. As a result, several of the previous Lords of Cinder were brought forth from their eternal rests so that they would fulfill their duties and link the Fire once more. They also refused and dispersed across the crumbling lands.

In a final effort to preserve the Fire, the Unkindled were raised, those who had previously attempted to link the Fire but failed. Playing as one of the Unkindled, the Ashen One, you seek out the Lords of Cinder to bring them back to their thrones so that you might use their powers to link the Fire yourself. As you venture through the broken lands of Lothric beneath a dying sun, it becomes clear that the Age of Fire is coming to an end, even if the Fire is to be linked again.

The Dark has been held off for so long that the world has begun to rot and a new place, known only as the Deep, has emerged and threatens to consume all that it touches. Once all the Lord Souls are acquired, the Ashen One ventures onward to the Kiln of the First Flame where everything began. There, they are confronted with the Soul of Cinder, the Fire manifest. So desperate to remain linked, to stop the inevitable, the Fire itself battles you fearing that you mean to let it extinguish. Taking on all the powers and abilities of all those who previously linked the Fire, most especially Lord Gwyn, the first Lord of Cinder, it desperately clings to life.

Even if you are to link the Fire at the end, there is little more than a flicker that remains. A pitiful flame that will soon die. If the Dark is embraced and the Fire dies, all that remains is shadow and the call of the Firekeeper’s voice asking, “Ashen One, hearest thou my voice still?”

The true conclusion, however, comes in the distant future. At the end of time, the true and final end of the world, amidst the ashen ruins of all great kingdoms that came before, the Ashen One battles with another hollow warrior over the Dark Soul which the furtive pygmy (so easily forgotten) discovered before the Age of Fire.

Lore in the Dark Souls Trilogy is far too ambiguous and complex to do justice to in a single post, but a basic summary is serviceable. An obvious theme to start out with is that of fighting the inevitable. This theme is present in all three entries, but it comes to a head in this game. After countless ages, the end has come, yet the world is not done fighting. Even the Fire itself fights for life, grasping for just a few more moments of light before the long dark. Despite this major theme, many in the land of Lothric have already accepted that the end is nigh and they have no desire to continue the Fire. The Lords of Cinder are key examples of this. Each gave their lives to link the Fire in the past and they refuse to do so again.

This acceptance of the inevitable is most clearly seen in Prince Lothric and his elder brother, Lorian. They have turned their backs on the world and await the coming dark. Despite being called upon to become the next Lord of Cinder, Lothric determined that the Age of Fire was not worth saving and that the Dark must finally be permitted to fall. When confronted by the Ashen One, he denounces the linking of the Fire and the system it has created.

Oh, dear. Another dogged contender... Welcome, unkindled one. Purloiner of cinders. Mind you, the mantle of Lord interests me none. The Firelinking curse, the legacy of Lords -- let it all fade into nothing. You’ve done quite enough, now have your rest.

In contrast to Lothric’s refusal of the call, there are many throughout the ruined lands who wish to salvage the fading embers. The Ashen One is pushed along and is expected to bring the souls of the Lords back to their thrones, but the ultimate decision to link the Fire, usurp it, or led it fade is left to you alone. Is there valor in clinging to the fading light, and is there courage in embracing the encroaching dark? We are given no clear answers as to what the world will be like after the Fire fades for good. All that is known, is that in the effort to stave off the long Dark, the world has fallen to deeper corruption through countless eras of Firelinking. The temporary salve has caused wounds of its own, and the result is beyond our understanding.

The world is destined to end, shattered and ruined, its great monuments and kingdoms buried in the ash of its burnt glories. All will perish beneath a dying sun and eventually no histories will be left to tell the stories of great heroes or their foes. Death comes for the world as much as it comes for us. This is not necessarily the end of all things, however, as it is often through destruction that something new may be born.

Back in the first game, one of the optional areas, the Painted World of Ariamis, showed that new worlds could be made. Ariamis decayed and fell to ruin and rot as the lands of Lordran beyond also succumbed to the Undead Curse and the fading Fire. The concept of a painted world returned in Dark Souls III with the Painted World of Ariandel. We find the Painted World, having been restored by Ariandel sometime in the past, now in a state of rot once again. Despite this, there is hope that a new painting can be made so that the world will thrive and flourish once more.

As the great question of the world’s fate looms over us, we must face not only the inevitability of our own personal death, something we have become intimately familiar with across the trilogy, but with the death of the world. One of the most striking images in Dark Souls III is that of a lone hollow standing on a crumbling bridge, mind warped and rotted by the Undead Curse, enraptured by the sight of the dying sun on the horizon. Death is a core theme in nearly every great human story, and this trilogy is no different, but the final installment is less interested in our personal death than the death of worlds.

The final act shows us the bleeding together of all the great lands of history until nothing remains but dust and memories soon to be forgotten. Just as with the hollowing of the Undead Curse, it is the loss of self that stands as true death. When one can no longer remember what it is to be alive, to love, to fear, and to persevere, then one has truly gone hollow and has died in a way worse than physical death. It is just the same with kingdoms.

In Dark Souls II, King Vendrick built a great kingdom that came to ruin due to his failure to defend it against his wife’s corruptive influence. The memory of his kingdom faded, barely known even by the narrator in the game’s opening cinematic (“I believe they called it Drangleic”). A world dies as the memory of it fades, and upon the ash heap at the end of time, they are no longer distinguished and merely wait for oblivion.

As the sun dies and darkness stretches across the world, our final decision is to persist in the broken system we were thrust into, to break the system in the fading hope that something better might emerge in its place, or usurp the power for ourselves and become the very tyranny that subjected us to our fate.

There are no clean answers in a world without clear hope. The only enduring truth in the broken, weary lands of Lordran, Drangleic, and Lothric is that change and death come for us all.

The Chosen Undead, the Bearer of the Curse, and the Ashen One live in worlds without hope and without a true, unyielding light. The perseverance demanded of them, and us, in their adventures is Sisyphean in its futility yet nonetheless noble. In our world, however, we do have hope.

We are not doomed without hope for the light as they are, but we can still be lost. Let the doomed heroes be for us an example of how persistence in the face of darkness and the inevitable is still right and true, no matter the outcome.

As always, don’t you dare go hollow.

All that said, I will assert wholeheartedly that Dark Souls II is a worthy successor to Dark Souls in many ways. It retains much that is familiar from Dark Souls while not trying to copy its predecessor. It attempts to stand on its own, and it does. As with the first one, the lore is phenomenal, but once more, we will not be diving into the lore in any real depth here. A summary of the basic lore is sufficient for a discussion of the themes.

You begin, as before, as one afflicted with the Undead Curse. In a time long after the events of the first game, you awaken in the Land Betwixt as you begin your journey through Drangleic. The Fire has been linked countless times to stave off the dark and kingdoms have risen and fallen with the ebb and flow of the Fire. This time, Drangleic, the kingdom of King Vendrick, flourished during the renewed Age of Fire until the embers once more began to fade.

You enter Drangleic and meet a woman known as the Emerald Herald who tells you to seek the king and take your place as heir to Drangleic. Before you may have an audience with the king, however, you must acquire a greater soul. To do so, you pursue the holders of the Lord Souls or Great Souls previously collected in the first game. They have passed to new owners through the ages and must be collected once more before you are strong enough to truly become Vendrick’s heir.

Through the game you are told to seek the king so that you might link the Fire as he once sought to do. However, upon reaching Drangleic Castle, you find only his wife, Nashandra present. The king has gone missing. Deep in the crypts beneath Drangleic, you find Vendrick, guarded by his ever watchful knight, Velstadt, aimlessly wandering a darkened chamber. He has gone hollow and is now a shell of a man. The man who once battled giants and drove them out of Drangleic and who sought the Flame. You learn that he hid his soul away so that Nashandra could not corrupt it.

Nashandra and her sisters were Daughters of the Abyss (but that goes deeper into the lore than we need to), and each one married a king. Alongside Vendrick, there was the Iron King who became corrupted and undone by his lust for immortality. There was the Sunken King who brought doom to his people through the slumbering dragon, Sinh. And there was the Ivory King who so dearly loved his wife that she was cleansed of her dark nature. Unlike the other kings, he did not fall into corruption or flee from his post, but he gave his life to seal away the Old Chaos which threatened his kingdom.

The setting has changed but the decision remains the same: link the Fire or let it fade. Upon the throne of Drangleic this is your decision to make. Seek the kings and the Great Souls, take the throne to place the fate of the Fire within your hands, or leave it behind to strive for a cure beyond the reach of the Fire.

As you venture through Drangleic, you are repeatedly confronted by Vendrick’s brother, Aldia, who is known as the Scholar of the First Sin. The First Sin likely being Gwyn’s linking of the Fire and the creation of the Undead Curse. Aldia sought to cure the Undead Curse independent of linking the Fire, but he failed. He follows your progress and questions your intentions showing that perhaps there is another way.

There are many overarching themes present throughout the trilogy, but each entry focuses a bit more on some than others. Dark Souls II places significant emphasis on memory and identity compared to the others (I even quoted DS2 in a paper on memory for my PhD last fall, perhaps a first for the program). As you trudge through the world of Drangleic, you meet several characters on their own journeys.

One of the most interesting among them is Lucatiel who is following in the footsteps of her brother who came to Drangleic to seek a cure for the Undead Curse. She, as well as many others you meet in your quest, slowly loses her memories as she nears hollowing. She soon forgets her reason for coming to Drangleic, her past and sense of self, and when you leave her for the final time, she fears that she will soon forget her own name. Her final words to the player:

My name is Lucatiel.
I beg of you, remember my name.
For I may not myself…

Dark Souls II (and the whole trilogy to an extent) has been described as a metaphor for depression and dementia, and the struggle to overcome suffering. You are in a land forgotten by itself, seeking renewal through ancient souls, seeking a fate that you do not understand, and all the while you cannot recall when or how you came to be in this place.

This emphasis on memory and the search for identity connects with another major concept explored in the game, that of destiny or fate. Aldia repeatedly questions the fate of the undead and the nature of life. As you near to the end of your journey, he asks you how you intend to deal with your fate and the fate of all undead:

All men trust fully the illusion of life.
But is this so wrong?
A construction, a facade, and yet...
A world full of warmth and resplendence.
Young Hollow, are you intent on shattering the yoke, spoiling this wonderful falsehood?

It is the fate of the undead to have death, and therefore life, robbed of them. Their life is an illusion because it does not end with death but instead lingers until they are no longer themselves. This is the fate of hollowing, that you lose who you are but remain undying. Aldia sought to break the wheel of fate so that the cycle of linking the Fire might end. His brother, Vendrick, once believed the Fire was his destiny until he fled to prevent his own corruption. Hollowing, instead, was his fate.

With the stories of these kings, we see a critique of power. Three of the four failed in their duties either due to fear, foolishness, or ambition. Vendrick feared Nashandra’s corruption and abandoned the throne. The Iron King sought immortality for himself, his power, and his empire which only led to the destruction of all three. And the Sunken King brought ruin to his kingdom when he brought them to worship Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon, leading to their inevitable end as the dragon woke. Only the Ivory King passed the test of power, the others were all found wanting.

The Ivory King gave his own life to stop the Old Chaos. He did not risk his people for his own gain and he did not abandon them in the face of danger. If we add Gwyn to this list as well, the Ivory King remains the only one who did not fail in the use of his power. Gwyn feared the dark to such an extent that he cursed all of the humanity with undeath to keep the Fire alive just a little longer. This critique of power is present across all three games, but Dark Souls II is the clearest with its exploration.

All this leads to the question of who we seek to be. As memory and identity fade, as our fate reveals its inevitability, as we struggle with the choices given to us, we become who we always truly were. When speaking with the Emerald Herald near the beginning of your journey, she tells you what is required for you to be worthy to take the Throne and make the choice:

Bearer of the curse, seek misery.
For misery will lead you to greater, stronger souls.
You will never meet the King with a soul so frail and pallid.

To be magnanimous is to possess a “great soul.” The cultivation of virtue requires suffering and the embrace of life’s difficulties so that they might be overcome. Comfort does not produce greatness, discomfort and the disquiet mind do. Hardship and suffering bring perseverance, trials bring resilience, and pain brings endurance. All great meaning in this life is not found easily and cannot be grasped without effort. To find joy and peace, one must suffer despair and war first. Even if one’s struggles are not epic in proportion, they are necessary features on the path to eternity.

Seek misery, but don’t you dare go hollow.

Obviously with the advent of more recent FromSoftware titles like Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Sekiro, and Elden Ring it pales in comparison when it comes to mechanical fluidity and boss fight complexity. Nonetheless, these games and many others would not exist if it weren’t for the original Dark Souls.

This post is not intended to be a retrospective on the game itself or an exploration of the game’s deep lore. If you want those, there are countless videos on YouTube that you can find. This Substack is not focused on such discussions anyway. Instead, I want to explore the themes of the game (and its sequels in later posts) to shed light on their philosophical and narrative implications.

In order to explore the themes, however, the absolute basics of the setting and lore must be overviewed. We are presented with these basics in the opening cinematic of the game.

During a period known as the Age of Ancients, the world was formless and dotted with Archtrees. Ruling over the primordial world were the Everlasting Dragons with their scales of stone. Then came the First Flame, and from the flames came those who would claim the Lord Souls: Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight and Lord of Cinder; Nito, First of the Dead; the Witch of Izalith; and the Furtive Pygmy (so easily forgotten) who would claim the unique Dark Soul. Together, with the aid of the betrayer Seath the Scaleless, they warred against the dragons and ushered in the Age of Fire. This was an age of flourishing civilizations and development, led by the god-king Gwyn.

Soon, however, the embers began to fade and an Age of Dark was approaching. In an effort to stave off the coming Dark just a bit longer, Gwyn linked the flames using his own soul as kindling. At the time of the game, the embers are fading once more. Prophecies speak of a Chosen Undead who will make pilgrimage to Lordran, the Land of the Ancient Lords, to ring the Bell of Awakening and link the fires once more to hold back the Dark.

As the Chosen Undead, afflicted with the Undead Curse—causing you to repeat the cycle of life and death endlessly until you lose all trace of humanity and go hollow—you scour Lordran to retrieve the Lord Souls and return them to the place where it all began. There, you must choose to link the fires once more or to embrace the inevitable turning of the age.

The lore goes far beyond this, but these basics are sufficient for our discussion of themes. If additional lore is required later on, I’ll provide a brief explanation to contextualize the point of issue.

