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| Tyrion and Teclis (©Games Workshop) |
Book: Blood of Aenarion. A Tyrion & Teclis novel, by William King.
+1 Rereading for the second time, I still found this book to be well-written with an engaging plot, focusing on the teenage years of Tyrion and Teclis, their beginnings as the famed warrior and sorcerer they will become, and their first encounter with Demon N'Kari.
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| Tyrion leads the forces of Ulthuan (©Games Workshop) |
- Epics, war and the Good/Evil binary
+1 Anti-war and Good/Evil binary critical content: Even though
this is a Warhammer epic book focusing on a fantasy society with a
heroic ethos and including plenty of battle scenes, some parts of this
book also challenged the Good/Evil binary and included some anti-war
content:
-"Too many people kill without thinking in this world." White
Lion (the elite guard of the Phoenix King) Korhien Ironglaive has more
than one conversation with protegé Tyrion about the dangers of
idealizing war and battle, the concepts of glory and prowess, and how
killing people is not something to be enjoyed. I personally really
appreciated these scenes in the context of what is basically a very
binary, epic genre which often disregards these matters and amps the
glory and honour of battling your enemies. In spite of these pep talks,
though, Tyrion - the good guy protagonist with a charming personality -
turns out to be one born for war who actually claims to enjoy battle and
even killing the ones who oppose him or his country, and will end up
conforming more to the epic ethos of the genre :S.
-Dark Elf assassin Urian also offers some critical content of the Good/Evil binary
when he muses on the centuries-long feud between the High and Dark
Elves and how masquerading as a High Elf noble for decades and living
among his enemies has made him see that both groups are not as
dissimilar or as black and white as they think they are.
- Female characters: Representation, roles and sexism
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| Concept of a high Elf female mage (©Games Workshop, Warhammer Online) |
+-1 Warhammer is not the best genre for a
lot of (good) female representation, to be honest, as most in-universe
societies, and the stories and authors, are overtly male-dominated and sexist
tropes and sexualization are often to be found both in the miniature and
online game designs/roles, and in the books.
+(-)1 This
particular book is still quite male-dominated, but I found to be a bit
better regarding positive female representation, even though many women
in interesting, subversive and proactive roles are still little more
than mentions. Still, contrary to other Warhammer books and *ahem* the
miniatures Warhammer Fantasy's range of High Elves offered (which was minimal and literally extended - if I recall correctly - to the Everqueen, her guard,
and a mage), there are mentions of female (arch)mages and
loremistresses, sailors and captains of ship, huntresses and rangers,
archers and warriors, priestesses, and women taking part in political
circles. Like I said, most of these roles are little more than mentions,
but the bar is so low sometimes in this genre that it's still a
refreshing sight :S xD
+1 Female characters with interesting and proactive roles that I enjoyed: The main one is Lady Malene,
a mage and loremistress who is also active in political circles and the leader of her House of Emeraldsea apart from her father, and is
described as serious, capable, powerful and intelligent. She is the aunt
of Tyrion and Teclis and mainly acts as Teclis' mentor in matters of
magic. I also liked that she is in a relationship without losing any
iniciative or her role being ever reduced to a love interest trope.
Another character I liked is Joyelle, a ship captain who answers to Malene and is described as capable, tough and stern (in a good way, although Tyrion first wonders at the fact that the captain's answering to Malene instead of her (male) lover and bodyguard Korhien - sigh - and then remarks on the sterness of both women, feeling relieved at seeing smiling sailor girls in the ship as well *le double sigh*). There's also sailor Karaya, who acts as kind of a love interest for Tyrion but is seen as capable in her job and shows plenty of iniciative of her own during her scenes with Tyrion.
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| High Elf female mage |
-1 Female characters with problematic characterization and tropes: Enchantress Morathi, the Dark Elven Queen, is always a character that's super sexualized in the Warhammer world (often wearing little more than a metal bikini and loincloth), and who follows a lot of femme fatale tropes (even though she is also an intelligent and powerful leader). Her appearance in the intro also included the love/hate relationship with Aenarion, which is not my fave thing. N'Kari the demon is also super sexualized and male-gazey when in female form. And characters such as Lady Malene's daughter Liselle followed the trope of the shallow, vain female character more than anything else and was there mainly to be one of Tyrion's love interests.
-Bechdel test: Pass. Malene and Joyelle talk to each other, and I remember conversations between Malene and Liselle, and between Liselle and another noblewoman called Lady Melissa (although they were talking mainly about Tyrion there, so maybe that conversation doesn't count :S).
+-1 Male characters and their treatment of women:
To finish talking about the treatment of women in this book, there's
also the theme of how men treat and think of women. Some thoughts -
-Lady
Malene's relationship with Korhien the White Lion is quite refreshing
and healthy, and she's always seen as the authority figure in her group
without question (the ship's crew and her entourage answer to her, for example). Teclis
and Lady Malene also get on well in a mentor/pupil dynamic.
