When Fantasy Meets Reality: The Folly of Kings

The more I think of it, the more I feel there is perhaps no other genre of fiction more enamored of autocracies than fantasy.

Perhaps this is due to the fable-like roots of the genre, dating back to King Arthur and beyond: the endless search for a true and proper heir bearing the awaited divine blessings, the curse of the kingdom ending only when he—and it’s almost always a he—is restored to the throne, and righteous restoration courses throughout the land.

Or perhaps our fascination with kings and autocracies is more innate. As Sir Terry Pratchett, the English author and satirist, once put it, it’s as if even the most intelligent person has this little blank spot in their heads where someone’s written: “Kings. What a good idea.”

Regardless, the second decade of the 21st century seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid. Our headlines are dominated by regimes with one nigh-all-powerful man at the top making any number of terrible choices, and then—to the bafflement of the entire globe—doubling down on them, thus inflicting massive suffering on his people. It seems the talents that make a man capable of navigating palace intrigue until he wins the throne generally don’t coexist with the talents required for—or even a passing interest in—good governance.

In the decade or so before this inflection point, however, the story was very different. There was a dreadful murmuring around the globe suggesting that autocracy was not merely surging, but better: more efficient and effective than liberal democracies could ever hope to be. “Wouldn’t it be better,” some began to mutter, “if we had someone in charge who didn’t have to listen to so many useless little people?”

And it is a curious correlation that, during this moment of self-doubt, fantasy’s fixation with autocracy not only grew in intensity, but grew stranger. For it was then that we saw fewer stories invoking a traditional, romanticized ideal of divine rule wielded by beneficent patriarchs, and in their place came a wave of fantasy that embraced if not celebrated the capricious cruelties of autocratic regimes.

And we loved it. We eagerly gobbled up tales of crude, primitive worlds where petty resentments, sexual sadism, and sheer stupidity regularly led to the torture, deprivation and deaths of thousands. We delighted in the piques and feuds of aristocrats placed beyond the rule of law, and sat captivated as privileged princes indulged in murder, rape and the sexual assault and torture of children, without even a gesture toward justice.

I suspect this was largely a function of our era. The 2010s were not only a time of surging autocracy, but also a moment of economic blight and rampant inequality. Perhaps the only escape we could imagine was one in which we could become one of the privileged princes we saw on the news every night, these boys who so blithely destroyed the pillars of society around us.

Yet if the 2010s awed us with the power of autocrats, the 2020s seem hell-bent to refute it. More and more, it becomes impossible to deny that autocrats—like any ruler—are but men, yet men with no obligation to listen to their people, and thus acknowledge reality. This, in turn, makes them fools: fools that are very difficult to dislodge from their thrones, true, but fools nonetheless.

Today’s fiction seems more circumspect and more critical of the seductive powers of the throne and scepter. Perhaps the mood is shifting with the times; perhaps this is but a hopeful delusion. Regardless, I hope my own handful of words will contribute in their own small way, yet it’s worth saying that the argument is not as clear cut as one might imagine.

When writing A Drop of Corruption, the second book in The Shadow of the Leviathan series, I made the unwise choice to depict the realm of Yarrow as a Dark Ages or medieval kingdom: that is to say, squalid, filthy, and wretched. Disdaining such a thing was too easy, I realized. A wiser choice would be to not only have it resemble a kingdom of High Fantasy, aweing my protagonist Dinios Kol, the apprentice investigator for the Empire, with its stone walls and armored warriors and high halls, but I should also weave imagery of High Fantasy autocracy throughout all the crimes of this story, from the King of Yarrow, to priestly Thelenai, to the White King in the mists.

Because all the characters in this story—like all of humanity, apparently—have a little blank spot in their heads that says, “Kings. What a good idea.” The idea is powerful, and seductive, and should not be underestimated. To be a civilization of any worth, however, means acknowledging the idea—and then condemning it as laughably, madly stupid.

May we come to live in such a worthier world, and soon.

Robert Jackson BennettMore by this author →

Robert Jackson Bennett, 41, is the author of American Elsewhere, The Troupe, The Company Man, and Mr. Shivers, as well as The Divine Cities trilogy. His work has received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Phillip K. Dick Citation of Excellence, and he has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus Awards. The Tainted Cup, the first book in The Shadow of the Leviathan series, is a finalist for the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Novel. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.