This is the series I was enthusiastic about when I read the first book. This is also the series which has disappointed me by book five, the last which is available in my language (the last two volumes can be bought only on Amazon or so, sadly). And yet, I’d still tell you that in some aspects, Crown of Stars is better than ASoIaF. But it’s also worse when it comes to certain metaphors, or rather, the way Elliot handled them was poor at moments. Still, sometimes I can’t imagine why it’s so forgotten in comparison to GRRM’s works. Maybe it didn’t hit the right point in the right time? Or maybe we actually don’t like very historical fantasy?
It’s a retelling of the Early Middle Ages in the Holy Roman Empire, told from the perspective of multiple characters. But here’s the diference: In this version of medieval Europe, the Roman Empire, or rather, the Dariyan Empire, had been founded by quasi-Aztec elves. Also, there’s a lot of magic, the Vikings are more dragon-people than people, and gender roles are much more balanced so the head of the Church is always a woman. Sounds refreshing? To me, it did. It sounded incredible, and for a time, I literally devoured all the deft references to actual people and events scattered here and there in Elliott’s story. To me, what she’d done was more aware than GRRM’s world-building.
I genuinely love many things about the universe she’s created. I am glad that she cared to distinguish between cultures and their customs and names. I’m glad that she managed to build a medieval world with women at power and with people of colour’s presence, and guess what? It isn’t “out of touch” as some opponents of such ways of retelling history think. Evoking the Middle Ages isn’t and doesn’t need to be about patriarchal whiteness. Westeros is white and patriarchal (and I mention this NOT because I think that GRRM is sexist and racist) and yet to my mind it’s never as medieval as the continent of Novaria created by Elliott. In her books, you have more noble titles than “lords” and “ladies”. In her books, everything, from garments to political climate matches the late Early Middle Ages. In her books, Widukind is a nun called Rosvita and I think it’s beautiful. In her books, inspirations taken from the Holy Roman Empire and Italian conflicts are well-drawn and acute. In her books, you don’t get your usual Anglo-centrism but realms based on Germany, Italy, Hungary, Belgium and Poland, and Eastern European steppes. In her books, the religion, although Christianity-based, goes beyond the well-used tropes and her characters actually talk about and ponder on their beliefs. And this is important to me because you don’t get a lot of such things in ASoIaF. In the latter, it’s hard not to see that Martin was more inspired by Lovecraftian cults and vague references to Catholicism than by anything else. In Elliott’s books, the image is more nuanced, and there are actual, fleshed-out references to the Bible, to psalms, to the Evangelists and saints. There are “heretics”, there are “pagans”, but every character has their own opinion on religion so don’t think that everybody is biased in that particular medieval way. It’s more complicated than that.
Oh, and should I mention that she wrote about domestic abuse and victim-blaming without making a fetish out of female suffering? Elliott shows those mechanisms we don’t understand, not always. Why somebody remained in a toxic, abusive relationship. Why somebody felt guilty and dubious about their abuser. And what is important, despite of medieval aspects of the setting, here’s it’s always clear how bad and devastating such violence is. Another thing is that in Elliott’s series, abusive villains aren’t outcasts or “uglies”. They are your Nice Guys, often handsome and charming, often respected by the society. And I can’t even say how important it was, to show it this way and not another. To show villains who are beautiful and believed, and to remind us over and over how they get away because of their status. It’s still valid. It’s still rings true, painfully true.
Another thing is that ordinary people, such as farmers, captured monks, refugees, have their perspective in Elliott’s series. In ASoIaF, you’ve got Davos Seaworth. In the Crown of Stars series you have several characters like him. What’s more, they discuss class and privilege. And it’s by no means “talking socialism in the Middle Ages.” It isn’t irrelevant. It’s also damnably important, to depict people who aren’t blindly loyal to authorities, and who pursue their own goals under the guise of feudal faithfulness. They serve the King not because they love him. They serve him because it’s an opportunity.
Still, there are things which didn’t age well: raunchy jokes about lesbian women and a controversial build-up for a gay romance of two heretic monks from noble families, Ivar and Baldwin. Yes, there’s a gay couple in this series which started in the 1990s. Their romance is depicted as kind of an error in one volume to be shown as the only pure and clear thing in their life in the following one. And while this second conclusion is by no means homophobic, the initial execution is poor, just as the final one, as I can see from spoilers. Because Ivar and Baldwin won’t be together. Ivar is to be with the best friend of Liath, one of the main protagonists.
Another thing is race and colour in this series: Again, it started well but ended up bad. The premise, at least for the initial volumes, was really good, and there were two PoC charasters on the first stage: Liath, a would-be-sorceress with family mysteries, and Sanglant, the King’s bastard whose mother was an elf. There was also a mixed-race prince and his Black mother, and at least at the beginning, it allured to the vision where people of colour belonged to the past. At the beginning. Because then, your Black Prince turned out rather nasty, and Liath’s mother turned out to be… a demoness of fire. You know, her golden-brown complexion. That’s because of her fiery heritage, you know. Add Sanglant being half elf and half human to all this… and one begins to suspect that people of colour, even if they are crucial to the series’ plot, are coded as inhuman. And it’s very, very alarming.
On the one hand, Elliot shows deflty that there was no political interest in creating systemic racism in the Middle Ages, and that prejudices were more about colorism than about racism. This is something which evades Martin and his means of showing how PoC characters are alienated and othered. On the other hand, Martin gets some metaphors while Elliott doesn’t: It’s very interesting, for example, to read Daenerys Targaryen as a deconstructed white saviour, and her doings in Essos as the critique of the post-slavery era in the US when many Black people were just left to fend for themselves. Also, at Martin’s, you don’t need to be half an elf or half a demon to be a person of colour. Still, the same author relegated people of colour to the faraway, “exotic” lands which have more in common with Lovecraftian fantasies on the Other than with any non-European culture. Was Elliott wiser in some parts of her execution? She was. Was GRRM wiser in other parts? He was.
The Crown of Stars has many problems, and yet I think it’s underrated. It’s a series never violent just for the sake of violence. It’s a series showing the quasi-Middle Ages in a nuanced way far from GRRM’s somewhat cynical brutalism. If you put everything together, it’s actually less problematic than ASoIaF. And it is, also, undeservedly forgotten.
Left Hand of Fiction 