A clear theme present throughout the series but most notable in the first one is that of perseverance. The Chosen Undead must persevere through the challenges of Lordran, the deaths and dangers of hollowing, and grasp his way to victory at the Kiln of the First Flame. Not only does the character need to persevere, however, so too does the player. This is a point that has been made by many in the past.

The various hollows you see throughout Lordran are those who could no longer persevere through the curse. They represent more than just the hollowed undead, though, they also represent the players who could no longer persevere through the challenges of the game. They gave up. They went hollow and now shamble through the ruined streets and pathways of Lordran as mightier heroes push onward before their unseeing eyes.

You are taught to persevere from the very start when you are confronted with the tutorial boss fight, the Asylum Demon. When it first appears, it is far beyond your abilities and you must flee to safety. But upon making your way through the Asylum, you find better equipment and you learn how to fight so that the next time you face the Demon, you prevail over it. On Steam, the achievement for reaching Lordran, which just requires that you kill the Asylum Demon, has been earned by 92% of players. So 8% of players went hollow before even making it out of the tutorial.

Even the first character you meet after escaping the Undead Asylum has all but given up. He is simply referred to as the Crestfallen Warrior. He has seen others arrive in Lordran with bold ambitions of ringing the Bells of Awakening, but all have failed, and so he gives you little hope for your quest. As you progress though, he eventually turns hollow and you must slay him to put him at rest.

Death is a key element in these games because your death is inevitable. Upon death, you will awaken at the most recent bonfire you visited and you must begin again. All enemies, with rare exceptions, will have returned even if you killed them before. You die, you restart that section of the game. Each time you push onward, you get a bit better and make it a bit further. J.R.R. Tolkien once stated in an interview that practically all human stories are ultimately about death. It is a central theme of The Lord of the Rings and, as discussed in a series of previous posts, of the Harry Potter series as well. Dark Souls is no different.

As an undead, you are cursed to die over and over again until you finally go hollow. Each death reminds you that the loss of everything you are is that much closer. Identity and memory play a much larger role in Dark Souls II, so we will explore those in more detail in the next post, but they are still crucial to the other games as well. The inevitability of change most obviously manifests in the inevitability of death. That is the ultimate change one can go through in life, whether spiritual or physical death.

In Lordran, death is merely a passing shadow under the Curse. This inevitability turns from the looming Dark to a fact of daily life. The presence, purpose, and meaning of death is thus diminished. Mankind is condemned to suffer death once in finality, and this is what contextualizes our lives and allows us to appreciate the grand narrative of history and our limited place within. Death itself is not what brings meaning to life but it contextualizes the meaning we discover in our lives.

Dark Souls is a journey that brings never-ending challenges as well as rewards when those challenges are overcome. The Chosen Undead prevails and comes to the decision to either follow in Gwyn’s footsteps and become kindling to link the fires once more, knowing that it will only stave off the long dark for a short time, or to let the fires die and accept the Age of Dark and whatever it brings. Roughly 30% of players on Steam have achieved either ending of the game. The rest went hollow.

The “right answer” is never given. We don’t know what the Dark entails. We know that the Fire brings flourishing for a time and then a Curse. Gwyn feared the Dark more than he feared the consequences of prolonging the Fire. When you finally face Gwyn at the end of the game, the Lord of Sunlight and the god-king of Lordran, you find that he himself has gone hollow in his fearful desperation to preserve the Fire.

It’s a fascinating question to end with because throughout the whole journey you must continue persevering so that you do not go hollow, but at the end you must choose whether it is worth it to continue the Fire or not. Is continuing the Fire, and the Curse, what you have persevered for? Or have you persevered for the Dark so that death may return to mankind and the flames can die out, even if only for a time?

The ambiguity is crucial to the story because the story is as much about you as it is about the Chosen Undead. This journey is your journey. Should you link the Fire, then you have condemned the protagonists of the sequels to their own hardships as they struggle with the same decision at the end of eras. Wrestle with fear, uncertainty, and the inevitable unknown, but in the end make your decision.

Don’t you dare go hollow.

The manorial system, the form of feudalism seen throughout most of Western Europe in the Middle Ages, was a system of relationships between individuals. In each relationship there was a superior and an inferior. The inferior swore fealty to the superior and was rewarded with land, privileges depending on rank, and protection. In return, the superior had the right to tax the goods and produce of the inferior and to call upon them in times of war.

This system was the same at every level, whether a serf to a minor landed noble or a noble to a king. The only notable differences were the privileges gained and the duties expected. The higher your rank, the more you were expected to provide and do. The superior always provides more benefit to the inferior than he receives. This is the standard agreement in feudal societies as well as between nations when one is suzerain over another.

Here, we see the cornerstone of chivalric masculinity. The oath. It’s still commonly stated today that a man’s word is his bond. The oath seals the relationship, outlining the duties and privileges of one’s station. A knight is a man who swears an oath unto death. If the oath is broken, death. And if the oath is fulfilled, also death, at least in some circumstances. The ideal of the knight is a man who upholds his oath, who defends the weak and innocent, and who embodies the virtues of strength, gentleness, mercy, and courage.

To be a knight is to understand that you are not at the top. You yourself have sworn fealty to a lord, and you have a higher duty to God. An oath is made to another person by invoking a higher power, God, and swearing to uphold the will of the superior and the customs of the land so long as they are within the bounds of the higher, divine law.

A common phrase found in oaths is promising to “love all that he [the lord] loves and to shun all that he shuns.” It is to align yourself fully with them in a manner more intimate even than with your family. The knight calls a curse upon himself should he ever forsake his duty. This is not blind obedience, however, and the knight’s duty extends beyond simply protecting his lord and realm.

The knight fights dragons and rescues princesses. It is in the Matter of Britain, or Arthurian Legend, we see the ideal of the knight most readily. Let us look at an exchange from Roger Lancelyn Green’s King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table from 1953:

“Well,” said Sir Tor, “ask a gift, fair damsel, and will give it you.”

“I thank you,” she answered. “And now I shall ask you for the head of this false knight Abelleus, for he is the most outrageous knight living, and the wickedest murderer.”

“Now I repent me of my promise,” said Sir Tor. “Cannot he make amends for any wrong that he has done you?”

“Not possibly,” said the damsel, “for he slew my own brother before mine eyes, and would not spare him, though I knelt half an hour in the mud begging him for mercy. So strike off his head quickly, I beg of you – or else I shall shame you as a false knight at the court of King Arthur.”

Sir Abelleus heard all this, and now he stood a little way off and begged Sir Tor to spare his life.

“I may not now,” said Sir Tor, “or I should be false to my promise. Moreover, I offered you mercy a little while ago, and you would not yield.” (71-72)

Here we have two knights, Abelleus and Tor. In the former we have a man who refused to show mercy who then begs for it for himself. In the latter we have a knight who has shown charity to a damsel who requested his aid, who first sought to provide justice with mercy and then fulfilled his oath without delay. Sir Tor embodies the heart of chivalry in this encounter. He does the bidding of his lord, King Arthur, and on his honor he provides aid to a damsel with whom he had no previous connection. When the avenue of mercy was closed, he took up arms and cleaved Sir Abelleus’ head from his shoulders.

Chivalric masculinity calls for gentleness and charity by default, unyielding adherence to oaths and duty, and relentless bravery and the capacity for great violence when the circumstances call for it. Knights were called to be gentle-men in the most literal sense of the term. Humility and patience stand between the world and the knight’s wrath. The meek shall inherit the earth, and the knight will clean his bloodied sword before sheathing it once more.

The masculine is most often associated with roughness and ambition today, often in a negative light. Even many modern figures pushing a positive view assert the conquering nature of men throughout history as the centerpiece of masculinity. They see the masculine figure as a man who owes no loyalty to a wife or children, no call for humility or peace-seeking, and no value for gentleness or mercy. They do not understand that only the strong can show mercy and only the dangerous can be gentle.

The knight is a conqueror, but he is first a servant of his lord and of his realm. He is gentle and merciful, and he does not turn to violence except when necessary. He understands that his strength comes from such restraint.

Peddlers of weak forms of modern masculinity revel in power and prestige and create slaves to baser instincts that only mask their own deficiencies in virtue. They, alongside their anti-masculine counterparts, only see the masculine through the lens of power. They consider a man’s base form to be that of a king or a warlord.

The default masculine archetype is not the king, however, it’s the knight. The Hero of the Monomyth is a knight first and foremost even if he is also a king. This is the form and duty set before man. It is a call to cultivate virtue, to exercise body and mind, to act with gentleness and mercy, and to brave dangers when others cannot. As I wrote in “The Princess and the Knight,” the masculine is revealed alongside the feminine. One cannot be understood without the other and if one is held in higher esteem than the other, it is done out of ignorance of both.

If the oath is at the heart of chivalric masculinity, then what virtue comes first? Honor. This honor is manifested in one’s loyalty to his lord and people, his willingness to put others before himself, and the care he shows to the vulnerable around him. There is a hierarchy to virtue and to its exercise, as with all things. A knight’s loyalty is owed first to God, then the one to whom an oath is made.

It is not ambition, pride, or power that set the foundation for the masculine, but the promise, the pledge, the covenant.

We know it’s there, we know it’s not false, but we don’t always know what it looks like. Sometimes the path to healing feels like a betrayal to the pain we’ve experienced. The light is a traitor that wishes for us to leave behind that which was so powerful to have left us in despair in the first place. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves as tears streams down our faces and anxiety burns in our chests. Healing must be a betrayal, redemption must be death.

Within the human imagination, there have been many truly great redemption arcs within fiction. These sometimes take the form of a villain turning to the light, a last minute redemptive act, or a sufferer who climbs out of the pit. Each of these can act as a powerful showcase of resilience, both physical and mental, and the unyielding nature of the good.

We all experience redemption in our own lives, whether it is small scale or life-changing. Not every story is dramatic, nor do they all need to be. Even life-changing redemption can feel mundane in the middle of that journey. It only gains its epic scope in retrospect. In the midst of my own suffering, there has been no impressive display of resilience or strength. Nothing that would appear overly dramatic from an outsider observer has occurred, yet the storm roars within.

When we talk about redemption, we often think about some great triumph over difficulty, the indomitable human spirit overcoming the obstacles which lay before it. That’s not really the case, however, because we do not, in fact, redeem ourselves. Redemption is an inherently internal process brought about by external factors. Take for example what is perhaps the single greatest redemption arc in television history, Zuko from Avatar: the Last Airbender.

When we first meet Zuko, he is a callous and arrogant young man with a clear sense of destiny set before him. He must capture the avatar because doing so would restore the honor he had lost by disrespecting his father in a war council. Joined by his war-wearied yet joyful uncle, Zuko scours the world for his prey. In the first season (referred to as books), we see his true nature begin to shine through the bravado as he shows resourcefulness, selflessness, and resilience.

Over the course of season two, after he has lost everything, he finds himself empathizing with the struggling citizens of the Earth Kingdom, a nation which his homeland has invaded and torn asunder. He sees the horrors of the war firsthand and embarks upon a journey of self-discovery to determine what his destiny truly is.

At the climax of the second season, Zuko faces a decision to either join his sister in defeating the avatar, or else join the avatar and seek to bring about peace. After his internal conflict had simmered throughout the season, it finally boiled over as he chose the path his father had chosen for him. He chooses his sister and rejoins the effort to conquer the Earth Kingdom. His uncle, Iroh, who had been encouraging Zuko to seek peace, defends the avatar and gives himself over to the Fire Nation in an act of self-sacrifice.

After returning home, Zuko finds his internal conflict even worse than before. He struggles with his past, his decisions, and his sense of duty. This leads him to visit his uncle in prison and learn about the history of his family so he might see the future more clearly. Ultimately, he chooses to turn against his father and to seek out the avatar once more to help bring about peace. He determines that his destiny is to help train the avatar and to lead the Fire Nation out of the war.

Zuko’s journey is long and complex, filled with back-steps and mistakes. His redemption arc provides a thorough character study of a young man who believes he knows what his destiny is, only to later realize he had been blind. Iroh had undergone a similar character arc prior to the start of the series. He had served as a general in the Fire Nation army, believing it was his destiny to capture the Earth Kingdom capital, Ba Sing Se. Only later did he realize that he was meant to reconquer it from the Fire Nation in order to restore its freedom.

Destiny intertwines with redemption as we struggle with the futures we thought we knew, or we thought were important and inevitable. The light shines out the darkness, however, and clarity comes as we gradually understand what truly matters. We do not redeem ourselves in this process. We are redeemed by others. It is the love and dedication of others that lights the path out of darkness. Zuko did not redeem himself, he was redeemed by his uncle, by the avatar, by all who opened the path of change for him.

The redeemer and the redeemed can never be one and the same. We do not create ourselves, nor do we save ourselves. Redemption comes as we traverse the tightrope held taut by others. Our failings hold us in darkness and we may seek the light, begging for it even, but redemption comes when others commit and join hands with us to pull us through.

All great redemption arcs have the wise friend, teacher, lover, savior, or the saved who shines out the darkness along the path. As we explored in the image of the princess and the knight, they are redeemer for each other as they sacrifice and commit themselves to serving the other. Redemption is the ultimate act of service as it risks oneself for the betterment of another. Perhaps not all redeemers take high risks, but the greatest ones risk everything.

We are redeemed by those who clear the way and shine light upon the path as we journey out of darkness. We may persevere, but that in itself is not redemption. Redemption is the embrace of our brothers and sisters at the end of the road. Their welcome redeems us into the land of sunlight so that we can look once more to the future without shadows on the edge of our vision.

While none of the women that shall be discussed here fall into the modern trope of the female action hero, they each acted with heroism in their own right. They did not do so by imitating the men around them or by rejecting their femininity, but by embracing the natural strengths of the feminine in times when the masculine had failed them.

Great examples abound, but we shall keep the discussion limited to Western Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern period here, because those are the women of valor I am most familiar with. One such example is Empress Matilda, also known sometimes as Maud. She was the daughter of Henry I of England and had been wed to the late Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.

Her brother, and heir to the Kingdom of England, was killed in an incident known as the White Ship Disaster in 1120. As a result, Henry I chose to name Matilda, now widowed, as his heir. The lords of England swore fealty to her at Henry’s request, but upon his death they rallied behind her cousin, Stephen of Blois. A bloody civil war known as The Anarchy erupted across England and England’s French holdings.

