The Ill-Born Prince

 I've got a new fantasy novel!  It's called "The Ill-Born Prince" (that's ILL-BORN, not three-times born or anything like that).  It's about a prince who has discovered he's actually not the son of the king but rather of the queen and the Royal Wizard, and he ends up off studying at the wizards' school.  (I was originally thinking of calling it The Bastard Prince but decided that would be too shocking.)

 

For those keeping score at home, it's number 4 in the "Starlight Raven" series.  That series is also known as the "Yurt, the Next Generation" series.  Here's the cover, and here's the link on Amazon.  It's available both as an ebook and as a paperback.

Like all the books in the Starlight Raven series, it's narrated by Antonia, daughter of the Master of the wizards' school, and the first young woman ever accepted to study there.  The male wizards are still not totally convinced that a woman magic-worker might not be some kind of dangerous witch, so Antonia has plenty of issues to deal with, not least her relationship to Walther, the ill-born prince.

I've tried to write it so people could enjoy the book without having read any of the others in the series, but you may pick up a few continuing sub-plots from earlier if you have.

Here's the beginning to whet your appetite.

PART ONE - Magical Problems

“Every spell in this book has an error in it,” the teacher told us.  “Something is left out, or steps are transposed, or the words in the Hidden Language are wrong.”
Our class of wizardry students looked at each other, startled, then again at the books on our desks.  This was not some ancient grimoire of half-understood magic scribbled down by an imperfectly trained magician whose wits were already going.  These were freshly printed, clean volumes, each copy identical, that we had just been told would be the fundamental text for our final two years at the wizards’ school.
There was a confused murmur while students tried leafing through the book, looking unsuccessfully for any clues.  Then Walther raised his hand and said, “Excuse me, sir, but why were the errors allowed to remain?  Or,” he hesitated a second, pushing a shock of black hair away from his forehead, “were they deliberate?”
The teacher smiled.  He was one of the older teachers; in the last few years a number of new, younger wizards had joined the school faculty, but he was still teaching.  Like all the older wizards, he always seemed to have a soft spot for Walther.
“Excellent question,” he said.  “And yes, it was deliberate.”  He scanned the room.  “Can any of you think why that should be the case?”
After a moment of uneasy silence, Chlodomer put up his hand.  “It’s an exercise for us.  If we can’t find the errors, it shows we aren’t as good at wizardry as we think we are.”
The teacher nodded, lips pursed.  No one on the faculty had ever had a soft spot for Chlodomer.  Even though he was no longer the awkward, easily startled young man he had been when first entering the school six years ago, even though he had become one of the best students in the technical wizardry division, he had never gotten the respect from the teachers he probably deserved.
For that matter, many of the older teachers were still reluctant to respect me either: the first girl the school had ever taken.
“It’s more than an exercise for you, though of course it could be that as well,” the teacher answered Chlodomer.
“This isn’t the way magic is supposed to work,” one of the students objected.  “This isn’t the way anything works.”
“Indeed,” said the teacher crisply.  “Since you have such a good idea of how everything works, this book will present no challenge for you,” which caused the student to slump back in his chair.
I was distracted, looking out the classroom window toward the school courtyard.  There, among the fountains and the rainbows, lay a crimson flying carpet, twitching as though eager to be off.  Two men were busily loading parcels onto it: a swarthy, enormously fat eastern mage, and with him the white-bearded Master of the wizards’ school.
I wished they were not going.
The teacher interrupted my thoughts.  “Miss Antonia, you usually are full of theories.  What do you think?”
I dragged my attention back to the room and tried not to appear irritated at his patronizing tone. “You’re keeping the most powerful spells from us.  Or if not from us, from the senior students, then from the more junior students.  You don’t want anyone using this magic unless and until you decide we’re worthy to have the missing parts of the spell revealed.”
Now the teacher looked surprised, even, I thought, a little guilty.  “Well, there may be something in that.  After all, it could be dangerous for some of the younger students to read and try to master a spell for which they were not ready.”
Another one of the students spoke up.  “What happens if we try the spell just as it’s written?  What is the danger, exactly?”  He and another young man bumped elbows and grinned at each other.  “Does something, well, inappropriate happen?  Does a winged gorgos appear?  Does the whole school collapse?”
“Not at all,” the teacher said reprovingly.  “If you tried one of these spells as written, it would have no effect.  Other than,” he added darkly, “perhaps blowing up in your face.  As would happen if a junior student tried to alter the spells unwisely.  These are errors that need to be considered carefully.”

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

Vultures and buzzards

Europe doesn't have all the kinds of vultures and condors found in the New World, no turkey vultures or black vultures, no California condors or Andean condors.  But medieval people certainly had birds, as I have discussed previously, and that included vultures and buzzards (buzzards and vultures are actually different  kinds of birds, but the names are often used interchangeably).

