It’s Monday, so time for more of the Fantasy With Friends discussion meme (hosted at Pages Unbound).Ā This week’s discussion theme iiiis:
āThe Chosen Oneā is an often-mocked trope in fantasy literature. Do you frequently run across this trope in the books you read, or has it been a while since you encountered it? Do you dislike it, or do you think it can be done well? Are there any interesting twists on the Chosen One youāve seen?
I think the “Chosen One” trope can be a lot of fun whether it’s played straight, subverted, or dissected. I’m actually having trouble thinking up examples right now where it’s played straight, because that was more common in a different era of my reading, and it also depends on how literal you want to be. To hark back to Tolkien, since we were talking about it last week, was Frodo chosen, as Gandalf suggests? Or did he just put his hand up and take it on because he was a good person? Is it kinda both? I know a lot of people read it as Frodo being Chosen, but does that meanĀ he doesn’t have a choice…?
Playing it straight but digging into what it might mean to be Chosen, Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children books try to examine the impact on the the type of Chosen Ones who travel to another world (like the Pevensie kids in the Narnia books, and other portal fantasies), and what happens once their part in the stories is done. What happens if they stop fitting the role, or falter, or slip out of their world?
In more recent reading, I liked the way that Caitlin Rozakis’ The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association handled it. There’s a prophecy, there’s a constant stream of large and small disasters, and the protagonist’s kid is being whispered about as a bringer of calamity (while others are being positioned as potentially Chosen Ones to act in opposition to her). But (spoilers ahead) the prophecy isn’t like that at all, the kids are all just kids, and someone’s benefiting from pretending things might be otherwise.
Another way to play with the Chosen One trope is the accidentally Chosen One. I’m thinking ofĀ The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, where the magical kingdom of Romany use magic to snatch a girl from modern Japan. She’s their Chosen One, but they inadvertently bring along Seiichirou Kondou as well because he sees her being dragged into a magical portal and begging for help, and goes to rescue her. In the end, he’s as instrumental as she is to solving the problem they needed a Chosen One for, if not more — and he makes sure they will never need to do so again, fixes the kingdom’s finances, and pushes along massive technological advances.
Along the way, Seiichirou also warns the girl who is the Chosen One not to blindly help the kingdom without examining what they’re asking of her, which… she doesn’t take well, but is actually a good point. What if you’re chosen for something awful? I think “the Chosen One doesn’t want to be a Chosen One” (for whatever reason) is probably a bit overplayed itself by now in simple forms, but I can think of a bunch of fun ways to play with it still…
On another tangent, I love that in Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, Huiwon gets sponsored by a righteous “constellation”, and gets a skill called “Time of Judgement”, which allows her to fight and destroy evildoers. It’s not quite the same as the Chosen One trope, but she’s chosen by the constellation and essentially becomes his incarnation, so it’s close. The problem is, “Time of Judgement” will only activate when approved by her sponsor and constellations aligned with him, and Huiwon’s definition of evil and evildoers is different from theirs. Early in the story, she frequently tries to call on “Time of Judgement” and is declined, even when she sees things she feels are deeply wrong. So what if you’re a Chosen One, but your intentions don’t fully align with those of whoever is doing the choosing?
So… I think there are reasons to mock or avoid the trope, because it can be really overused and under-examined. For me, though, there are so many ways to put a fun spin on it, or dig into what it might actually mean for the characters, and otherwise do surprising and interesting things with it. I won’t say I’d never read stuff with a Chosen One trope, but I do prefer it when people are consciously playing with it and teasing out the implications!
I was just thinking that the standard Chosen One trope seemed much more common, say, 20 years ago. I think many fantasies inserted such a character possibly without even thinking much about it–it was just part of the genre. Now, I see Chosen Ones inserted a little more subtly. They aren’t being called out in the book or by other characters as the Chosen One, but they are uniquely positioned to act as a Chosen One.
I also think the question of Frodo is interesting because I do think he had a choice. You can be chosen, but say, “No, thank you.” At the Council of Elrond, no one was going to appoint someone to walk into Mordor because that would be like telling them they were almost certainly going to die. So I think it says a lot about Frodo that he volunteers.
Yeah, that’s my take too — Frodo was chosen, but it still mattered what he decided to do in response to that. Sometimes the “Chosen One” trope sort of assumes that no matter what they do they’ll triumph because they were chosen, which I find less compelling.
Yes, I was also having trouble thinking of a book where there’s just a straightforward Chosen One with no little twist on it at all. I think it got so mocked that people don’t write it anymore, or publishers won’t pick it up if you do write it. But I don’t want to hate on the trope entirely. I think I was kind of into it as a child, and I think children today would be too. As a kid, you really like the idea of being Special. Things that seem ridiculous or Mary Sue-ish to adult readers just read as “cool” to a lot of kids. Oh, a character destined to save the world who has special powers that never existed before before and also, for some reaon, has pink hair? That’s just cool. You want to imagine yourself as being that Chosen Special Person too. š
Briana @ Pages Unbound recently posted…What Do You Think of the Chosen One Trope? (Fantasy with Friends)
Yes, that makes sense to me! It works better in children’s literature, I think.