Her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, later known to history as Geoffrey Plantagenet, was her strongest and most ardent supporter. Together, they rallied troops and held onto the French territories of Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. Their endeavor did fail, however, and Matilda never sat upon the throne of England as the kingdom’s proper monarch. She eventually passed the struggle to her son, Henry, who would become Henry II after defeating Stephen in the second phase of The Anarchy. Matilda’s story, though unsuccessful, highlights her resourcefulness as she strove to bring peace to a kingdom torn by civil war.

Another example, from a few centuries later, is Catherine of Aragon. Originally married to Henry VII’s eldest son, Arthur, she was widowed after a few short months. In order to retain the sizable dowry Catherine had brought with her from Spain, she was wed to Henry VII’s second son, who would become the (in)famous Henry VIII. Early in Henry VIII’s reign, he went to war with France and left Catherine as regent with full authority over his kingdom.

Almost immediately upon her placement as Governess of the Realm, the Scots invaded. With the aid of Sir Thomas Lovell, she raised an army and rode north. Despite her pregnancy, she donned full armor and remained present on the battlefield as her army drove out the Scottish invaders. The battle claimed the life of James IV of Scotland, ending the invasion. This endeared her to the English people, and Catherine became one of the most beloved foreign-born queens in English history.

Likely the most famous woman of valor in European history is Joan d’Arc. Her story is such that if we did not know that it happened, it would be considered far too fantastical to believe. After receiving heavenly visions and coming to believe that she was a virgin prophesied to save France from the English, Joan eventually met with Charles VII of France at Chinon. She was seventeen years old and convinced the king to place his armies at her disposal so that she might break the siege of Orléans. While she was not placed in direct command of the armies, and she did not aid in strategizing, she was a beacon of hope among the French forces and her image drove them to victory.

Wearing armor specially commissioned for her by the Dauphin (crown-prince of France), she served as an icon of French resistance to English occupation in France. Her courage and virtue drove the French to victory. While not every battle she attended saw a French victory, she remained an influential figure in the tumultuous kingdom. Her eventual capture and execution by the English in 1431 (she was 19) only further rallied the French. It would not be an overstatement to say that she played a key role in the ultimate French victory in the Hundred Years’ War two decades later.

A literary equivalent for Joan d’Arc is Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings. At the time of Tolkien’s saga, Eowyn lived in the declining kingdom of Rohan, beset with challenges both internal and external. The Westfold fell to the orcish invaders from Isengard and her uncle and king, Theoden, had come under the corruptive influence of Saruman and his formerly loyal advisor Grima Wormtongue.

This left the land in shambles, as the only men who were truly loyal to Rohan, including Eowyn’s brother, Eomer, were driven away. It is in this time of desperation that Eowyn chose to take up the sword to fight and risk death alongside the men of Rohan. She was denied this during the Battle of Helm’s Deep, but as Rohan marched for Gondor’s aid at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, she disguised herself as a soldier and, along with the disguised hobbit Merry, rode into battle.

In the midst of the chaos, she witnessed the death of her uncle. He had been renewed by the intercession of Gandalf, and had led his kingdom against the darkness, but it had cost his life. While defending the body of Theoden, she found herself face-to-face with Sauron’s most dangerous servant, the Witch-King of Angmar, leader of the Nazgul. An ancient prophecy had foretold that no man could kill the Witch-King whose power was drawn from his connection to Sauron.

Revealing the dual meaning of this prophecy, the Witch-King was stabbed by Merry, wielding a blade of the barrow-downs, and was then struck dead by Eowyn. The prophecy was fulfilled as it had been Merry (not a man in the racial sense) who severed the Witch-King’s connection to Sauron with his blade, and then Eowyn (not a man in the gendered sense) delivered the final blow.

After the battle, while recovering from her injuries, Eowyn met and fell in love with the wounded Faramir, captain of Gondor. Eowyn was a woman of valor who never rejected her femininity, nor did she attempt to become masculine. She instead sought to help preserve her falling homeland by taking up arms in a time when the strength of men was fading. She chose to ride with them into the face of death because to sit back and do nothing in such a time was, in her eyes, evil. She says to Faramir, after his declaration of love, that her eyes have been opened and her path has been made clear after he brush with death:

I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,’ she said; ‘and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.’ (The Lord of the Rings, book 6, chapter 5)

After the war, she sets aside her arms and embraces the path of healing, the path of peace. This is the only true path one can take after battle, or else the battle shall never be over. This is her strength, a feminine strength that understands the need to seek peace and to restore beauty to a darkened world once the battle has been fought.

All of these women, historical or literary, continue the tradition of the great biblical heroines like Deborah and Jael who helped to overcome the Canaanites during the pre-monarchic period of ancient Israel. Deborah, a judge and prophetess, rallied the Israelite armies under a man named Barak and saw victory against the Canaanite general Sisera. Upon victory, she composed a song praising the Lord for the victory and hailing the heroism of the tribes that had come to their aid while denouncing those that failed to heed the call. After his defeat, Sisera fled and sought shelter in the tent of Jael who drove a tent spike through the general’s head once he had fallen asleep, thus ending the conflict.

In each of these examples, we find women who answered the call when no others could. While the details of each story complicates matters, as they always do, we would do well to look at the narrative power of their lives and appreciate the virtues they displayed during times of need. The feminine is not the same as the masculine, but this difference is not one of inequality.

As I wrote in “The Princess and the Knight,” there is no imbalance of power in such dynamics, only the complement of two fundamental and primal aspects of creation. One is not complete without the other, and the true strength of one is revealed in the presence of the other. And, when the day arises that one is unable to fulfill its duties alone, the other will rise to the occasion and they will shine the brighter, for good is made great in weakness.

This quote is often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte (r. 1799-1814, 1815), though we do not know for sure whether or not he actually said it. Regardless, it has been used in movies dramatizing the events of Napoleon’s life, and for good reason. It showcases the dramatic power of kingship and the responsibilities found beneath its weight. France had been long plagued by an elite class that cared little for the peasantry, and the indifference of her kings did not assuage the situation.

From the time of Louis XIV, the French monarchy emphasized the divine right of kings, the idea that they had been installed by God to bear the burden of the crown for one of God’s earthly kingdoms. This mandate of heaven, to use the equivalent Chinese concept, granted them absolute authority as representatives of the French nation.

A forgotten element, however, was that of good rule. This divine right exists only so long as a king pursues the good of his people. We see King Saul in 1 Samuel lose his right to rule due to his rejection of divine guidance and his selfish purposes. The mandate of heaven was then passed on to David. In the case of France, Louis XVI’s rule was overthrown in revolution leading to his and his wife’s executions. The power vacuum left by the empty throne led to years of endless and bloody revolution in the Reign of Terror. France and her traditions were left in a gutter overflowing with the blood of innocent and guilty alike.

When Napoleon took power, he did so at first as Consul, later becoming Emperor through the mandate of the French people. His own failures as a ruler led to his defeat and subsequent exile to Elba, then to his final defeat at Waterloo and a second, more permanent, exile to St. Helena. His ambitions to rule over Europe cost him his right to rule, the mandate of heaven. He had rescued the crown from the gutter and had restored order to France, but he was still a flawed man whose mistakes cost him. In Napoleon we see the return of the king, the restoration of glory to a nation in chaos, and we also see the fall from grace.

History abounds with examples, the most famous of which might be that of Richard I the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199). Richard inherited the throne from his father, Henry II, who had himself been a king restoring order to a fractured nation. Upon his ascension, Richard set sail for the Holy Land to battle Saladin for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He left behind his younger brother, John, who was to be watched by their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. During Richard’s absence, the men he had set over his kingdom as regents proved incapable, leading John to prop himself up as a makeshift king.

This proved disastrous as England and the Angevin territories fell into turmoil under John’s attempted leadership. Richard returned to England in early 1194, having been delayed due to imprisonment in Germany. At once, John and his forces surrendered the kingdom to Richard’s authority, not daring to fight against him. It was enough to know that the true king was returning. Richard, ever the knight, pardoned and forgave his brother who then served loyally for the remainder of Richard’s reign. England’s problems were not solved by Richard’s return alone, but the chaos was quelled and the nation was given a respite to heal.

The return of the king is a powerful image in stories and history, and we find it deep within our subconscious. In the literary realm, we have Arthur, the Once and Future King, as well as Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur. These are figures who embody the virtues of kingship which are the virtues of knights writ large.

Like the knight, the king slays the dragon. He brings peace and stability, not chaos and division. The true king is a man who has fatherly affection for his people, embracing the culture and traditions of his nation. A king is nothing if not the avatar of his nation, and if he does not love his countrymen and the land in which they live, he has no right to claim the title of king.

Usurpers and pretenders bring disorder as they seek power and glory through vain ambition, but the true king fulfills his duty by bringing prosperity. Power and duty are dangerous and potent forces in human endeavors. They are inextricably linked, and those who seek power without recognition of the duties implied are doomed to tyranny. And those who recognize duty but fail to understand power shall inevitably see their realms fall into well-intentioned chaos.

The battle between kings and chaos is as old as stories, seen in its most primal form through Chaoskampf, the struggle against Chaos. This is a trope seen in countless cultures worldwide, most prominently among Indo-European cultures. A king, often the sun god or god of the sky, comes to do battle with a serpent or dragon of darkness.

The king casts down the serpent and brings order to the cosmos. Examples can be seen in Marduk vs Tiamat of Babylonian myth, Baal vs Yamm of Canaanite myth, Indra vs Vritra in Vedic/Hindu myth, Ra/Aten vs Apophis is Egyptian myth, and Zeus vs Typhon in Greek myth. Each legend depicts a king bringing peace to a world torn asunder.

In history, these kings are rarely as virtuous as though ought to be, but in them we see the shadow of something greater. They are imitations, anticipations of something more fundamental to the world. History is itself a story, and we best understand the world around us through narrative. This speaks to the grand narrative of all history, and in these stories and in these men, we can see the imprint of that narrative in our imaginations.

We find metaphysical truths in the stories of Richard I and Napoleon. But let us add others to this list: Octavian, Alfred, Casimir III, Alexander II, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. These were men of destiny whose stories, in their own flawed ways, echo the deepest story of all. This is a truth that humanity has grasped since the beginning. Darkness came, and the light will someday cast it away. Disorder has spread, but order will be restored.

The King is good. The King has gone. The King will come again.

Perhaps the single most famous example is that of St. George and the dragon. In his travels, St. George came across a young princess who had been condemned to serve as a sacrifice to a dragon that had been terrorizing her homeland for many years. In defense of the princess, St. George struck the dragon down and bound it to her as little more than a pet. When the townsfolk were terrified by its presence, he commanded them all to repent and be baptized, and he would slay the dragon for them once and for all.

Despite her cries that he save himself and flee, George took up arms against the beast because there was no other choice to make. Either you answer the call or you fade into nothing. You persevere or you perish. You take up your spear and you fight, or else you disgrace the call. There’s more to be found in the image of knights and princesses however, and we must look more deeply at what is being expressed.

The knight is a man who has taken an oath to serve his lord and his lord’s people, to uphold what is true and just, to seek the good, and to help those in need. The chivalric code demands the pursuit of virtue and character, to practice war only for the sake of peace. While many knights in history have fallen short of these ideals, the knight who rescues the princess is no such figure. He is the embodiment of chivalric virtues and the selfless love demanded of men by God.

The princess is a woman who exemplifies the virtues of the feminine, the strength of empathy, the discipline of humility, the honor of devotion, and the courage of charity. She is the one so immersed in what is true, good, and beautiful that the forces of darkness cannot bear to leave her be. Her very character is an assault on the evils of this world and it demands that others rise up to defend what is just and right. Her station is that of the lighthouse beckoning others to safety.

When a dragon steals away a princess or else demands she be handed over, it is seeking to destroy what is innocent and beautiful. It desires to tarnish the unblemished and to cast into darkness that light which draws others forward. Both the knight and the princess act as signposts to what is even greater than they, the transcendent True, Good, and Beautiful. By assaulting the princess, the dragon hopes to wound that transcendence and to cast the knight into darkness along the path so he might become lost.

One of the most striking and memorable scenes from my childhood comes from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). It typifies this love between the knight and the princess, the roles they play and the absolute character required of the knight. Near the end of the film, after killing the Sheriff of Nottingham, Robin rushes to Marian and embraces her. Breathlessly, she expresses her shock and joy that he’s alive and he came for her. Without a thought he responds, “I would die for you.”

This is what honor demands of knights, that they be willing to suffer and die for what is true, good, and beautiful. He must be willing to sacrifice and to risk his heart, his mind, his body, and his life for the princess. She stands not as a prize to be obtained, but as a woman of valor who rightly enjoys the love and devotion of the knight. It is through the self-sacrificing love the knight has for the princess that he is able to travel the thorny path of the transcendent. It is through the service of the knight that the princess is able to flourish in the light of the transcendent.

This princess is not a damsel in distress who is rescued because she is helpless. The knight does not save her because she is little more than a child. He does so because he loves her and he will pursue her safety and well-being even and especially at his own expense.

She does not wait for him to save her out of cowardice or weakness, but because she understands that it is his path to take and it is her duty to cast light upon it. There is no imbalance of strength in the tale of knights and princesses, only the harmony of the masculine and the feminine in their most primal and mythic conditions.

The dragon is defeated as it dared to mar the beauty of the innocent and to stand in the way of valiance. It desired what did not rightfully belong to it, that is, what is beautiful. It must steal away the beauty of others and keep it captive for it has none of its own.

The knight and the princess work in tandem to display the selfless love and duty which the world has been called to imitate. In their roles, they exemplify the bonds of marriage and the joyful duties therein. In both, there is a willingness to suffer for the other, to serve the other in the deepest and most profound of ways, and to stand in the face of darkness if it means the salvation of the other.

Always a knight, ever a princess.

Despite its far reaching influence, this has also become a much-maligned trope due to many examples of poorly written and developed Chosen One characters. I can sympathize with people who dislike or are tired of them, but the good examples are often of such quality that they shine out the bad. This character trope speaks so deeply to the human psyche that we will never be rid of it, so we might as well learn to live with and appreciate it.

There are different forms this trope takes that must be explored before we can get to the bottom of the trope as a whole. It seems to me that there are two primary forms: the hero foretold by prophecy, and the hero anointed at a particular time.