The European buzzard (pictured above), although now rare, may still be seen in the Pyrenees.  It, like the turkey vulture of the Americas, soars high on air currents looking for dead things to eat.  This is of course a useful function.  Dead animals lying around help nobody.  Different birds and animals have developed a readiness to eat dead things at different stages of decay.

For example, when scientists were trying to live-trap California condors for captive breeding, they would put out a dead goat, then hide in the bushes for four days.  First the ravens would come, then the turkey vultures, then the golden eagles, and finally the condors.  Time to spring the trap!

European buzzards are especially fond of the marrow inside bones.  This is hard to get out when you've only got claws and a beak to work with.  They will thus carry bones high in the air and drop them on a rocky surface, so that they split open, allowing access to the tasty marrow.

The vultures of the Mediterranean, also carrion eaters, were considered a suitable subject for theological speculation, as of course were all aspects of the physical world.  It was widely believed (falsely) that female vultures were able to produce eggs and raise chicks without the intervention of male vultures.  For some early Church Fathers, therefore, the Virgin Birth of Christ was preceded by the virgin birth of vultures, "proving" that such an event was entirely possible and need not be dismissed as imaginary.

Even more so, "Christ as vulture" was, for these theologians, an indication that God had planned out the natural world to give humans a foretaste and understanding of important religious issues.  Just as vultures took care of the dead, Christ came to raise the dead.  It all made sense.  God was thinking of us ahead of time, providing a handy metaphor in the animal kingdom to help us understand the heavenly Kingdom.

Noah Neiber of the University of Iowa is studying vultures as theological beings.

Okay, some early medieval theology is weird.  (Noah knows this.)

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

For more on animals in medieval thought, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.

 

Fantasy heroines

 The fantasy genre is full of women.  And no, I don't mean men fantasizing about some top-heavy lass pressing her unclad body against theirs.  I mean that the fantasy genre, most commonly a vaguely medieval setting with magic and (usually) wizards and dragons, has lots of active heroines.  This is especially true of YA (young adult) fantasy.

We've come a long way since covers showed sword-wielding maidens dressed in chain mail bikinis.  But some of that ethos is still there.  Fantasy heroines are tough.  Especially the YA ones, where everyone's a teenager.

Even though the setting is sort-of-medieval, fantasy heroines tend to live in a society that is not at all patriarchal.  Women can and do everything the men do, and no one thinks anything of it.  Women in these stories may be knights, bishops, ruling queens, shopkeepers, wizards, mayors, and the like.  Although real medieval women were much more active than scholars once thought, there is no question that medieval men were given precedence, and that the careers of knight and priest were closed to women.

YA heroines are inevitably smart, skilled, sassy, strong, and ready to save the day.  They do not menstruate.  They are not wracked by self-doubt.  They do not carry themselves cautiously around men, trying to avoid any situation that might result in sexual assault.  They do not get all embarrassed around a boy they like, nor do they feel they should agree to the sexual urges of the boy they like.  As role models, they have much to offer teenage girls, as the heroines do not assume there are things they just cannot do, and they do not routinely defer to men.

One of the chief ways in which these heroines differ from medieval women is that they are handy with a sword.  Medieval women did not wield swords (okay, a few may have, and certainly there are examples of women leading knights into battle, most notably Joan of Arc but sword-fighting was just not an option).  Sword-fighting requires both upper-body strength and lots of training.  Even the unusual medieval woman with more upper-body strength than most men would not have been offered the training.  Even in the much more egalitarian modern period, women do not play major league baseball, for the same combination of reasons.

Interestingly, male characters in YA fantasy are much more likely to be wracked by self-doubt than are the female ones.  They wonder if they will have the strength or skill to do what needs to be done, they feel the weight of the expectations put on them, and they are cautious around girls if thoughts of sex enter their minds at all, which it does surprisingly rarely.  And no wonder.  If they tried an unwelcome move on a fantasy heroine, they know for a fact she'd run them through with her sword.

Recently I've realized that my own YA fantasy heroines do not conform to the modern norm.  Antonia, heroine of my "Starlight Raven" series, is certainly smart and capable, but she lives in a patriarchal society, where it is considered shocking that a girl would want to become a wizard.  She has plenty of self-doubts as well as unease around attractive young men.  Sure, she gets to save the day, but without the sassiness or ready confidence of many a fantasy heroine.

Am I being more realistic about what teenage girls are like?  Kind of hard to talk about "realism" in a story that has magic and dragons.  Is she more like what I was like as a teenager?  Probably.  It's interesting that the strongest, sassiest, quickest-with-a-sword fantasy heroines are most freuently written by men.

© C. Dale Brittain 2024