One that always annoys me is the always obviously evil adviser, or even worse the brother who tries to steal the throne from the rightful heir.

Say hello to King Jonathan of Tortall, king during all four Tortall series written by Tamora Pierce.

One that always annoys me is the always obviously evil adviser, or even worse the brother who tries to steal the throne from the rightful heir.

Unless its someone like Renly Baratheon.

Hm.. its hard to tell from just a description. Easier for us in text and literature.

What do people think of Touchstone? (...For those that have read Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom.)

And how dare you have creases in your tights! They stuffed them with horsehair padding or even grain to keep them from getting creases or wrinkles.

Reality is a strange place indeed.

You could try Kings.)
It may be too speculative, though.

@ Corsair: well, I’m flexible. Inaccuracies, overused cliches, whatever.

uhh… avoid writing politics if you know nothing about how politics/power actually works. And yes, I am glaring at you Paolini and that indeed is murderous rage in my eyes.

@Witrin—Mmm, yes, I’d say Touchstone is a good, normal king. Although I will say that he does have the usual angst about not wanting to be king—but thankfully he doesn’t promptly then become TEH BEST KING EVAR. I liked that.

How all non-human races are ruled buy a monarchy who commands all members of that race with unquestioned authority.

All elves are ruled by a single Elven King or Queen. All dwarves are ruled by a single Dwarf King. All fairies are ruled by a single Fairy Queen. All Orcs and Goblins and Dragons and every minor vaguely humanoid races have a monarchy. I mean, even Philip Pullman had Bear-King and Witch-Queen. gags

I’d really like to see a non-human race with a goverment type other than monarchy, you know. It doesn’t even always work for all human society, so how is it supposed to work every time for species who don’t even have a intellect similar to ours?

The fact that there is only one government for each race always irked me, too. Human societies are always seemed to be plagued with different governments and nations in conflict, but an Elvenking rules all elves, and the Bear-King rules all bears. Why can’t elves have several monarchies, instead of one? What if the dwarves of North form a theocratic government, while the dwarves of South prefer to live as nomadic clans?

And many fantasy stories take place in a world where elves and dwarves are ‘fading’ for whatever reason, so it makes sense that they’d be more centralised as a race. This also allows the young, dynamic and easily corrupted humans to take centre stage with their more diverse cultures without causing too many territorial disputes.

This also allows the young, dynamic and easily corrupted humans to take centre stage with their more diverse cultures without causing too many territorial disputes.

Well put, Moldorm. ;)

That would be surprisingly original.

Ooh, yes, let’s have Elrohir and Elladan try to overthrow Elrond!

I can see it now.

While Eragon is away fighting Galby, Arya overthrows Izlanzadi and flanks the Varden army, and after Eragon kills Galby then Arya kills him and claims the throne of Alageisia.

Makes perfect sense, specially given that Paolini continuously portrays Islanzadí as a emotional and ineffective queen while Arya is supposed to be the godly, goodly, all-knowing goddess. It will be for the good of the Alagaesia.

I haven’t read it…

You know, that really is a crappy made-up name for a Queen. Ditto for the country.

Another Tolkein nut!

Yay for the Silmarillion :D

Elvish politics (in LotR) are incredibly confusing. Even if they are a “fading” species during LotR, they’ve still got multiple factions.

Anyway, back to fantasy royalty. Aside from the constant cliches, most royalty in fantasy is over-simplified for my tastes. It’s like in Spain, back in the time of Isabella and Ferdinand. Before they married and united Castile and Aragon, Spain was a conglomeration of territories ruled by powerful nobles. Sure, there were kings of each area, but they had to have the support of the nobles, and when the nobles decided to support someone else, that person was the new king. Same thing in Germany, England (in this case, they had to rely on Parliament to do what they wanted, because Parliament controlled the money… at least after 1215 AD), everywhere in Middle Ages Europe. Sure, there were some monarchs who had a lot of power and were evil dictators, blah blah blah. But many had extremely limited powers and survived only by keeping on good terms with the nobles.

Also, that joke about how the peasants don’t know they have a king in Monty Python and the Holy Grail wasn’t entirely inaccurate. While I’m pretty sure the peasants knew they had a king somewhere, the lower classes would have been far more worried about their particular lord or other noble than the overall government. Oh! That’s another thing! Why is there never any feudalism in fantasy books? The system, although abused a lot, made sense, so any place where invaders/wars were common seems like a likely place for feudalism to grow up.

ASoIaF is a good book, though. (at least from what I’ve heard) Bad fantasy books always have either an evil king with supreme power and conveniently no nobles whatsoever or a benevolent but old and doddering king who is being threatened by an earl or duke or somebody.

@ Corsair: I read the Silmarillion and enjoyed it! It’s been a while, however, so my memory of fine-details might be off.

I really do need to read ASOIAF. I can’t find it anywhere, though! So freakin’ annoying.

Then again, Tolkien really doesn’t go deeply into government in Middle Earth in any case. Not like that takes away from the story…

Back to royalty – what’s the difference between a rebellious princess and one with Rebellious Princess Syndrome?

@ Smartalien: A princess who’s rebellious in stereotypical ways? Refusing to have an arranged marriage, hates wearing dresses, etc.

But this makes me wonder what kind of princess would not be stereotypically rebellious.

A rebellious princess is one who refuses to follow society’s expectations, for one reason or another. RPS is a reason, or rather a lack of a reason.

Keela from the Chanters of Tremaris by Kate Constable is an example of the above.

Keela from the Chanters of Tremaris by Kate Constable is an example of the above.

Ooh, yeah, I remember her. She was v. pretty, as with all princesses, but she went about undermining things in more creative ways.