Heroes of prophecy probably make up the lion’s share of this character trope as it is the easiest to do and to integrate within a narrative. The most obvious example from recent fiction is, of course, Harry Potter. His rivalry with Voldemort was foretold in prophecy, and his knowledge of that prophecy propelled him forward into war. Another example, though ‘hero’ is obviously a complex term to lay at his feet, is Paul Atreides from Dune.

These are the Chosen Ones whose roles are determined in the conflict without their knowledge or consent, often being determined years before they are even born. They are beset with the weight of destiny and often struggle with their path due to their inability to change it. This can lead to fascinating character development and internal conflict.

It can also lead to boring, rehashed, and cliched character woes and self-pity. There is a delicate balance required. Chosen Ones benefit from reference to other great Chosen Ones, but they need to stand on their own as well and not merely act as one story’s messiah transplanted cheaply into another.

Generic characters do not go far regardless of their tropes, but for Chosen Ones it can be even more grating and frustrating. Why exactly is this prophesied hero so boring and plain? Being average is no issue, but being uninteresting is unforgivable.

I think part of people’s exhaustion and disillusionment with Chosen Ones has come as a result of YA fiction taking culture by storm. Many of the prominent YA protagonists of the last twenty years have been Chosen Ones of one sort or another. It is unfortunate that many of these protagonists are quite bland as characters and cannot stand on their own. They mostly act as hollow shells for the audience to slide into while reading.

Though some people would cite Harry Potter as one such protagonist, I actually disagree. I think he has a fairly complex and interesting personality on his own, and his struggles with destiny are effectively conveyed and explored. He has become the template, however, and has therefore been cheapened in retrospect due to so many subpar characters attempting to fill his shoes.

The other form of Chosen One is that character who is called to action at a particular time. He is not foretold by prophecy, but in the moment of battle, he is called and he answers the call. A great example from history/legend would be the story of Cincinnatus. A man of a simple life who was called to defend his homeland. He answered the call, then returned home. I often find this sort of Chosen One to be more interesting, narratively speaking. They stand at the break of destiny not because they were foretold to be there, but because they were the ones who took the burden on.

Perhaps the greatest example from literature is Frodo from Lord of the Rings. He was not a prophesied hero, but a simple hobbit who took on the weight of the world. One of the features often present with this type of Chosen One, and it is seen very clearly with Frodo, is the movement of providence.

They may not be foretold by prophets and sages, but they are still chosen by forces beyond their understanding. At the Council of Elrond, Frodo responds to the movement of providence within his heart and declares that he will take the Ring to Mordor.

At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice.

‘I will take the Ring,’ he said, ‘though I do not know the way.’ (Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, 270)

Frodo will answer the call, leave behind his home with little hope of returning, and set forth on adventure. He has no claim to special status or powers, no unique properties that make him a greater hero than others. His smallness is the reason he is chosen, because he is ultimately not the hero of the story. He is the instrument of divine will, the activity of Eru Ilùvatar.

A key aspect of the Chosen One is the surrender of the past life. Whatever came before the call or the activation of prophecy is left behind in order to follow the path. It is an all-encompassing command upon their hearts, and they cannot resist, even if they wish to. They are called, and they must answer.

They leave behind the plow and the oxen in the field to follow the path set before them. This sacrifice of what came before is a necessary feature of the Chosen One. They are chosen, they cannot simply remain with their mundane life and hope to bear the burden of destiny. They are called to change, to sacrifice, to prevail, and sometimes to die.

There is no discussion of Chosen Ones without recognition of the greatest Chosen One present within the human consciousness, Jesus Christ. Many of these characters simply become Christ-figures, though perhaps our idea of what that means has been watered down over the years.

The Christ-figure is the greatest of all Chosen Ones, and this character may be foretold in prophecy or be anointed, as Jesus himself was both. What ultimately matters is that they make the ultimate sacrifice for the salvation of those they care for. The Christ-figure is not only one who is called by destiny to conquer evil, but to sacrifice everything in order to do so.

Cincinnatus may have turned away from his simple life for a time, but he returned to it after the adventure was done. There is no return to the mundane for the Christ-figure. Frodo is unable to return to normal life in the Shire after the wounds, physical and spiritual, he suffered on the journey to Mount Doom. He instead ventures forth to the Grey Havens for peace. He may not have died, but he lost everything that had come before his adventure and he returned a fundamentally changed person.

Christ rose again, but not to the mundanity of earthly life. The Christ-figure is the Chosen One who must lose everything. There is fear and pain involved in this, fear and pain at unfathomable levels. Jesus sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he awaited his fate, yet he submitted to his duty nonetheless.

These are figures who call us to higher action. We cannot read the story of one chosen for greatness and not be filled with wonder and feel a demand press in upon our hearts to take action ourselves. A truly great Chosen One should inspire others to answer the call. Their very stories are our calls to action.

They have been chosen and have walked the path before us, and their footsteps invite us forward. We desire saviors in our lives, but we often neglect the reality that saviors demand sacrifices of those they save. When they sacrifice for us, we cannot remain in the mundanity of our lives either. There is work to do, and we must play our part. We are called to act and to follow.

Just as they die to what came before, so too must we.

Why should they be considered less interesting, even boring? Is it because we find it less realistic to see a character with great virtue fighting for what is right? Of course, figures like that have always existed in reality, but they often don’t look quite the way we’d expect. I suppose part of us assumes that truly virtuous people do not have internal conflicts or complicated histories. They must have been sheltered from an early age, or else their tragic past has not impacted them in a realistic way.

Another way of looking at it is the sheer amount of evil we see across the world in media and news, not only today but down through history. In this way, perhaps evil feels more familiar to us than good. To us, a hero with true virtue and discipline is an alien come to earth as a messiah, not a human who has been forged by trial and pain. There may be an underlying assumption that evil is simply more ‘real’ than good. The ubiquitous nature of cruelty and our dark fascination with it both in fiction and reality seem to testify to this fact. Goodness and virtue are lofty ideals only truly seen in mythologies and fairy-tales. Of course evil must be more real than good.

But why should this be true? Is the shadow more real than the light casting it?

We live in a materialist culture, not merely in the sense that we value too highly material gain but that we often reduce all things to the material by default. If something does not have tangibility, something our senses can experience directly, then it must be unreal or at least less real than the things that do and can. We cannot live according to this assumption, however, and no one would dare try. Virtue is assumed to be real, even if we do not often seek it. We see acts of good and love in charity, kindness, mercy, but these still feel less real because they seem to occupy a minority of our attention or awareness.

True heroes must then feel somewhat less real than villains, as though their responses to the world around them are less likely or more fantastical. Maybe we can sympathize with the Joker and his ‘one bad day’ more than Superman and his perfectionist ideals. Maybe the cruelty of the big city streets feels more real than the peace of life on a Kansas farm.

In reality, we have always found good to be more interesting than evil in purely conceptual terms. Great philosophers have written countless more tomes and treatises on virtue and goodness than they have on wickedness and evil. It has always seemed clear that evil is less real than the good.

If you were to commit to learning about the great virtues and heroic acts of past figures or about those atrocities which scar the human past, you would quickly realize that the men and women behind such atrocities were seldom very interesting or worthy of study. Of course, we all know the great evils of history, we know their names and many of their deeds, but when we are confronted by a truly good person in history, there is a clear difference.

Consider the story of Private Desmond Doss from the Pacific theatre of the Second World War. He was a man of great faith and virtue, whether he considered those factors in the moment or not, who saved dozens of lives at the Battle of Okinawa. The person who would choose to study more closely the banal ambitions of Nazi leadership over the life that led Private Doss to heroism is someone who ought to self-reflect more intently.

We are more inspired by acts of heroism than we are horrified by acts of evil, but we pay them less attention and we are presented with them less often. A good man’s life story is more interesting than a bad man’s, though one might think the opposite. A bad man may live counter to social mores and norms, but ultimately he is giving into his weaker and more primal drives. A good man lives counter to the widespread darkness he sees around him, and his toil is made greater, his light is made brighter, by the darkness he overcomes.

Some of the great and classic heroes of the modern era remain pure of heart, despite our fascination with anti-heroes. Examples are Frodo, Sam, and Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Aang from Avatar: the Last Airbender, Superman, and Captain America.

Purity of heart does not necessarily mean perfection or being unharmed by the evils of the world. It simply means that these characters pursue the good amidst great evils, good for its own sake because it’s the right thing to do. Love is best understood as willing the good of the other, even at your own expense. Purity of heart is to love and to sacrifice for others, even when it hurts. To persevere in the face of suffering because of what’s true and right.

Some of these characters may feel more mythical and unattainable than others, but none of them fall outside the bounds of human virtue. Men like Desmond Doss are proof of that. Perhaps we have grown content with holding ourselves to a lower standard, and anti-heroes allow us to feel that we might still be good even if we allow the world to bend us. True goodness may be ultimately far beyond our abilities, but there is value in the ascent. For now, we simply grasp at shadows, but the pursuit of virtue and perfection is more fulfilling and meaningful than choosing to remain in the dark.

Whatever it is that draws a person to a villain, it is clear that something fascinates us with the darker elements of stories. Sometimes the hero and villain are inextricably connected, like many superheroes and their arch-nemeses, and other times the villain outshines the hero. It’s an interesting turn of events that we should so often favor villainous characters in media and find them more intriguing or satisfying to watch than the heroes.

Many people consider heroes, especially those pure of heart, to be rather boring. Villains tap into some taboo that culture just can’t get enough of. It’s gotten to the point where even our heroes today have become anti-heroes more often than not. Some might argue that this is because it feels more realistic due to the moral complexity of our world. There’s merit to that argument, but it’s not quite enough because it doesn’t explain our general preference for straightforward villains, even when they don’t have tragic pasts or sympathetic motives. The question becomes, what makes evil so fascinating? And is evil actually all that interesting?

If one were to survey the most impactful characters of 21^st century media, I guarantee there would be an inordinate amount of villains on the list. Figures such as Sauron and the Witch-King from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptation, Heath Ledger’s Joker and Tom Hardy’s Bane from The Dark Knight Trilogy, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, Voldemort from the Harry Potter series, Ramsey Snow and Joffrey Baratheon from A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, Thanos and Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and many others would certainly be in the discussion, and rightly so.

If we look at some of these figures more closely, then we can see what about them strikes us so potently. Let’s take Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. One of his defining features is his soullessness. He feels more like an automaton than a man in many of his scenes, and his moral compass is utterly divorced from human ethics and remains mostly incomprehensible throughout the film (I cannot speak to the book as I have not yet read it). Lives are retained or lost based on the flip of a coin, but refusal to play the game at all is losing it straight away in his eyes.

His philosophy seems to focus on the pathways people take in life and the risks they take along the way, the rules they follow that guide them on their journeys. When speaking with a gas station attendant, he claims that the attendant has been putting his life up on the table since it began, he just didn’t know it. He had chosen a safe and simple life, but he had been playing the game nonetheless. When Anton eventually confronts a bounty hunter named Carson Wells, he asks him if the rule Carson followed that had led him to that moment was of any actual use if he still wound up at the nonexistent mercy of Anton.

Perhaps Anton fascinates people because of his inhumanity. He feels like something completely other, like a force of nature, but we can imagine someone like him potentially existing in the real world. We know that evil people exist. Some of us have known evil people in our own lives. Evils like Anton are real, and seeing them on the screen reminds us of that fact. In the controlled context of a film or novel, a villain may appear fascinating due to their connection or lack thereof to the real world. In reality, however, most villains are quite boring.

If we look at the mechanisms behind the Nazi regime, we don’t see mustache twirling monsters who laughed with glee as they signed the death warrants of thousands, tens of thousands, millions. Instead, we see bureaucrats with families and friends who got up for work in the morning just as people do today, bureaucrats with pets and hobbies and favorite songs, only to sign such death warrants without a second thought. No wicked joy, no evil laugh, no cruel smile. Just banal clerical work you might even have mistaken for a present day DMV. This fact reminds us that they were human and not under-the-bed monsters, but their humanity only makes what they did all the worse. It provides complicating context to our understanding of the human condition.

Villains in stories give us a glimpse of evil characters, or tragically flawed characters, from a perspective that demands interest as they relate to the plight of our heroes. If they were to be removed from the drama of the story—if we were to see their day-to-day lives—they would lose much of the mystique they carry.

Most evil actions throughout history have been done for relatively uninteresting reasons and in uninteresting ways. Bureaucracy, incompetence, apathy, the vain search for human perfection or absolute equality, or the mere desire for power and wealth. None of these are especially interesting in their own right, and the great evils of the past century were mostly committed by either buttoned-up administrators or simple soldiers ‘just following orders’. Hardly the dramatic flare of villainy one would expect from the stories.

If we saw extensive footage of Darth Vader sitting at a desk simply administering bits of the Empire, he would lose a significant portion of his ‘cool factor’ or intimidation. If we saw the Joker lie down in bed at night and count sheep to help himself fall asleep, he would, for a moment, not be quite so menacing. If we saw Anton Chigurh stop to go to the bathroom, perhaps he would begin to feel a bit silly to us. Evil exists in the mundane, not solely in dramatic moments, but in stories villains thrive on their disconnect from daily experience.

Our fascination with villains comes from the drama through which they are presented. People want to see the darker bits of the world, of humanity, but we don’t necessarily want to see it within daily life. But that’s where it actually lives. By contrast, the heroic figures of stories can lose their luster in comparison, not only because we simply see them more often but because their actions don’t feel quite so dramatic by comparison. There are many nuances behind the depiction of good and evil in stories, and one could spend a lifetime studying one side or the other. Perhaps next week we’ll look at the flipside of this coin.

In writing good villains, there are a number of approaches one can take. My personal preference has always been to keep the villain’s screentime to a minimum. The less you see the villain, the more power he/she has over the narrative. They remain a relatively unknown factor. They require a strong entry to show the danger they pose, but they should not be seen very often. Personally, I would never give the main villain of one of my stories a point of view within the narrative. They’ll only ever be seen from the perspective of other characters, characters who learn to fear them. That is my preference, but it is certainly not the only option.

I found while growing up that villains in TV series seemed more interesting and stronger the less they were shown. If we look at the big bads from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, most of them are all over their respective seasons. You see them constantly, and by the end of the season they just feel like one character among many. Maybe they’re still threatening, but there’s little mystery left. I don’t say this to disparage the show, I did enjoy it when I watched it, and my mom remains an avid fan of the series.

