Grittiness, realism, honor, and the life in the middle-ages

[Galactus]

Could an unmarried woman enjoy a night out alone in the evening, drinking and dancing, or flirt with a man without being raped? Or travel alone? Of course not. Few women would have thought about it. Rape in the Middle Ages was as common as it is in Saudi Arabia today: normally, it doesnt happen, because few women would be allowed to put themselves into vulnerable situations.

That's not really true, was doing so a risk? Yes. (It still is) but unmarried women certainly did flirt, and dance, and even travel, without neccessarily being raped. (a simple rummage through contemporary literature, not to mention court records, show this amply)

[Darth Richard II]

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain how we even got onto this tangent about rape. I know little and less about the statistical average of prosecutions for rape. I think the genesis of the conversation began with someone wondering how prevalent it was.

Are you really that shocked? It's either rape and/or Bakker after page 3.

[Errant Bard]

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain how we even got onto this tangent about rape. I know little and less about the statistical average of prosecutions for rape. I think the genesis of the conversation began with someone wondering how prevalent it was.

It started with the argument Abraham describes: some people claiming it was (or was not) really like that in the middle ages, and the whole grit thing ending up somehow resting on whether or not there were rapes and punishment for them. This is of course irrelevant, as Abraham says: Fantasy is not in discussion with history (it is also a fallacy to reduce the "grit" and potential "inaccuracies" in Fantasy to just rape)

[Callan S.]

But I'm sure if it could be shown there were very few rapes in history, then then people would abandon 'fantasy is not in discussion with history' and start saying it wasn't like that.

[C.T. Phipps]

George R.R. Martin's depiction of the Middle Ages is more honest than the majority of depictions out there. However, I will say he tends to throw in sort of a cornicopia of the problems that real-life tended to avoid. Yeah, war is pretty hellish in real life and the "rules of it" are not precisely NEW but rape/pillage/burn isn't something which is avoided in conflicts even today.

It didn't ALWAYS happen, though. In Henry V, they were hanging people for battlefield looting and taking personal spoils/horrors unleashed was a negotiating tactic. I.e. "I'll do this if you don't surrender" not, "it will happen regardless."

Still, one needs look no further than the life of Henry VIII to know how utterly scumbag-like the nobility could be. The Tudors was kind of hilarious in they obviously wanted to do a period costume drama about sex and romance and betrayal only everytime they looked up Henry's deeds during this time, it was him doing a new atrocity.

But, really, they were SLIGHTLY better. The Game of Thrones is like the 30 Years War during the Black Death and throwing the politics of Renassiance Italy with the Reformation.

[Arthmail]

It is a fallacy to have fantasy equated with history. But it is almost semantics. As Ron Pealman says: "War. War never changes." More succinctly it could be said that humans never change. It is a problem of genetics, of the fact that we are made as we are, and war and the harshness of life in the middle ages are reflected in this simple understanding.

Fantasy might not be historically accurate. But it needs to be accurate enough to reflect the vagaries of the human condition.

[Richard]

Fantasy might not be historically accurate. But it needs to be accurate enough to reflect the vagaries of the human condition.

Spot on. For me, the weird thing has always been that the debate arose in the first place - elsewhere in literature, that imperative to address the human condition is so much an accepted part of the terms of engagement that it barely merits mention, let alone heated and strident dispute. I don't know what it is about the fantasy genre that's allowed it to somehow hermetically seal itself off this way - reminds me of that comedy with Brendan Fraser and Christopher Walken, about the kid who grows up in isolation in a nuclear bunker hidden from the world, and then emerges shocked and bewildered into the real world at the age of 35............

[Datepalm]

Fantasy might not be historically accurate. But it needs to be accurate enough to reflect the vagaries of the human condition.

But does any one work need to reflect them all? It's a question of tonality and worldbuilding. Not worldbuilding in the technical, geographic sense - this many cities here, this many fjords there - but in what it conveys. ASOIAF is gritty but also epic. Tolkien kind of melancholy. WOT is detailed and rather bureaucratic. These are different worldviews. A super-gritty, gross, brutal middle ages works for the story of a particular book. A dreamy, fairy-tale middle ages works for a different one. It just doesn't strike me as a contradiction, or any kind of right or wrong. Reading fiction for accuracy is a fool's game in the first place.

[Happy Ent]

I, too, think it is completely valid to write literature that is removed from the human condition. Fantasy is certainly a good genre for that. I find such things irrelevant, but to each his own.

(A lot of science fiction has characters who strike me as psychologically irrelevant, and societies that I can’t image ever working. But that’s the point of that genre.)

[Datepalm]

I, too, think it is completely valid to write literature that is removed from the human condition. Fantasy is certainly a good genre for that. I find such things irrelevant, but to each his own.

(A lot of science fiction has characters who strike me as psychologically irrelevant, and societies that I can’t image ever working. But that’s the point of that genre.)

I think the point is that you can't sum up the human condition as any one thing. There was an interview with a politician here once where she said - proudly! - that she never reads fiction, only non-fiction, because what can she possibly learn from some made-up story? I thought it was one of the most bizarre things i'd ever heard (and it honestly made me regret voting for her party). All fiction is fake, and as such unrealistic, in a way. That's hardly the point of it, not does it make it untrue or necessarily dishonest about the human condition.

