History... but with Dragons

First up, let me say that I am all about "history, but with dragons".

Did I mention that I'm writing a novel? Well, I am, and now I have mentioned it: and it's very much the Hundred Years' War only with some more magic, some cultural changes when I feel like it, and of course some dragons.* Shameless plug!

And that seems to be a trend right now, sort of. Not a trend like, say, "vampires" (too popular for their own good) or "plucky heroines in a dystopia"--nothing so big. But there are a lot of them nonetheless, although in some ways it's ridiculous to lump them all into one category.

For instance, my novel, like those of GRRM (though I have a distaste for lumping his work, which I have major problems with, next to my own!**), is really just "fantasy", with a historically-inspired flavor, that also likes dragons. Because dragons are awesome.

And then there are works that are much more strongly linked to actual history. At the furthest end of the spectrum are works such as Naomi Novik's Temeraire and subsequent books, which I can highly recommend. It's the Napoleonic era, only there's an Air Corps in England--because people ride dragons. Dragon-riding, of course, has been done before (because, I must reiterate, dragons are awesome--why would you not want to ride one?)***. But the historical context is new.

What does it add? Well, it's an original context for dragons, obviously, and creates a particular kind of "let's revisit history" feel not otherwise attainable. But we can also ask, what does adding dragons to history do? It serves, if you will, as a highlighter to make unfamiliar issues we're accustomed to in a purely-historical context. It heightens themes. The Napoleonic era was characterized by increasing trends of colonialization, growing contact with unfamiliar, far-off societies. On a practical level, having dragons flying about lets you visit those places much more easily! But narratively, they act as a focus for the issues arising from the colonial aspirations of Europeans. Dragons themselves are, in their way, subjugated: is this acceptable? Their relations across cultures are shaped by, but in important ways different from the ways human strangers interact: what lessons can be learned from that?

[Aside: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is also related to category, although it lacks any actual dragons, which does give it a different feel. I mention it in part because it is one of the most brilliant works of modern fantasy (the term is not meant to be ironic) I have ever read. You should read it too. Although it lacks the iconic dragon-ness, it again uses fantasy to elaborate upon historical themes (again in the Napoleonic era), especially gender balances, national myths, and the relevance of history itself. In young adult lit, Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy (and the fourth stand-alone book) does much the same: power is concentrated in the hands of demon-summoning magicians, whose magical power and relationships with their otherworldly servants (and the rest of society) is indicative of the problematic structures of power within an oligarchic polity.]

Most recently, I just finished Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, which is actually a dragon society. That's cool: when was the last time you actually had an entire civilization of dragons, rather than dragons simply incorporated into human society? More specifically, that society is, with the necessary changes to accommodate dragon-ness, essentially early/mid-nineteenth-century England. There were humans in the past, and they still exist somewhere in the world, but are almost entirely physically absent from the story, and the dragon culture gets along just fine without them. Within their own sphere, then, the familial dynamics and social structures reflect values of our real historical time (including tensions between Protestants and Catholics, uncomfortable relations with the serving classes, and gender roles) but heighten them through the unfamiliarity of having it all be done by hat-wearing dragons. It makes you take notice of the underlying mechanics much more aggressively (though this is not to say that they cannot become evident in other historicizing genres, of course!).

[Second aside: Interestingly, the Novik books also have at least one dragon society (I have only read the first six, after which they no longer had pretty covers and are hard to find in England): in the heartlands of the African continent--I'm guessing it's the Great Rift Valley, but that could be entirely wrong--there are a group of dragons living without contact with humans. That opened up yet another social model with which to compare the human-dragon society.]

I have always felt that dragons (and, in fact, elves/fairies/whatnot) are most interesting insofar as they stem from different elements within the human disposition. Dragons, in addition to being awesome, are often the embodiment of negative human tendencies such as greed, violence, or a lust for power. (I explore this in a short story, The Price of Gold. Oops, second plug!). Clarke's fairies embody human actors in very much a historical mode, but without an essential element of human compassion; this makes them both familiar and unsettling.

This is not a particularly new observation in itself: myths and legends have long tended to be analyzed in terms of projecting our own fears, hopes, worries, etc. on an imaginary prospect. I do find it interesting that this is often tied (and has been tied for a good while) onto specific historical moments, as if dragons and their fantasy friends actually belong most in a familiar world, to shake it up and make it into something new. There also seems to be a preponderance of 19th-century settings, which is significant in itself (even the more modern Stroud books rely heavily on the impact of the great magician Gladstone, and Britain still functions in the mode of an Empire): a moment when society shifted away from what it had been**** and had to be redefined, with good options and bad.

Dragons, perhaps even more so than other fantastic creatures, can exemplify these choices in society. Because nothing sends a message across like a creature that mirrors our own concerns, but wears wings and breathes fire.


*It's called The Gates of Yesterday and can be read on-line (still in-progress) if you drop me a line to give you access.
**Hubris!
***Oh right. That would be epically dangerous. Also, they are not real.
****The telescope of history strikes again in our obsession with this.

[Edit: I just remembered that, in France, Pierre Pevel has a trilogy that also does the dragons-in-history thing--in the Paris of Louis XIII this time, so it's kind of a fantastic Alexandre Dumas. To a degree that one's more literary in character, in that it's goal is more reimagining the Three Musketeers only with a magical twist rather than working directly with the historical situation proper. On the other hand, recasting the power balances of Europe as manipulated by dragons could be a fair analogy. Still, since the dragons are not the actual figures of political power--in that, say, Richelieu is not a dragon, nor are any of the Spanish leaders with which France was, at the time, at war--the feel is different; frankly, the dragons feel more like an intrusion into the historical world (however literary and dramatized it may be) than the ones which fulfill a more integrated, social role. Still, they're quite a fun read (everyone loves a musketeer...).]