It does, however, contrast with the practice of the first five seasons of Supernatural. Personally, I consider all seasons after season five to be nothing more than fanfiction of varying quality. In the first five seasons, the main villains are rarely seen. They might show up three or four times over the course of 20+ episodes, most of those appearances being quite short. The villains remain mysterious and powerful in the audience’s imagination because of their rarity. They do not become mundane and boring as normal evils actually are.

Looking famous examples, it's easy to understand why villains make such an impact on us in their stories, but we do seem to disconnect when considering evil in reality. People remain complex and, oftentimes, more morally grey than black or white. Villains show us the flashy, dramatic flare of a character working toward darkness without all the crummy details mixed in. This makes it easy for us to forget the full picture. Have you ever considered if Baron Harkonnen has food allergies? Would he become perhaps a little less threatening if you knew he couldn’t drink milk without tummy rumbles? Something to think about.

Which villains have most fascinated you? Why?

The most powerful examples of media remain with you long after the initial feeling subsides. Horror is not different. The reaction sought is perhaps a bit more visceral, and the lingering impact may have you checking over your shoulder for a few days, but it is ultimately an art form that conjures powerful responses when done effectively.

Now, not all horror is made equal. I would utterly disregard the majority of slashers as the genre-equivalent of generic, dumb action films. They are intended to show gore and provide a few jump scares, not to actually frighten the audience. You jump in your seat, shock and surprise override your emotional range for a moment before subsiding. You then take your friends to see the film so you can mock them for jumping at the same part you did. Thus is the nature of mainstream horror. The primary response is shock, not fear. Fear is paralyzing, not something you leap from your seat over. A consistent failure in horror films is the use of stingers, or loud musical cues that tell the audience they are supposed to be afraid. More often than not, the best horror uses silence.

The character lies in bed amidst a torrent of rain and thunder. The camera settles on them, lying on their side and facing away from the bedroom door. Lightning flashes, illuminating the room behind them. Thunder. The light cuts out—darkness. Another flash. Thunder. Darkness. Another flash. Thunder. Darkness. Another flash and the vague outline of a figure peering from behind the doorway is illumined for a split second before a blast of thunder and a return to darkness. All the while, the scene is silent.

With a stinger, or musical cue, the audience might jump and be surprised for a moment. Their heart-rates may rise before settling back down as they grab another fistful of popcorn. But silence changes everything. The silence draws your focus, demanding that you pay attention because the film won’t tell you when the scary bit happens through music. Instead, your eyes wander and steadily focus on the shadow that’s not meant to be there. The realization burns in your chest and your fight or flight response short circuits, causing your muscles to tense in a momentary paralysis as you comprehend what you’re seeing.

Terror is the true basis of horror media. It is the steady build-up of dread and anxiety. You know something bad is going to happen, but you don’t know when or necessarily what. In the cheap formula of your average jump scare, there is a false scare then a cut to silence just before the stinger erupts alongside the actual scare. The sense of surprise overrides the feeling of dread which had been building, and the tension of the scene ends. Effective horror relies on terror far more, denying the audience the relief brought by the jump scare. If only you could finally see what’s lurking in the darkness, then the dread would end and you would know. But terror denies this for as long as possible.

Horror is when you are at last confronted by that which you have been dreading. The killer appears, a body is discovered, the demon manifests. These do not need to occur as jump scares, though they can be effective as such when done well. The question remains, however, why in the world would someone enjoy this? As I said, horror evokes a visceral reaction from audiences, more so than most other genres. There’s a clear taboo in watching things that are intended to frighten you, but I think it goes beyond that. There is a sense of danger to it, a controlled sort, that can provide an immersive sense of adventure. But even beyond that, horror forces us to deal with aspects of reality that we oftentimes refuse to acknowledge.

Ari Aster’s debut feature film Hereditary (2018) is a supernatural horror film centered around a family troubled by a curse. The film is primarily interested in the discomfort and horror of grief and the sundering of familial ties amidst tragedy. There are supernatural elements to it, but the thematic focus is grief and our human inability to cope with drastic and devastating change. Much of the movie feels like an intense family drama, allowing the emotional turmoil of the characters to build dread toward their inevitable end. Horror of this sort is many leagues ahead of the usual drivel put out into theatres, as it attempts to speak to real human experiences and fears.

Effective horror, as with all fiction, taps into and participates in reality through some connection to human experience or the nature of the world. The various subgenres of horror have diverse themes, but effective examples always lean into genuine fears. My personal favorite subgenres are folk horror and cosmic horror. There is a fair amount of overlap in their dominant themes, but they diverge in several ways.

Folk horror is comprised of stories which include, you guessed it, folkloric elements such as pagan/nature deities, shamanism, and mystery cults. Folk horror stories oftentimes emphasize feelings of isolation, strangeness, and lack of belonging. Oftentimes characters in folk horror find themselves to be trespassing in some way, leading to the story’s conflict. Film examples of the subgenre are Children of the Corn (1984, 2009), Midsommar (2019), Apostle (2018), and the seminal classic The Wicker Man (1973). Recent novels I have read in the genre are A God in the Shed (2017), The Hollow Kind (2022), and The Only Good Indians (2020).

Folk horror leans into our fear of old things, things that we don’t quite understand in our cultural mindset, or bits of the past that haunt us. Characters in folk horror are normally confronted with ways of living that are deeply strange or foreign, or places that aren’t like home. The old ways are not like our ways, and that is terrifying.

Cosmic horror is often tied with science fiction, but not always. It relies on feelings of insignificance, fear of the unknown and unknowable, the loss or change of self, and the horror of being confronted with the ‘other’. Cosmic horror is notoriously difficult to capture in film, so non-literary examples are rare, but some prominent ones are The Thing (1982), The Void (2016), and The Endless (2017). It is worth noting that season 1 of True Detective (2014) has many elements of cosmic horror, however the horror is not placed centerstage. In terms of novels, both A God in the Shed and The Hollow Kind would fit within the cosmic sphere as well.

I would be worthy of all disdain if I described cosmic horror without mentioning the progenitor of the subgenre, H.P. Lovecraft. The subgenre is often referred to as Lovecraftian horror due to his influence. Lovecraft was a man with many fears, but one of the most prominent which had a significant influence on his work was his deep loathing and fear of the ocean. Many of the creatures in his stories exhibit marine features such as tentacles, scales, and fish eyes. Due to the unknown of the ocean, his stories make reference to the ancient entities dwelling in that abyss, waiting for something to rouse them from their slumber.

While others may primarily find human and natural evils more compelling in a story or even in reality, I remain most interested in and affected by folk and cosmic horror. Evils where there is some semblance of escape or resistance are less frightening to me. I can fight a serial killer, though I may lose. I can arm myself against a wild animal. I can flee from a disaster. While in each of those cases I may, and very probably would, fail, it does not matter.

The mere possibility of escape and resistance is enough for them to be lessened. They are also dangers that solely affect my body. In the cases of folk and cosmic horror the evils are, most of the time, beyond resistance or flight. Not only are they beyond the reach of simple weapons, but their threat also goes beyond the physical and into the spiritual and mental. Such threats require powers beyond our own to combat them.

Both subgenres grasp at the natural human fear of the unknown, either as being beyond our lived experience (folk) or beyond our comprehension (cosmic). The question remains, however, why horror? What draws us to the experience of fear?

As I said above, I think part of it necessarily comes from the desire for adventure, the rush of adrenaline, the sense of danger that makes the day, in retrospect, more thrilling. Horror provides a controlled experience of these sensations. More importantly, horror forces us to confront the reality of evil within this world. Whether the evil is of a human variety such as a serial killer, a natural variety such as a disaster or animal, or of a supernatural variety such as a demon, horror confronts the viewer with evils we might otherwise wish to ignore.

Effective stories cause a change in the viewer’s perception of the events unfolding within the narrative. They immerse you to such an extent that you are able to, on a lower level, suspend your disbelief, or, at the higher level, acquire a secondary belief within the context of the story (this is a topic worthy of its own post).

When applied to horror, an individual who may not fear serial killers in daily life will come to fear them deeply in the context of an effective story. Likewise, an individual with no belief in demons will find them terrifying and dangerous within the boundaries of another story. This immersion is possible and worth pursuing in all genres of fiction and modes of art. Specifically applied to horror, it forces the audience to grapple with darker aspects of reality—to be unsettled and uncomfortable for a short time in an otherwise comfortable life.

Part of the ultimate appeal of horror is in its unsettling nature. Art can be lovely, captivating, and soothing, but it can also be terrible, haunting, and discomforting. Beauty commands both fear and awe, and that which is truly beautiful is equal parts unsettling and mesmerizing. Horror, as with any other genre or art, seeks the beautiful though not via the same pathways.

Perhaps the beauty is most often found in the ways horror reveals the comfort of our actual lives. The dark on the screen or in the pages sheds light on the good in our lives, and reminds us that greater suffering exists. I think another key message to be found in a lot of good quality horror is that there are fates worse than death, and we ought to be mindful of our lives.

Horror as an art form grasps at the beauty which haunts us, the wonder of creation that terrifies us when considered another way. The beauty we witness here grasps for something that is higher than itself. Our imaginations seeks nourishment in stories of all kinds, stories that participate in the fundamental truths of reality, and the battle with fear is an enduring truth.

There’s a sense of excitement and wonder than comes when you enter into a well-crafted world for the first time. Your mind races with the possibilities and mysteries that lay ahead, and you become antsy to learn more about the characters and the setting itself. I recall feeling this way with a number of worlds, and it is a feeling that naturally arises when we are introduced to worlds that scratch the wistful longing of the human spirit, the spirit that is dissatisfied with its own world.

Among the many worlds that have captured me in this way are Avatar: the Last Airbender, Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, and Heroes. Regardless of opinions on the content or enduring quality of these examples, they were all successful at capturing my curiosity at least at the start. I’ll likely explore each of these in greater detail some time in the future.

The key to this sort of excitement is in gradually unveiling the setting through conversation and display. If too much exposition is revealed right away, the mystery never takes hold and the audience has no reason to feel antsy to learn more. Information becomes too free and is not acquired over time through the course of major events and interactions, therefore it feels cheaper and less interesting.

A large amount of exposition is not inherently bad, and is sometimes necessary, but it shouldn’t be dumped at the beginning of a story or all in one place. The beginning should provide a foundation or framework for the audience to use in understanding future revelations. It shouldn’t tear down the curtain right away.

An example of gradual and ambiguous story development, done effectively though imperfectly, is in the first Dark Souls game (the same basic practice continues in the other entries as well). The very basics of the lore are presented in the opening cinematic, allowing the player to see some prominent figures and events from the lore. We are not presented with a clear narrative though. In the end, however, a proper understanding of what happened and what is still happening in the game remains elusive.

The most exposition you receive up until you’re a third of the way through the game comes from a handful NPCs who provide vague dialogue describing what you need to do, but without explaining why. The why only comes later, and even then it is not presented clearly or objectively. Some people love the ambiguous and shrouded lore of the Souls Trilogy while others hate it. Personally, I think the lore itself is very well done, but it is only available to players who are willing to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to piece together a puzzle without form. I will be discussing the Souls Trilogy in more detail in the future, not focusing on lore but the central themes of each installment.

The main takeaway from this approach that I’m interested in discussing here is that you can present the basics of your story early on while still maintaining mystery. Another example is Game of Thrones. When I first watched it, I knew nothing about the series or the lore. The sheer scale of the setting and the very real presence of a complex past made it immediately intriguing. Legends of white walkers, the Wall, dragons, blood magic, Robert’s Rebellion, the Mad King, the Lord of Light, etc… all hinted at deeper and greater bits of lore.

The early seasons effectively set up these concepts, events, and figures as mysteries to be explored or solved later. In the end, however, the show-runners were incapable of writing to the standard of the early series, and thus botched or neglected the mysteries planted at the beginning. Nonetheless, the first four seasons of the series are masterclass examples of gradual exposition and exploration of deeper lore.

Another infamous downturn, the Game of Thrones of the previous generation of television perhaps, can be found in Lost. It began with strong characters, a mysterious setting, and a fascinating story but amounted to nothing as the writers didn’t actually know what to do once it came time to provide answers. Because of this, Lost falls out of the pantheon of great series and into the bin of promising disappointments.

Mystery is not enough in the end. There have to be answers eventually, whether provided directly or indirectly, objectively or subjectively, and satisfactory ones at that. When building a complex and compelling setting, there needs to be some sort of plan in place and some deeper understanding behind it, even if all the details will never be revealed within the story. Audiences can feel when there’s more behind the curtain, so there must always be more that they don’t see.

It’s important to plan out more than you actually intend to do or use. The sense that there is more that could be said or discovered is crucial to establishing a fascinating setting. It is difficult to tap into that sense if there really isn’t anything more to say about your story or your world beyond what’s already on the paper. If you’re the creator of this setting, you should have the answers, or at least be able to develop them when needed.

Despite the success and merits of the Harry Potter series, there are legitimate issues with the world-building. It seems clear enough that J.K. Rowling didn’t begin developing deeper lore until the fourth book. A few seeds were sewn in the early books, but the late showing of most deep lore leads to consistency issues and a shallow setting at times. The series is obviously an example that you can be successful and still make mistakes in your writing. I think we tend to be more forgiving of children’s and young adult fiction for flaws of this kind, just as we tend (and rightly so) to be more forgiving of younger people for their flaws.

The beauty of world-building is found in reflecting bits of reality, showcasing them in new and exciting ways. When we delve into a fantasy world, a science fiction world, or even a historical setting, we are, in many ways, exploring our own world placed through a filter. As I stated in the Truth in Fiction post, good world-building participates in reality through the universal human condition and the necessary features of the universe.

These fictional worlds give us the opportunity to take on the role of explorer and adventurer more directly. Good fiction ought to cause self-reflection, and the effective mystery of a well-crafted setting ensures that the audience will have a wealth of ideas to consider. Even if the reflection is passive, it still occurs, and the things which impact our imaginations may remain mysteries to us for years to come.

When was the last time you entered into a story, no matter the format, and right away became excited? What stood out to you the most? Was your excitement satisfied eventually?

I knew which movie it was though, and that was good. It popped into my mind fairly often when I would think about my own story ideas or even about bits of life. Something about it just stuck with me, but I couldn’t explain exactly why, because I’d only seen it the one time. A few scenes, lines, and images from the movie became ingrained in my imagination. One thought that I consistently had about it was that it was a real shame that more was never done with the film. A movie like that deserved a sequel, I thought. The character needed to return somehow, but by that point it had been the better part of twenty years since the movie’s initial release in 2000. It was too late.