[Richard]

But does any one work need to reflect them all?

Absolutely not. In fact, I'm not sure any one work - of any genre/type - could. But I think it's fair to say that the more of the human condition a work manages to touch accurately, the more quality we ascribe to it. That can manifest itself in a variety of ways - characters that feel real, situations that ring true, dialogue that doesn't "clunk", a fresh perspective on some well-worn aspect of life - and most works of fiction have it to some greater or lesser extent (contrary to popular simplified belief, there's actually a fair bit of gritty realism scattered about in LOTR - though it does tend to come in very small chunks). But what's bizarre is this allergic reaction that seems to have emerged in fantasy the last couple of years to what is no more than an attempt to turn up the dial on convincing human detail in nasty contexts

[SeanF]

It is a fallacy to have fantasy equated with history. But it is almost semantics. As Ron Pealman says: "War. War never changes." More succinctly it could be said that humans never change. It is a problem of genetics, of the fact that we are made as we are, and war and the harshness of life in the middle ages are reflected in this simple understanding.

Fantasy might not be historically accurate. But it needs to be accurate enough to reflect the vagaries of the human condition.

The wars that most Western countries currently engage in are "small wars", like many limited wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's easy to assume that raping, burning, and pillaging is something that's been consigned to the history books, if you live in a Western society.

Yet, it clearly hasn't. Yugoslavia in the nineties is a good example of a fairly advanced, prosperous, society lurching into civil war, and the various sides resorting to practices that would be familiar to any student of medieval history.

[Datepalm]

But what's bizarre is this allergic reaction that seems to have emerged in fantasy the last couple of years to what is no more than an attempt to turn up the dial on convincing human detail in nasty contexts

I think it's two fold. For a while there the gritty, blood and gore stuff seemed to have become the default, celebrated mode, so a backlash is natural. On the one hand it way maybe perceived as shoving out the less gritty stuff, which then misses those bits of the human condition. Not because that's more 'realistic', but because lack of realism is one of the tools fiction uses to explore that same human condition. Saying that a medieval setting must have rape and disease or it's untrue limits the amount of things that can be explored, it doesn't expand it - from that perspective a defense of anti-grit strikes me as natural and even necessary.

Secondly, there's the political aspect. Some gritty stuff is very good at taking a sexist, racist, violent world and making it into a story that isn't sexist, racist or glamourizes violence. And then some isn't. Plenty of grit does relish the opportunity to just have humiliating, humiliated depicitions of women in particular and cosily wraps it in 'realism'.

[Green Gogol]

Secondly, there's the political aspect. Some gritty stuff is very good at taking a sexist, racist, violent world and making it into a story that isn't sexist, racist or glamourizes violence. And then some isn't. Plenty of grit does relish the opportunity to just have humiliating, humiliated depicitions of women in particular and cosily wraps it in 'realism'.

I agree with that. I started the thread to know more about the real middle ages compared to the popular notion of the middle ages. I won't restate my question and the reason behind it since I've done so quite a few times already.

But, I think an author have a responsibility about those things. If you put your characters in a sexist, racist and violent world, I think you need to do something relevant with it.

Also, non-gritty does not mean a lack of violence, sexism, racism, blood and gore. In the Lord of the Rings, there is violence, and there is racism, there is torture, people suffer, get hurt or go crazy. But it's not the focus of the story. It's a story about a desperate attempt to save the world.

A work becomes gritty when it puts a lot of emphasis on horrible things and there is a lack of "good" things in it.

Now, is it important to show these things? I don't know. For me, one powerful scene that troubled me deeply in a movie, was the scene in Revenge of the Sith when Anakin gets to the Jedi Coucil Room, and there's this bunch of kids hiding. And they go to Anakin for help, and he draw his lightsaber. And the scene ends there. I think it was more powerful this way, than to have shown him actually slaughtering the kids, with blood and limbs flying everywhere.

[Green Gogol]

^{Arthmail, you seem to argue that human is a nasty beast, who don't need much to do bad things to other. Yet in a previous post you did argue that you need to deshumanize your opponents in a war to help you soldier do what they have to do. Isn't that contradictory?}

^{Also, I'm wondering. The point of black and white fantasy is to show that even confronted with the worst, human can do what it's right, and keep on going, keep on getting better, to offer you a role model. Now, what is the point of gritty fantasy? To show that life is shit? That good is dumb?}

^{And I'd like to put all of you in a situation I've been in, please tell me what you would do? You are walking on the street, and there is 3 other person around. 2 girls, each waking alone, and a guy. Suddenly the guy gets near the first girl, and punch her in the face. Next, he punch the second girl in the face, then walks away. What would you do?}

[SeanF]

^{And I'd like to put all of you in a situation I've been in, please tell me what you would do? You are walking on the street, and there is 3 other person around. 2 girls, each waking alone, and a guy. Suddenly the guy gets near the first girl, and punch her in the face. Next, he punch the second girl in the face, then walks away. What would you do?}

It would depend on how big and tough he appeared to be. If I thought I could tackle him, I would do. If I thought I couldn't, I'd call the police on my mobile 'phone.

