“Heritage and Exile”, and what to Do with Them

CW: heavy topics discussed, spoilers

I think a brief (or not-so-brief) clarification is needed here. I haven’t purchased the “The Heritage of Hastur” and “Sharra’s Exile” omnibus, “Heritage and Exile”. After all we’ve learned about Bradley’s crimes, I’m not going to fund her trust. I read the books for free. You may ask, though, why I read them in the first place if I knew that Marion Zimmer Bradley had harassed her own child and, possibly, other children. Well, I think that we still have to read terrible people’s books to see if they reflect their atrocities. I don’t expect other readers to do the same, since it may be connected to trauma and uneasiness, but it was my conscious decision. And you know what the scariest thing is? Terrible people’s books may not reflect their atrocities. Worse: people who, as long as we know, aren’t criminals and abusers may write equally problematic stuff.

Let’s take Marquez. He wrote about pretty terrible things in most of his ‘historical’ novels (I don’t count “The General in His Labyrinth” here, since there’s no zoophilia, child-grooming, or incest there). I mentioned something awful and inexcusable, didn’t I? I did. And you can find all these issues in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, “Love in the Times of Cholera”, and “Of Love and Other Demons”. What’s more, the author leaves the judgment question to the reader. Or “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides. Brother-sister incest. And there are consent problems in the protagonist’s story, to put it mildly. Well? Does it say anything about the authors? I am afraid it may not.

Bradley depicted incest as either abhorrence or madness in her Darkover series (“Stormqueen!”). In “The Heritage of Hastur”, Lewis Alton and Regus Hastur, two young aristocrats, try to oppose the corrupted Danilo Ardais, known to be an ephebophile and abuser. Their rage is right, and so it is described in the novel. But when you know the author’s story, it rings different. On the surface, the novels seem to be on the right track. But when you read them carefully and see their ends unfolding… Well, everything becomes sinister.

The plot follows such themes as power, telepathy, queerness, and cultural clash. Both Lewis and Regis belong to the telepathic Darkovan aristocracy, the Comyn, and both don’t quite fit there. Lewis is half-Terran, and thus, though born to a married couple, thought to be a bastard unworthy of inheriting his father’s duties and privileges. Regis, the only heir to the Regent of Darkover, is laran-less, which means that he doesn’t have telepathy or other supernatural gifts so far. Regis, as is customary for a young aristocrat, enters the City Guard. In this formation, the sinister plot with Dyan Ardais unfolds as he harasses Danilo, Regis’ new friend. Both Lewis and Regis try to call him out and, overall, change the corrupted system. However, the Comyn doesn’t trust Lewis in this matter, and he is sent to the Aldarans in the mountains. There he meets people who want to show the Terrans that Darkovans are worthy of cooperating with and threatening to clash with. He meets people who want change as much as he does. And, of course, he would be punished for this. Real social change? Sexual predators being held accountable? Forget about this on Darkover. There will be no real change, neither in “The Heritage of Hastur” nor in “Sharra’s Exile”.

Of course, this duology among Darkover books isn’t the only example of a text where everything remains the same despite promises of change. But given the context, it’s more unnerving in these two novels. Worse than unnerving, it’s disgusting. Dyan Ardais wasn’t punished for his violent and harassing behavior because he made Danilo his heir. Lew, having striven for a more democratic Darkover, eventually decided that their society wasn’t ready for more equality and that keeping Darkover intact would be more important than improving people’s lives. In different novels, it would be sad and disappointing but true, telling us something about hierarchical societies and social changes. But when you know that these are Bradley’s novels, it isn’t “disappointing but true”. As I’ve already said, it’s sinister—this cynicism and conformism. You know, then, that it was meant to be so. This cloaking of the literal abusers. This pseudofeminism, ignorant of class struggle and people of color. This showing white nobs with extra privileges and extra powers as victims. And everything that is unsettling and unjust here is actually consistent with the rest of the Darkover series. Bradley might have written against incest in “Stormqueen” and put a social taboo on generational gaps in relationships in Darkover, but absolving abusers is consistent with the other books. In “Two to Conquer”, a serial rapist is forgiven because… one of his victims punished him and showed him how she and other abused women had felt. And this, you know, sets things straight… Only on Darkover. Did authors who were normal, unabusive people could have written a similar plot? Yes, they could have. But in their cases, this wouldn’t have been the mirror of their deeds. At Bradley’s, every cringy or terrible stuff is, I am afraid, the mirror of her deeds and of repressing them.