Fast forward to 2018. A couple friends and I had a bonfire one summer night as a sendoff before I left for Scotland to begin graduate school. The conversation eventually shifted to horror movies, as it often does, and they began talking about a movie called Split. It sounded interesting, so I asked them about it. I was sold on the plot right away, but then they mentioned that it was a backdoor sequel to another Shyamalan movie from a long time ago.

The pure and impossible coincidence that it was connected to Unbreakable just floored me. I hadn’t even heard of Split when it was coming out, but more so the fact that a backdoor sequel to Unbreakable had snuck by me two years before was astonishing. I went home from that bonfire and found, through unsavory methods, both films online for free. Needless to say, I went to bed late that night.

Having watched Unbreakable multiple times since then, I now have a better idea of why it stuck with me for so long and why I wanted more. A major theme in the film is that of longing, or yearning for something more. Spoiler alert from here on out. The main character, David Dunn, moves about the events of the film as though he’s in a depressive fog. He’s gone most of his life without finding a real sense of purpose. He awakes in the hospital at the beginning of the story and learns that he is the sole survivor of a train crash, and that he has no physical injuries. Meanwhile, Elijah—a man born with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bones—reaches out to David after the accident, inquiring about the nature of David’s survival.

During a conversation with Elijah he describes this as a sadness he wakes up with each morning. Of course, David finds himself drawn to helping others by working in security, but nothing quite satisfies that sadness. Their relationship is complicated throughout the film as David does not initially believe Elijah’s proposal that there is something superhuman about David’s survival.

As he comes to accept the reality of his abilities—apparent invincibility save for drowning, enhanced strength, and the ability to have brief visions of a person’s past or present crimes—David asks Elijah what he needs to do. Elijah tells him to go to where people are, and that it won’t take long. At the end of the film, once David has rescued a pair of children from the man who had murdered their parents, he goes to speak with Elijah. In the conversation Elijah asks David if he woke up that day with the same feeling of sadness. David answers no.

In a moment of vulnerability, after revealing himself as the terrorist who orchestrated the train crash David had been in, Elijah explains how he has also felt that sadness and aimlessness throughout his life. He states that it’s “just an awful feeling” to not know your purpose or place in this world. Elijah, in suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta, had come to believe that someone on the opposite of that spectrum must exist. Someone whose bones do not break. Both men had a deep, lingering sadness over not understanding their respective destinies. In the end, David understood that he was meant to help people, while Elijah tragically determined that he was always meant to be the villain. The movie is ultimately centered around the search for meaning in our lives and our ability to pursue what we understand to be our purpose.

That lingering sadness arrives when we live contrary to, or outside the scope, of what we find most meaningful. Elijah’s sense of aimlessness was in feeling like a mistake, feeling alone in a world that he didn’t belong to. He needed to find a reason for his own suffering. David’s came from not understanding his path in life or how to utilize his gifts. The men are simultaneously the same and opposite. Elijah is physically fragile, while David is unbreakable. Yet they both suffer from a yearning for more in their lives.

More than just about any other film I’ve seen, Unbreakable taps into that yearning. It’s a feeling I think most people experience at least once in their lives. In a day and age when career options seem endless yet impossible to obtain, there’s a very real sense of wanting to do something more in your life, wanting to achieve something or do something great. We can look to history with a romantic lens and find stories of great figures who built empires and changed the destinies of their nations before age 30. But what have we to do now? How do we effect change in the world today, despite being seemingly freer?

In the midst of our apparent options and opportunities, the ability to grasp at meaning and purpose in life is slipping away from many people. There’s a real sense of nostalgia at the heart of superhero media, something which Unbreakable tapped into a bit more subtly, and many years prior to the Marvel phenomenon. Not only is there a desire for heroic figures we can look to for inspiration, but there is a desire inherent in mankind to be heroic ourselves.

What is difficult to remember, is that even a simple life with a devoted marriage and deep bonds between parents and their children is oftentimes heroic enough. At the end of Unbreakable, it is not only David’s realization that he has the power and ability to save people which heals him of that sadness. His relationship with his son has been healed, and his marriage is working toward a similar level of healing.

When the film begins, David and his son are distant, almost cold with one another. His son, Joseph, is clearly uncomfortable and afraid each time they speak—not due to an abusive relationship, but due to the natural fear a son has toward a father who has become a stranger. David’s role as father is what ultimately inspires his pursuit of heroism. Joseph believes in David far more than anyone else, even once in an emotional outburst trying to shoot his father to prove his invincibility. As the film goes on, the softening of their dynamic coincides with David’s understanding of his own abilities.

This is not to say that all meaning stems from becoming a parent or spouse, though those are both incredibly important roles that may and should provide a great deal of meaning. It means that there is heroism in the seemingly mundane elements of life. Being a loyal friend, a devoted spouse, an inspiring teacher, or a good and active parent is meaningful and heroic. Whatever your hands and mind find to do, do your very best and seek what is enduringly meaningful rather than fleetingly enjoyable. Unbreakable is ultimately a superhero origin story, but it feels like a family drama at times. It is not flashy or larger than life like others of the genre, but it embodies the ideas and yearnings that still remain in many of the films released today.

David’s yearning to help people ultimately started with the repairing of his familial relationships. He came to understand that his purpose was outwardly focused, that the sadness leaves when he forgets himself and looks to how he can serve others. Elijah’s yearning came from a constant remembrance of self and personal suffering. David was merely the key to Elijah’s own destiny.

The pursuit of meaning in life is found in the realization that our lives aren’t really about us at all. Our accomplishments might be remembered, but not in the context of how we accomplished them. They will be remembered by the way they impacted others. At the heart of Unbreakable is the understanding that life is best spent in service to others, whether in the context of your family, your work, saving people as a superhero, etc. If we were to inhabit this world alone, it would be nigh-impossible to discover any lasting sense of purpose or meaning. Our bonds with others help to draw meaning into our lives.

We’re called to take on the burden of being and move forward, but helping to shoulder a friend’s burden is often when we feel most fulfilled.

Perhaps the most direct exploration of death within the seventh book comes in the Tale of the Three Brothers. I will not share the full story here but simply recount the basics.

Three brothers on a walk at twilight thwart Death by conjuring a bridge over a dangerous ravine. In a calculated move, Death offers each brother a gift in return for their cleverness. In the decisions of the brothers, we see three perspectives on death.

The first brother asks for a wand more powerful than any other, so powerful he might never know defeat. The second brother wished to restore life to his loved ones, receiving the resurrection stone. And the third merely wanted the means to live without fear of death.

For the first brother, he wished for the power of death. He wanted to mete out death to all who might challenge him, leading to hubris and an undignified death of his own. The second brother wished to defeat and humiliate death by denying him the spirits of the dead. When it turned out that such spirits could only live a feeble imitation of life, as they no longer belonged to this material plane, he took his own life in sorrow.

The third brother had no desire for power or to overcome death by force. He wished to live and not see the looming shadow of death in his life, thus he received the invisibility cloak. When his death finally came, he accepted it as the fate of all humanity and passed on his wisdom to his son. The invisibility cloak represents, in this story, the life lived without fear of or obsession with death.

Death is defeated not by gaining power or denying the natural end of life for oneself or others, rather it is defeated by accepting its inevitability and choosing to live outside its shadow. Those who seek to prevail over death or command it themselves end up being ruled by it. When Harry and Hermione visit the graves of Lily and James Potter, they find an inscription on the gravestone from 1 Corinthians 15:26, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

“‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’…” A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. “Isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?”

“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means…you know…living beyond death. Living after death.”

But they were not living, thought Harry: they were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them. (The Deathly Hallows, 328)

Comforting ideas of the afterlife oftentimes ring hollow in the wake and presence of tragedy. How can death be defeated when it’s just won? A loved one has died, death is victorious. Where is the hope? We all must die, and recognizing this fact does not take away the sting of death so easily. There is still the dread of the long dark, the fear of the unknown.

Seeing the inevitability of death on its own does not defeat death. Knowing your impending doom may simplify things, but it does not vanquish death from our imaginations and fears. There are no easy answers. Part of overcoming the fear of death lies in recognizing that it is a fearful thing indeed, not in the sense that Death himself is worthy of fear but that we must leap into the unknown with hope of more.

Harry eventually comes to understand his role in the battle against Voldemort after seeing Snape’s memories. He understands that the final horcrux lives inside of him and that it must be purged if Voldemort is to be defeated. What follows is a powerful reflection on death as he makes his way toward the end.

Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric’s Hollow would be finished: Neither would live, neither could survive.

[…]

Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought that it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: His will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur to him now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.

If he could only have died on that summer’s night when he had left number four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix-feather wand had saved him! If he could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened! Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save someone he loved… He envied even his parents’ deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. (DH, 691-92)

The kinds of deaths that Harry envies are those of randomness and purpose. Hedwig’s death was mere chance, the curse hitting the snowy owl and not Harry himself. Death without a moment’s realization. A quick cut to black. Painless. No fear involved. No drum roll.

Harry’s parents made tangible sacrifices for their child, casting themselves before Voldemort as he stalked his way through the house. Their deaths had clear and discernible meanings. Their sacrifices were concrete. Their deaths had purpose.

Sure, Harry’s death might enable the eventual defeat of Voldemort, but it is an abstract and ephemeral purpose to a very real and concrete death. There are no comforts in contingencies when your lifespan has been cut to mere minutes. Harry is forced to accept death not as a distant inevitability but as a conscious decision on his part, sacrificing himself for others.

There is a clear, though limited, Christian allegory here in that Harry moves toward death, not losing his life but giving it. His decision is a clear reflection of the words of Jesus in John 10:17-18, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” Harry must deliberately bring about his own death in order to vanquish evil.

On his long walk to the place of execution, Harry realizes that he has possessed the resurrection stone all along within the golden snitch. He utilizes it not to defeat death by robbing the afterlife of souls, but instead he uses it to steel himself for his own death, to find comfort in the reality that existence endures. He is able to see and speak with his loved ones who had died before him, each one having given their own lives in the struggle.

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry’s brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision.

“You’ll stay with me?”

“Until the very end,” said James.

“They won’t be able to see you?” asked Harry.

“We are part of you,” said Sirius. “Invisible to anyone else.”

Harry looked at his mother.

“Stay close to me,” he said quietly. (DH, 700)

A life given and life protected. He dies. A cut to black. The purpose of his death still abstract, the effects unknown, but he faces it nonetheless. Upon waking up in King’s Cross, Harry’s conversation with Dumbledore helps to further illuminate the role of the Hallows as well as finally establishing for Harry that death no longer has its sting.

The Hallows are no prize. They do not make one master of death because none can truly conquer death in this way. Two of the three brothers in the tale attempted to master death with their own Hallows and both failed. Even the three Hallows together cannot grant one such power.

“Maybe a man in a million could unite the Hallows, Harry. I was fit only to possess the meanest of them, the least extraordinary. I was fit to own the Elder Wand, and not to boast of it, and not to kill with it. I was permitted to tame and to use it, because I took it, not for gain, but to save others from it.

“But the Cloak, I took out of vain curiosity, and so it could never have worked for me as it works for you, its true owner. The stone I would have used in an attempt to drag back those who are at peace, rather than to enable my self-sacrifice, as you did. You are the worthy possessor of the Hallows.” (DH, 720)

Self-sacrifice is the key to understanding the role death plays in this series. While many of the deaths are those of soldiers in battle, there is still the overarching idea that they died fighting for others. Even a random death like that of Cedric Diggory finds purpose in the path taken by Harry in defeating Voldemort. It is not death that has meaning, but life. Harry’s death was not meaningful, the giving of his life was. The conquest of death is the embracing of life and the understanding that we endure beyond the grave.

Harry is worthy of the Hallows not because they grant him power over death, but because he accepts that they do not. He is still subject to death in this world, but now there is nothing to fear.

“I think,” said Dumbledore, “that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning here than he does.”

Harry glanced again at the raw-looking thing that trembled and choked in the shadow beneath the distant chair.

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present.” (DH, 722)

Although no clear thoughts regarding the afterlife are given within the series, it is made clear that life goes on, both on earth and beyond. There are spirits that continue, and they are aware. There is love beyond the grave and hope in the loss of life. Death to Harry becomes merely a reunion with those he loves. It is not a childish fantasy, but a reality. It takes little courage to state that existence ends with death and all that exists is material. Harry’s parents are not mere bones resting beneath the snow. They live on, both in him as he carries their memories forward, and in the life to come.

Perhaps such a fate makes Voldemort’s fear of death all the worse. The fact that death is not simply a cut to black, but that existence endures, is far more horrifying for one so desperate to cling on to an imitation of life. Despite all his efforts, Voldemort dies an ordinary and unremarkable death. A meaningless end to a meaningless life spent in pursuit of mere survival.

And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. (DH, 744)

A death like any other man. Voldemort falls back without realizing what has happened. As to his fate in the next life, we can only guess. Perhaps his soul was so obliterated that what remained simply could not carry on and he truly did cease to exist. I don’t think so, though. I believe he endured, but only just. A life beyond life, one filled with love and hope would be agony to one such as Voldemort. He will find no rest among the dead, only more pain and fear.

When Harry tells him to try for some regret and remorse, to understand his actions properly, Voldemort is disgusted with the idea. It is this unwillingness to repent that makes Voldemort’s life and death meaningless. If he had repented and died right there, perhaps purpose might be found, but instead he died in pursuit of that which could never be his on his own terms: life without death.

In the end, there is hope. Death will come for us all the same, but where is death’s sting when we know that existence endures, that our loved ones remain with us and that we hope to reunite with them? Our lives are made more meaningful by the fact that they go on and that our decisions here have a true moral impact on the world around us and our eternal destinies.

Death does not truly separate those with hope. Love is what binds us to those no longer with us. It is what remains of us when we’re gone, lost to the world, our bodies turning to dust. It’s what leaves us in the memories of others. We are known either by how we loved or how we did not.

If love is a worthy pursuit, and it truly has meaning, then love continues beyond death. Love can never be one-sided, and as love endures, so do we all.