[SeanF]

I agree with that. I started the thread to know more about the real middle ages compared to the popular notion of the middle ages. I won't restate my question and the reason behind it since I've done so quite a few times already.

But, I think an author have a responsibility about those things. If you put your characters in a sexist, racist and violent world, I think you need to do something relevant with it.

Also, non-gritty does not mean a lack of violence, sexism, racism, blood and gore. In the Lord of the Rings, there is violence, and there is racism, there is torture, people suffer, get hurt or go crazy. But it's not the focus of the story. It's a story about a desperate attempt to save the world.

A work becomes gritty when it puts a lot of emphasis on horrible things and there is a lack of "good" things in it.

Now, is it important to show these things? I don't know. For me, one powerful scene that troubled me deeply in a movie, was the scene in Revenge of the Sith when Anakin gets to the Jedi Coucil Room, and there's this bunch of kids hiding. And they go to Anakin for help, and he draw his lightsaber. And the scene ends there. I think it was more powerful this way, than to have shown him actually slaughtering the kids, with blood and limbs flying everywhere.

I think we all have different levels of tolerance for these things. One passage I found very hard to stomach is in Best Served Cold, by Joe Abercrombie, where the heroine of the novel smashes a man apart with a hammer (albeit, he's obnoxious), and it's described very graphically. But, I enjoyed the book overall, for its black humour.

I was also pretty disturbed by Arya's story in A Clash of Kings, when I read it for the first time.

[Galactus]

I go to the trouble of finding and trying to decipher medieval swedish law and what do I get for it? Pah. Not even recognition.

[Happy Ent]

I go to the trouble of finding and trying to decipher medieval swedish law and what do I get for it? Pah. Not even recognition.

Thank you, it was really interesting! (But Arthmail was unhappy about the rape tangent, which is why I didn’t reply.)

[Arthmail]

Green Gogol: My ability to quote appears to be lost to me, not sure why.

What I have been arguing is that history is a hot shitty mess. But there is no contradiction in what I have been saying. Humans do tend towards the brutish, in my worldview, when the going gets tough. In many instances communities will fall together to help out towards common causes. This is largely dependent on groups identifying with each other. We are a part of this group, and we will help in this way, when this happens. But in war, for instance, people have dehumanized each other into the scary "other" for ages. It is a way to get over people's natural inclination not to hurt each other.

I can see you saying now, aha, their natural inclination not to hurt each other. You are correct, I do believe that people have to fight to be pricks. But the simple truth is that they are still pricks. They still do nasty shit. Now we don't have to see it in all of the fantasy books we read. Nor do we have to see everything. But for me, as a matter of personal preference, when you whitewash everything with this notion that people are either good or bad you miss the point, and the genre fails.

I had a dream once, the most vivid I have ever had, and I dream all of the time. It was quick, very quick. It was about a sword parting flesh. That is it. But I was sick to my stomach when I woke up. I realized the sheer amount of violence that is put into something that in fantasy seems so simple, so overdone, as a sword slashing flesh. There is a responsibility, in my mind, to deal with the consequences of these actions. You want to have a soft version of the truth, you want to deal more with concepts than the nitty-gritty, I respect that. But for me I think it should be acknowledged that most people, if they were injured in war, had a pretty bad time of it. Its a messy business, involving a great deal of pain and blood.

The thing that I find is funny is that there is this continuous backlash against the perceived "grit" of some new fantasy, but it is always started by people that are against it. Perhaps I'm wrong in this, but I don't see many threads started about how fantasy is too sanitized. It might come up during a thread, but its not specifically started with that in mind. To me, to be honest, there is more than enough room for both on the shelves.

Happy Ent: I was not unhappy with the rape tangent, just confused as to how it had miraculously sprung into existence. I think that subject, at the least, has been done to death - or at least it has for me.

Galactus: I am giving you a thumbs up.

Edit: Back to GG - You asked what the point of gritty fantasy is? You seem to be under the misapprehension that people are either good or evil, and that good triumphs. I think people need to manage their expectations to reflect some semblance of reality. I don't want to watch captain awesome win the day as good wins out over evil. I want to see how real people respond to the situation. Some will rise up to the challenge, some will do it poorly, and some will fail. But people do not exist on a spectrum so cleanly divided. This is not a video game where you are either a Paragon or a Renegade depending on your life choices. There is no one keep tally, we are all just muddling through it as best as we can.

As for your scenario, I am unclear as to the relevance. If you are asking if I would intervene, sure. That does not make me a paragon of good. I am simply a person. But scenarios, as represented in fantasy, and how they pertain to people, are far more complicated. Distilling it down into us or them, as Bush did, is a fallacy of the highest order (at least if I read your question right). It is simply more complicated than that.

The growth of more realistic fantasy is a reflection of needing to see the duality of human nature. We are both sinners and saints, in my opinion, and it gets messy in the middle, which is where most of us spend our time.