{"id":3220,"date":"2015-07-14T07:58:32","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T14:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/?p=3220"},"modified":"2015-07-14T07:58:32","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T14:58:32","slug":"the-bad-guys-in-white-part-i-blog-post-by-tara-maya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2015\/07\/14\/the-bad-guys-in-white-part-i-blog-post-by-tara-maya\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bad Guys in White, Part I (Blog Post by Tara Maya)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wheel<\/a>(This post will contain spoilers for The Unfinished Song, so if you haven\u2019t read up to the end of Book 6, you might want to come back to it later.)<\/p>\n

I love thoughtful email from fans. I hope one of my correspondents won\u2019t mind if I use her email comments as the inspiration for my post today. After an insightful analysis of The Unfinished Song epic so far\u2014and some rather startlingly accurate predictions about where the heroes would go next\u2014she noted that Xerpen is far too evil to be, as he is, technically, on the same side as Dindi and the good Aelfae. In fact, since Xerpen has started using Death Magic, allying with him against Lady Death may be a huge mistake.<\/p>\n

I cannot argue with that. Yet Dindi may still have to try\u2026<\/p>\n

Interestingly, there was no Xerpen in the earliest versions of the story. He arose because I realized such a power would always arise in such a situation. Look across history and you\u2019ll notice that whenever a great trouble or problem comes up, one of the reasons it\u2019s so hard to solve rationally is that some people fixate on an irrational<\/i> solution that\u2019s even worse than the problem. Or they are so fanatic and excessive in their zeal to destroy evildoers that they become evildoers themselves, though they are blind to their own faults.<\/p>\n

\"Wheel<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Edward Cote, a writer friend of mine (I was also the cover artist for his book Violet Skies<\/a>; if you would like to hire me for cover art, contact me to find out about availability) described these guys<\/a> as \u201cthe Bad Guys in White.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Wheel of Time, they were called the Children of the Light<\/a>.\u00a0 In Sword of Truth, they were the Blood of the Fold.\u00a0 They show up in even the otherwise refreshing Ice and Fire, as the Sparrows.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

This trope is perhaps even more standard in fantasy gaming, where a villainous organization is doubly useful as an implacable foe for the player characters.\u00a0 The Iron Kingdoms has the Protectorate of Menoth.\u00a0 World of Warcraft has the Scarlet Crusade.\u00a0 The Eberron D&D setting has both the Church of the Silver Flame and the Blood of Vol, either of which could arguably fit the description.\u00a0 Several faction based games have an almost generic “Crusaders” type faction.<\/i><\/p>\n

Even the trappings of the Bad Guys in White are quite constant.\u00a0 They usually literally wear white, often along with red or gold.\u00a0 They always make a loud show of piety and hatred for anything they consider heretical or evil, which almost always includes any kind of magic, even what the good guys use.\u00a0 They typically have a military structure, complete with rank, heraldry, weapons and armor.\u00a0 There is sometimes an order of Inquisitors within the larger organization.\u00a0 They almost always practice hypocrisy, murder, theft, and torture, sometimes even genocide.<\/i><\/p>\n

He points out that in this incarnation, they\u2019ve become a bit of tired clich\u00e9. Let\u2019s give the Spanish Inquisition a rest.<\/p>\n

\"VioletSkies-EbookFrontCover-3x6-72dpi\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I understand where he\u2019s coming from\u2014no one wants to read\u00a0 or write clich\u00e9\u2014 but I can’t\u00a0agree that the Inquisition or Templars should be deemed exhausted sources of inspiration. (In fact, one of the book I am recommending this month is\u00a0Henry Charles Lea’s oeuvre\u00a0A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.)\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

I quite like the category “Bad Guys in White”;\u00a0I don’t think we should try to avoid those kinds of characters. Just…as with any villains… take them one step deeper than the cliche, make them new and real and frightening again.<\/p>\n

One way to do that is to study history. Fiction characters who are modeled on other fiction characters tend to be weary shadows, stereotypes. Fiction characters who are modeled on our own deepest experiences, or upon historical people<\/em>, tend to have much more heft and originality.<\/p>\n

When I thought about what motivated a person like Xerpen, I wondered, first of all, how much backstory I should even delve into. Vashti Valant argues in her guest post later this month that it isn’t always necessary to know the backstory of a villain. Sometimes, indeed, the inscrutability of the villain’s motives makes him all the more frightening. The unknown is so much scarier than the known.<\/p>\n

But I realized that since Xerpen was an Aelfae, and at one time the companion and lover of Vessia, it would reflect poorly on her if he had been a crazed, genocidal psychopath the whole time she knew him and somehow she never noticed. Therefore, I did want to show a series of experiences befell him that changed him from the man she knew into a very different creature. I also realized that his core values never changed. He believed in a good world, in a better world, in a perfect<\/em> world. The world, he reasoned, had been\u00a0perfect without humans, and so only without humans could it be perfect again. He is, in short, a True Believer, and like other true believers, he combines the best of motives with the worst of methods.<\/p>\n

\"Tomorrow<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I drew inspiration for Xerpen’s rise to power as the War Chief of the Rainbow Labyrinth from the Cattle Killing movement of the Xhosa. The Xhosa were desperate because their way of life was being threatened by British colonists.\u00a0Then a young prophetess and her uncle, a prophet in his own right as well as her interpreter, arose promising to cast out the British. If only they would heed the prophecy, they could\u00a0restore their way of life<\/em> and restore their dead to life.<\/em>\u00a0Could the Xhosa be blamed for thinking that prophet was one of the Good Guys, there to save them from the villains, the British imperialists?<\/p>\n

And yet, the fanatics lead their people to destruction more swiftly than the British could have contrived.<\/p>\n

The Aelfae are in a similar position vis-a-vis Humanity. In fact, in some ways, the Aelfae are even worse off. For they once were<\/em> immortal, not only in their dreams, but in their real lives. And now they are all but extinct. But of course, in Faearth, where magic is real, there is no question but that a real Resurrection of the Aelfae may be possible. The question is how is it to come about and at what price?<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

For Dindi, the other challenge is how to offer her own help to the Aelfae as a viable alternative to Xerpen. Or… even worse… \u00a0as Lady Death becomes more ruthless and gathers more allies, Dindi may find that she must accept Xerpen as a temporary ally, even knowing that he will betray her at the first opportunity.<\/p>\n

Also read The Bad Guys in White, Part II.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This post will contain spoilers for The Unfinished Song, so if you haven\u2019t read up to the end of Book 6, you might want to come back to it later.) I love thoughtful email from fans. I hope one of my correspondents won\u2019t mind if I use her email comments as the inspiration for my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[577,579,580,589],"tags":[605,606,637,662,719],"class_list":["post-3220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","category-writing-advice","category-writing-craft","category-writing-tips","tag-bad-guys","tag-bad-guys-in-white","tag-evil","tag-inquisition","tag-villains"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}