As a result of his new acquaintance with death, Harry is changed. A simple but direct way that this is seen is the fact that Harry now sees thestrals. Throughout The Order of the Phoenix they act as a reminder that death has not only touched his life, but that he has met death in person and seen the reaper’s handiwork with his own eyes.

The thestrals are not evil, and their connection to death is never truly explained, but within the narrative they serve as a visual representation of Harry’s lost innocence. Sure, he had lost his parents and had been abused by his aunt and uncle throughout his childhood, but those did not rob him of his innocence in the same way as watching a friend die right before him. He is still a child in the first four books. A child with trauma, yes, but a child. Now he is a young man who can put a face to the trauma of his nightmares. And unfortunately for Harry, his first meeting with death was followed quickly by a second.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch…

And Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his god-father’s wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind and then fell back into place.

Harry heard Bellatrix Lestrange’s triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing—Sirius had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second… (The Order of the Phoenix, 806)

Now death shows himself again. First the shadow of family in the deep recesses of Harry’s mind, then a friend face-to-face, and now the only family he felt he had left. In each case, death draws closer to him and he has been helpless to prevent it. But now the instrument of death is within his reach. The perpetrator is in sight. He chases down Bellatrix and attacks her, but to no avail, leading to the battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort. This scene is especially notable due to the conversation between the two as the duel continues.

“You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?” called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. “Above such brutality, are you?”

“We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,” Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk toward Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. “Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit—”

“There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!” snarled Voldemort.

“You are quite wrong,” said Dumbledore, still closing in upon Voldemort and speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. Harry felt scared to see him walking along, undefended, shieldless. […] “Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness—” (OotP, 814)

It’s during this conversation that Voldemort’s fear of death is laid out clearly in his own words. For him, death, the end to his earthly existence, is worse than any other fate. Worse even than becoming a disembodied spirit for years. Part of this is certainly due to his narcissism, as he cannot allow the chance that his presence on earth might somehow end, and it also manifests in his desire to be special or set apart from others.

In his first interaction with Dumbledore as a child, Voldemort learns that he is special already due to his magic, but this does not satisfy him. He wishes to be unique even among those who possess magic. His fear of death is a manifestation of that desperate grasp for power. Dumbledore, echoing statements made to Harry at the end of The Philosopher’s Stone, retorts that there are absolutely fates worse than death. Men can be destroyed utterly in this life, making death seem preferable.

And then Harry’s scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance—

He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature’s began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape—

And when the creature spoke, it used Harry’s mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move….

“Kill me now, Dumbledore….”

Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again….

“If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy….”

Let the pain stop, thought Harry. Let him kill us…. End it, Dumbledore… Death is nothing compared to this….

And I’ll see Sirius again…. (OotP, 816)

Here we see how Harry in his agony both from losing Sirius and being possessed by Voldemort deems death as preferrable to such suffering. Death seems to him peaceful and a release from pain, not a consuming void. Here, his fear is not of death but of having to suffer in the wake of another loss. He has hope in reunion with his loved ones and this hope enables him to see Voldemort’s fate for what it is: something worse than death. The connection between them illuminates this fact during this possession sequence.

Voldemort here knew that Dumbledore would not kill Harry. Voldemort believed that Dumbledore was deluded to think that something might be worse than death, so Dumbledore’s refusal to kill Harry in order to ‘end’ Voldemort seems to prove his point, at least in his mind. In the end, it is Harry’s love for Sirius and desire to be reunited with him in death that forced Voldemort to flee or else, ironically enough, suffer pain worse than death. Voldemort’s inability to reflect honestly on life and his own inevitable death blinds him to a true understanding of the events surrounding him.

After this experience at the Ministry of Magic, questions of death continue swirling as Harry approaches Sir Nicholas, asking him about ghosts.

“Wizards can leave an imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod,” said Nick miserably. “But very few wizards choose that path.”

“Why not?” said Harry. “Anyway—it doesn’t matter—Sirius won’t care if it’s unusual, he’ll come back, I know he will!”

And so strong was his belief that Harry actually turned his head to check the door, sure, for a split second, that he was going to see Sirius, pearly white and transparent but beaming, walking through it toward him.

“He will not come back,” repeated Nick quietly. “He will have…gone on.”

“What d’you mean, ‘gone on’?” said Harry quickly. “Gone on where? Listen—what happens when you die, anyway? Where do you go? Why doesn’t everyone come back? Why isn’t this place full of ghosts? Why—?”

“I cannot answer,” said Nick.

“You’re dead, aren’t you?” said Harry exasperatedly. “Who can answer better than you?

“I was afraid of death,” said Nick. “I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn’t to have…Well, that is neither here nor there… In fact, I am neither here nor there…” He gave a small said chuckle. “I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead.” (OotP, 861)

Once again, the fear of death was the primary contributing factor. Sir Nicholas chose to cling on to what he calls a ‘feeble imitation of life’ rather than risk the great beyond. The dead know little of death, and ghosts can only grasp at life. This hearkens back to the death day party where the ghosts attempt to recapture the living pleasures of food by drifting through rotten piles of it on platters, hoping the stench would translate to something meaningful. They lose the very thing they were afraid of losing. Sirius may have been a relatively young man still, or at least a young man in a withered man’s body, but he had no fear of death and would not cling to the edges of life.

Voldemort, for all his work to undermine and escape death, ultimately knows little about it. So great is his fear that he has never been able to comprehend what it is he flees from. He chooses his own feeble imitation of life, perhaps one even feebler than that of the ghosts. Sir Nicholas must wander the corridors of Hogwarts and watch as students grow older and live fully, but he can never truly join them. Voldemort may not care to be set apart from others in such a way, but it ultimately shows that his life is as hollow as the existence of Sir Nicholas, or even more so.

Harry comes to a greater understanding of what it means for a person to embrace death within The Half-Blood Prince. Though it will take more time, this is the book where he begins to see death for what it is, simply a transition from this world to something else. Upon learning of Voldemort’s horcruxes, Harry realizes the desperate terror that Voldemort has for death. The fact that he is willing to tear apart his own soul and to murder others, to exist as a phantom for years after his curse rebounded, indicates a pathological fear of that great enemy beyond any person’s control.

Death comes for all. It is the great equalizer, and Voldemort could not possibly be made equal to another person or to allow his fate, his power, to fall outside of his control or be left to an unknown. This is noted by Dumbledore when the Elixir of Life is referenced once more, stating that Voldemort would likely have resented his dependence on the Elixir after a time, choosing instead to rely on his horcruxes, his own work.

Throughout this conversation, Harry begins to see that death is not something we ought to center our lives around. We will die, it’s a brute fact of existence. Acknowledging and accepting this fact is the key to not being ruled by it. As they discuss the nature of the prophecy and that one must kill the other, Harry takes an early step toward understanding how death might truly be overcome.

But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew—and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce price, and so did my parents—that there was all the difference in the world. (The Half-Blood Prince, 512)

Dignity in life and dignity in death, desperation for control, and fear of the unknown abound within the series. It is through these that we also find the key to fates worse than death. Desperately clinging for life is undignified as it rejects the natural end of this earthly existence, but throwing one’s life away is equally undignified. Standing before death unafraid, with hope in the what is to come, is a true step on the path to being free of death.

As Dumbledore suffers from the effects of the horcrux potion in the cave, he cries out with anguished regrets and begs for the relief of death. Unknown to the reader at this point, Dumbledore is experiencing his regret over the death of his sister, Ariana, and the events surrounding Grindelwald’s rise to power.

Unleashed with no barriers of reason and purpose, these agonies became overwhelming to the point of him begging for death. Living in regret, feeling the sorrow of a lost loved one, being alone without love in your life. These are all fates worse than death. It is the anguish of living that makes us fear death oftentimes, not death itself. The very things that make life worth living can also make it unbearable. But the worst fate is to fear death to such a degree that one never truly lives.

Next week we will finish the series with a discussion of book 7.

I thought through what I remembered of the books, not the movies, and decided I wanted to give them another try. Over the course of a few weeks, I reread all seven books and came away with a much deeper appreciation of the series. Looking at the story through the lens of death as its central theme made it, ironically, come alive. This post will deal with the first four books, next week’s will look at books five and six, then the seventh book will have a post all to itself the following week.

While the theme of death is not used subtly in the series, there were certainly elements of it that I appreciated far more when reading with that theme in mind. It truly is more than one theme among many, it is the primary theme of the entire Harry Potter series.

We get our first direct look at this theme in Harry’s conversation with Firenze near the end of The Philosopher’s Stone while the former is serving detention in the Forbidden Forest.

“That is because it is a monstrous thing to slay a unicorn,” said Firenze. “Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something so pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips.”

[…]

“But who’d be that desperate?” [Harry] wondered aloud. “If you’re going to be cursed forever, death’s better, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Firenze agreed, “unless all you need is to stay alive long enough to drink something else—something that will bring you back to full strength and power—something that will mean you can never die. […]” (The Philosopher’s Stone, 258)

It is here that we are introduced to an idea that will be brought back multiple times throughout the series. There are fates worse than death, and one would need to fear death above all else in order to take them on. Voldemort is willing to risk such a curse in order to return to full life and power because he cannot recognize anything worse than dying.

Death is so great a menace in his mind that his quality of life is ultimately expendable so long as it is extended. Of course, he is risking this due to the promise of the Philosopher’s Stone, but there was always the chance that he would never obtain it. His decision to drink the blood shows his contempt for life as much as it does his fear of death.

In contrast, there are many characters across the series who display a willingness to die or to risk the quality of their own lives, but it is done not out of contempt for life or personal fear, but courage and/or an acceptance of death. They recognize that there are things worth dying for, and that a life well-lived must come to a natural end. The willingness to die, or the readiness to die, is brought up when Harry speaks with Dumbledore in the hospital wing at the end of the first book about the fate of the Flamels.

“They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die.”

Dumbledore smiled at the look of amazement on Harry’s face.

“To one as young as you, I’m sure it seems incredible, but to Nicholas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all—the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.” (PS, 297)

This conversation parallels the final conversation between Harry and Dumbledore in the King’s Cross chapter of The Deathly Hallows. In both conversations, Dumbledore notes that particular items with extraordinary abilities are not truly as amazing as they might seem. The Philosopher’s Stone may grant longevity and wealth, but it cannot bring you anything meaningful to fill your life with. That remains up to you.

For Voldemort, life is not even the priority, it is a means to the end of avoiding death. The Philosopher’s Stone is just as seductive a power as the Elder Wand or the Resurrection Stone. It is power without restraint, and it will corrupt and destroy whoever seeks it for the wrong reasons. Life simply for the sake of not dying is not a worthy pursuit, neither is power for the sake of power.

There were no particular passages I found to quote from The Chamber of Secrets, but the theme of death is still present. One obvious example is in the increased prominence of the Hogwarts ghosts. Sir Nicholas’s Death Day Party provides a glimpse at the sad state the ghosts exist in, something which Nicholas expands on at the end of book five. Moaning Myrtle especially seems to be one who could not fully accept her death and now exists in painful stasis, haunting the stalls of the bathroom where she died. They exist in a state of shadow. They stayed back to witness life move on without them, but they are unable to participate.

The ghosts are little more than memories imprinted on the school grounds. They are helpless and neither living nor truly dead. More can be said about the ghosts, but that will be saved for next week’s discussion of Order of the Phoenix.

Tom Riddle’s diary, as the second on-screen attempt for Voldemort to conquer death, attempts to weaponize its imprinted memory to steal life from Ginny. One must be robbed of life so that another might live. This is true with regard to the existence of Voldemort’s horcruxes and it is true in each of his attempts to return to full life. A life taken and a life received.

Within The Prisoner of Azkaban, we see the shadow of death in Harry’s confrontations with the dementors. He hears the final cries of his mother each time they approach him, forcing him to experience his parents’ deaths more directly than ever before.

An intense cold swept over them all. Harry felt his own breath catch in his chest. The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest, it was inside his very heart…

Harry’s eyes rolled up into his head. He couldn’t see. He was drowning in cold. There was rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downward, the roaring growing louder…

And then, from far away, he heard screaming, terrible, terrified, pleading screams. He wanted to help whoever it was, he tried to move his arms, but couldn’t … a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him— (The Prisoner of Azkaban, 83-84)

The dementors caused Harry to deal with the reality of death and his fears. Death up until this point had been an opaque nightmare of flashing green lights and grief over his parents, but the dementors force him to experience his mother’s death more clearly.

The loss of his parents grows heavier in his mind, and we see him consider his fears in light of this renewed grief. It’s made clear that Harry is not chiefly afraid of Voldemort or his own death, rather he is afraid of falling into the clutches of such fear. He discusses this with Lupin, reflecting on their lesson with the boggart, a creature which transforms into what a person fears most.

“Well,” said Lupin, frowning slightly, “I assumed that if the boggart faced you, it would assume the shape of Lord Voldemort.”

[…]

“Clearly, I was wrong,” said Lupin, still frowning at Harry. “But I didn’t think it a good idea for Lord Voldemort to materialize in the staffroom. I imagined that people would panic.”

“But then,” said Harry honestly. “I—I remembered those dementors.”

“I see,” said Lupin thoughtfully. “Well, well… I’m impressed.” He smiled slightly at the look of surprise on Harry’s face. “That suggests that what you fear most of all is—fear. Very wise, Harry.” (PoA, 155)

Fear is innate within human life. We simply can’t avoid it. We all have fears as varied as those seen within the boggart lesson. Some of us fear tangible threats such as murderers, sickness, beasts, or injury. Others fear the intangible such as madness, death, pain, and sorrow. Harry’s fear stems from his lived experience of genuine horrors. His fear is not of the horrors themselves but of finding himself unable to push back against them. His fear is not directly of death but rather the fear that death might be worth fearing, that the loss of his parents is even greater than it already seems.

Once we arrive at The Goblet of Fire, the series takes a darker turn. Harry has confronted and survived encounters with servants of Voldemort and even a fragment of Voldemort’s soul. However, while death has always cast a shadow over his life, Harry has never dealt with it head on up to this point. Death is a vague memory of screams and green flashes, not a real and present pain. It’s something of the past, a painful jolt of nostalgia for what could have been. His first real encounter with death, face to face, comes during Fake Moody’s lesson on the Unforgivable Curses. The final spider is doomed as the only curse remaining is death.