-Tyrion
is written with the intention of being charming and likeable, but he also revels in violence
quite a bit and is quite a womanizer, sometimes bordering on dudebro
material. His one-off relationship with the sailor Karaya is a pretty healthy example of a casual encounter, but the one he later has with his cousin Liselle showcases his
entitlement and internalized sexism more, as he clearly views her as
vain and shallow and later thinks of her in a quite disparaging way,
showing he was using her more than anything else. Lady Malene also tells
him to make and effort not to extend his womanizing to his close kinswomen, but there he
went anyway and with Malene's own daughter no less lol (le sigh).
-Dark Elf assassin Urian is probably the most
blatantly misogynistic character in the book alongside fabled ancestor Aenarion (who clearly hates
his second wife Morathi but still lusts after her and is quite abusive in the way he goes about it :S). Urian may give us
some anti-binarism commentary which makes us relate a bit to him, but
he's also a creep who's proud of the "harem of slave girls" he had back
home to do as he pleased with (ugh), and who fantasizes about making stern Lady Malene, who dares
distrust him, succumb to his (violent) charms. Eww.
-1 A bit related to this, even though I have a higher tolerance for it in
reading form than visual, I personally find the gorier and more graphic
side of Warhammer so not my cup of tea. Especifically the sections in
which the writers indulge and focus too lengthily in torture scenes or
anything related to the cult of pleasure of Slaanesh (which is always a good
opportunity to also include sexualized women or sacrifice scenes, yay).
- Poc and LGBT+ representation. Colonialism and xenophobia.
-1 No representation of poc except for very brief mentions of poc humans from the Warhammer equivalents of North Africa and China (merchants, traders and people who live in the foreigners' quartet of the High Elven capital Lothern). As per usual fantasy white-centrism, it is assumed that all High Elves are white (something that in my opinion doesn't make a whole lot of sense if we're talking about a whole species :S, but OK), and all Elves whose appearance is described have fair to very pale skin (Tyrion in book 2 has tanned skin from his journeys, but yeah).
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| Ulthuan and its colonies in a map of the Warhammer version of the world (©Games Workshop) |
-1 Practically no representation of LGBT+ people. Demon N'Kari can easily be seen as genderfluid, as many demons often are, but is portrayed in a quite problematic light. N'Kari uses 'he/him' pronouns the most, but also appears in female form at least twice. The problem is, when N'Kari is female she is incredibly sexualized and cast in the 'seductive femme fatale' role as per male-dominated fantasy standards. The fact that N'Kari is a demon who serves Slaanesh, the Chaos deity of pleasure and all things lascivious and perverse, is not helping any matters.
- Other intersections: Class and ability
+1 There's also some social commentary regarding classism, the hypocrisy and snobbery of the aristocratic classes and the difficulty of learning how to navigate and survive in a world full of protocol and courtly intrigues, as rural-raised Tyrion and Teclis find out when they go to the capital to live with their wealthy relatives for a while.
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| Teclis (©Games Workshop) |
+1 Ableism critical content:
While Elves see themselves as the superior race for their beauty,
longer life, and the fact that most never get ill, Tyrion's twin brother Teclis is frail and
disabled (he gets ill often to the extent of being in the brink of
death, has a severe limp and mobility problems, and is considered to be
less canonically beautiful), and thus he has experienced constant
disapproval and insult from his Elven fellows, who look down on him for being
'inferior'. Compared to his able-bodied, beautiful-even-among-the-Elves
brother Tyrion, he feels insecure and bitter, but relies on his
intelligence, acerbic wit and remarkable magical ability to shine.
Thankfully, the treatment of this issue was pretty positive, being
critical of the classism and ableism of the High Elves from the pov of
Teclis, who is never seen in a negative light by the narrator because of
his health problems and disabilities. Teclis will also end up being the High Elven
character who seems most understanding of humans (also seen as frail, uglier and
inferior by the Elves) and one of the few Elves more interested in
helping them and sharing his knowledge with them. There's also the fact
that even though Teclis ends up gaining more health and mobility that
allow him to do adventuring of his own and live a long life to perfect
his lore and magic powers, he ultimately also gains a more able-bodied
lifestyle mainly by his own agency, choice and powers (as well as receiving help in this book, for example, which is also a positive thing, of course).
+1 And
finally, I also like that Tyrion and Teclis maintain a pretty healthy
and supportive brotherly relationship in this and other respects, which is a
refreshing subversion of the often competitive, love/hate trope dynamic
based in jealousy issues of the 'golden, athletic brother pitted against
the dark, bitter brother' (hello, Thor and Loki xD - that particular relationship also has its character development and is really interesting, of course, but I could not let that reference slide xD)
And finally, the IG storytime with more or less the same text content, but including direct quotes and a bit more specifics sometimes (also here)