So that was how his parents had died…exactly like that spider. Had they been unblemished and unmarked too? Had they simply seen the flash of green light and heard the rush of speeding death, before life was wiped from their bodies? (The Goblet of Fire, 216)

This is, of course, not the first time Harry has seen a spider or insect die. It is, however, the first time such a death is put into the context of how his parents had died. This spider shared their fate. He now knows what their final moments may have been like, and that their lives were snuffed out without a trace. Life is fragile, and the illusion of the untouched corpse masks the horror of what just occurred.

Perhaps we can sympathize with Voldemort’s fear of death and quest for immortality. As I said above, it is natural to fear death and to avoid it. He uses this quest to conquer death as a boast for his powers, but this, too, is an illusion. It disguises his terror that he might one day cease to exist. Despite all his powers, despite his knowledge and skill, he cannot simply defeat death with brute force. His powers are meaningless. No thoughts of an afterlife could comfort Voldemort because death in his mind is final. Nothing can surpass it or exist beyond it. Death is the enemy, and it is one that must be avoided, if never truly defeated.

“And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death. They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living?” (GoF, 648)

This monologue from Voldemort mirrors the conversation between Harry and Firenze in The Philosopher’s Stone. Ultimately, his pursuit is a desperate clinging to life. He survives only in the most generous of definitions, having mutilated his soul and cursing himself. Life is not meaningful to Voldemort, only the continuation of his power. He goes on to discuss the pain and suffering he experienced as a result of his attempted murder of Harry, showcasing how far he has fallen and how desperate and terrified he truly is of death.

“I miscalculated, my friends, I admit it. My curse was deflected by the woman’s foolish sacrifice, and it rebounded upon myself. Aaah… pain beyond pain, my friends; nothing could have prepared me for it. I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost… but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know… I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal—to conquer death. And now, I was tested, and it appeared that one or more of my experiments had worked… for I had not been killed, though the curse should have done it.” (GoF, 653)

The conquest of death. He survived. He suffered terribly, but he survived. Surely a life of such debasement and inhumanity is not worth living, but life is not the goal. Voldemort’s search for immortality has nothing to do with life, it has to do with death. Death is to be feared. Life is a means to the end of avoiding death. It is expendable whether in regard to the lives of others or Voldemort’s own quality of life. So long as death is avoided, all else is secondary. Just like with the unicorn’s blood, Voldemort will curse his life if it means he escapes the cold embrace of the abyss.

Harry’s parents died by sacrificing themselves, considering their own survival as less important than another’s. This marks the key difference between Voldemort and those who resist him. Voldemort will sacrifice others for the sake of continued existence, but they will sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. And the irony is that while he strives to defeat death, it must always act as a looming shadow over his half-life.

Next week we will continue with books 5 and 6.

The first way is enjoying it as children’s entertainment. This means that you enjoy it solely or chiefly in the context of it being for children. The story is straightforward and simple, there are only a few major themes which do not move beyond scratching the surface, and it is there as mere entertainment for children that may also be amusing to their parents. It has no in intellectual or emotional value to you as an adult, but you may be able to enjoy it alongside the child for whom it is intended.

There is nothing inherently wrong with children’s entertainment of this sort. It merely speaks to a particular audience at a particular point in time. It is limited in its meaning and reach, but children may always find value in things that adults neglect. Such stories will not be revisited by adults apart from extreme cases of nostalgia. They will resurface in our minds only when something jogs our memory, and we will have a faint pang of longing for childhood before it dissipates and we return to the present.

The second way is to enjoy, or better, appreciate, the media in its own right. This would be a piece of children’s fiction that touches on ideas or themes deep in the human psyche. Children’s media often deals with archetypes in a more direct way than adult media which enables such stories to have universal value when done well. In my eyes, ATLA is a prime example of this sort. It is a series that was clearly directed toward an audience in the range of 8-14 years old, but it remains fully enjoyable and entertaining for an adult audience.

A few elements of this may be the quality of writing, the complexity of the characters, and the maturity of the themes and plot lines. A piece of children’s media can be as dark, complex, and emotionally impactful as many examples from adult media. Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is another example of this. These are stories that carry meaning far beyond simple entertainment for children, but remain meaningful to audiences long after childhood. These are stories that an adult might take time to watch, even without a child present, because they are stories worth revisiting and appreciating. They just happen to be directed primarily toward children.

Nostalgia certainly plays a role in revisiting these stories as well, but it is not the chief motivation. This current viewing of ATLA is probably my fifth or sixth overall. It is a series I return to every few years, and it feels special each time. I intend to watch it again in a couple years, and I certainly intend on showing it to my future children. There is a sense of nostalgia for me, remembering the first time I saw the show, or my state in life when that viewing occurred, but the series is enjoyable in this moment and not solely in light of those past moments. It is a series that has something to say to its audience, regardless of age group. As I said above, children’s media often deals directly in archetypes, allowing for a sense of purity in exploring even complex themes of good and evil.

A major virtue of ATLA is its character development. You see growth and maturity from all of the characters, even the adults. These character journeys are explored organically and never feel forced. (Spoiler alert for those who have not seen the show) Zuko’s legendary redemption arc is a long process that includes several steps backward before he finally finds his footing. His redemption arc grabs people so fiercely, I think, because he fails so much along the way and slides back to his former self.

It would be nice if we could embark on our own journeys of improvement and never fall short, just cut to a training montage and at the end we’re new and improved. But life doesn’t work that way, and it doesn’t work that way for Zuko either. Even with his metamorphosis in book 2, leading to his release of Appa from the Dai Li’s prison, he still falls back to his desire to please his father and follow the destiny that had been assigned to him.

Zuko fails and falls short many times, and it’s frustrating to watch just as it’s frustrating to experience in our own lives. His arc connects with people so effectively because of how many steps back he takes before, at last, making progress. Just when you think his arc is complete, and that he has found his footing, he slips and falls away again. The relatableness of Zuko’s flaws has enshrined his journey in the canon of all-time greatest character arcs.

Whenever I seek to change something in my life, such as correcting my sleep schedule or improving my diet or leaving behind a bad habit, I inevitably fail from time to time. These backward steps aren’t the end of the road and his arc is a visualization of that. As children, we all had images of ourselves growing up to be a certain kind of person. For many of us, we fall short of the people we thought we would become or the people we thought we were. There is hope in our failures though, and with each one we prove that we can try again. Part of the impact stories have is in their ability to grant us an outsider’s perspective of the things we struggle with in our own lives.

Iroh, one of the wisest and most balanced characters of the series, also falls short and takes backward steps. He chooses to aid Zhao in his invasion of the Northern Water Tribe, despite having retired from his time in the Fire Nation army. Even if his primary intention was to support Zuko, it shows that Iroh had not yet fully given up his willingness to support the Fire Nation’s war, even temporarily.

While he was never as aggressive or volatile as his brother, Iroh’s past is complicated and it sometimes bleeds into his present throughout the series. Iroh’s center of gravity is revealed about halfway through book 2 when he mourns the loss of his son who had died fighting for the Fire Nation under Iroh’s leadership. His grief is a driving force in his desire to seek peace and to guide his nephew, Zuko, away from a path of anger and war.

There is no point in life when our development is complete. We will never reach the point of no longer needing to learn or grow as a person simply because we’ve arrived at our twilight years. Change may become harder as we grow older, but our duty to improve and to learn never ceases. The path to human perfection is long, exhausting, and impossible to complete in this life. Our failures do not halt our development, rather, they are the means by which we develop.

We fall short, and we try again. We fail, and we strive to do better. We are defined by the steps we take forward, by the fact that we seek to move forward. Failure only defines us if we choose to remain in it. This is wisdom for all people at all stages of life. It is wisdom found in children’s fiction. It is a simple truth that can discovered in countless places, sometimes becoming most glaringly obvious and impactful when presented to us like we’re children. Truth is meaningful no matter where it is found, because all truth comes from the same source, and truth is eternal.

My family moved when I was thirteen and our next-door neighbors, much to my parents’ chagrin, introduced me to World of Warcraft. As a lonely, homeschooled teenager, I dove in headfirst. Perhaps another post in the future can discuss particular experiences on WoW, but for now I just want to address one aspect: the lore. I fell in love with the lore of Azeroth very quickly and spent a significant amount of time reading about it both in-game and online.

The adventure of the game was great as well, as were the friends I met there, but the lore stood out as a special highlight. Eventually, I was able to recite the basic timeline of WoW lore from beginning to end. As you can imagine, no one was really keen on listening to me prattle on about it. My mom humored me once, but her eyes glazed over by the time the Old Gods showed up. It made sense to me why I enjoyed the lore so much though. It was simply the history of a fictional world.

As a result, I eventually decided that it would be a fun experiment to create my own fantasy setting and lore. This became my first foray into world-building. The initial idea was that the lore would belong to a video game, another MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) like WoW. That continued to be the case for a few years as I developed the lore, scrapped it, started over, revisited old ideas, and scrapped them once more.

The early years of creating Roth, the Seventh Realm, were tumultuous and chaotic, mirroring the actual lore itself. Some elements of the setting stuck with me throughout various drafts, but others came and went, occasionally popping back up before being erased again. As with any creative endeavor, sometimes fresh starts are needed. It can be difficult to remove bits of lore than you hold dear, but at times it is for the good of the lore as a whole.

It seemed clear to me that a good quality fantasy world needed to be consistent and have basic explanations for all major assumptions. It needed a clear creation story, whether or not the denizens of the world knew about it accurately. It also needed to have a cosmology that described and explained the unseen celestial powers at work in the universe. These fundamentals became the primary focus of my world-building for years.

Many charts, timelines, and cosmic maps have been developed for Roth over the years. The basic creative power within the lore underwent significant alterations before I finally settled on its current form a few years ago. I’ve always gravitated toward the ‘big-picture’ elements like creation itself, cosmic hierarchies, and the various religious traditions and pantheons present within the setting.

As organized religion is one of the necessary pillars for human civilization, it became my first priority when developing fictional societies. You’ll find that cosmic and spiritual beliefs set the tone for culture and political systems, and they must be understood before we can fully appreciate the societies they belong to. I recall filling several pages with pantheons of deities, connecting them like family units and granting each one a sphere of power. Some were greater than others, and some had powerful weapons or items associated with them. At times, it was more fun to simply plan out bits of deep lore for a fantasy setting than it was to plan out actual stories.

This was still an occasional truth after I had decided to write novels based in Roth. The abstract can sometimes be more enticing than the concrete. As with all things, however, theory must give way to practice eventually. What is history if not the sum total of human narrative? We may learn history as a list of facts about the past, but it is best understood through a human lens rather than through a cold and detached survey of bullet points. A world needs stories for it to come to life. Roth is no different from Earth in that regard.

You’ll never hear me—or read me—say that world-building is not worthwhile in its own right. It absolutely is. But it remains incomplete without narrative. A historian could list all the prominent figures and major events of King Henry VIII’s reign alongside relevant dates and locations, but the information one could gather from such a listing would be severely limited.

Names don’t mean very much without persons behind them. Events mean little without context and purpose. History is rendered empty if the story is removed or neglected. It’s for this reason that world-building must also serve an end and not merely be an end in and of itself. World-building is a sort of raw creativity, but eventually it needs to take form.

On a similar note, narratives and characters fall flat without rich worlds and settings. You cannot sacrifice one without in some way damaging the others. Once I developed a concept for a novel, a series of novels in fact, I took to developing characters. An excel spreadsheet exists in a deep dark place on my computer with over fifty characters described and organized within.

These characters have relationships, personal histories, and ambitions within the context of their placement in the setting. They have their own worldviews and ideas about the nature of the world, and their pasts impact the way they settle into the narrative whole. Some character profiles are more detailed than others, naturally, but it is important to bring in texture regardless of the character’s significance.

Even if a person plays a small role in your life, they are still affected by events and ideas beyond your awareness. Even if you, or the audience of a story, never finds out these details, their existence is still key to the person or character in question. This series has been temporarily shelved due to its complexity, but once I have more experience with writing novels, I will revisit it. So just see this post as a very long-winded hype-up for a series that may come to fruition in about 10-15 years. Get excited. I know I am.

Returning to World of Warcraft, I think one of the most impressive features of the game is how much weight there is to the world. The history of the races and cultures are clearly felt and seen whether you are questing, doing dungeons/raids, or just exploring. You may not know all the lore behind the Scarlet Monastery, but you know there’s history there. The same may be said of the Ruins of Lordaeron and the Undercity. The history is felt even before it’s known. That is a major element of what drew me into the game’s story. Not only could I learn about Azeroth’s fictional history, but I could also see the places described in the lore.

World-building serves a similar purpose in novels or any purely text-based narrative. The visuals may not be direct as in a movie or game, but they are seen and felt nonetheless. A city with ruined walls has a history. A man with a scar wrapping around the side of his left eye has a past. Whether you see these with your eyes or your imagination, it makes little difference. The weight of that history is there, and even if it never plays a major role in the narrative, it provides texture and layers to the story.

Realism is necessary in almost all stories, even and especially in fantasy. It is what allows us to connect with these fictional worlds and characters. Without internal consistency and a hint of reality, we would struggle to establish emotional connections or find the narratives truly meaningful.

This is an issue seen in history lessons in school. History is often taught disconnected from humanity, as a series of dates to be memorized or events to be filtered through a modern lens. History is a story we tell ourselves, it is the story through which we see humanity’s nature, whether triumph and glory or corruption and unspeakable evil. It is humanity’s self-revelation.

The grounding of history in human reality, human stories, makes it compelling for even cynical students. Likewise, world-building serves the purpose of expanding a story beyond the simple background. It brings texture and complexity, and without it there is a loss of depth. Characters are made more impactful and personable when they have pasts and when they live in places with history.

Stories are remembered not only for their characters, but for their worlds. We’ve all seen polls asking which imaginary world you would want to live in if you had the chance. There’s an antsy excitement that comes when you first start to explore a new setting. This is what draws us into fantasy and other works of speculative fiction first, before any characters have been firmly established. It is the greatest strength of speculative fiction. World-building may be done with any genre of story, but it is in its purist form within more imaginative genres. These fantastical stories participate in reality through the grounding of their world-building, and they come alive through interwoven narratives.

Stories are the means by which we share our creations with others. Few people would be interested in reading page after page of world-building notes. The story brings it to life for another’s imagination. As humans, we have an obligation to create, and to share our creations with others. No one truly creates for themselves, but we desire instead for others to share in enjoying the labor of our hands and minds.

Which worlds have most drawn you in? What was the last world in which you lost yourself?