Fealty. Steadfast loyalty even unto death. Two people gazing tenderly into each other’s eyes as they ritually clasp hands and make heartfelt oaths of eternal devotion. And then they Yearn about it, because somehow that wasn’t already a literal marriage ceremony? DELICIOUS.
If you know me at all, you know that this is the trope I go unapologetically feral over. But you know what’s even better? Going feral with a buddy! It was therefore an absolute delight to be joined by my friend Victoria Goddard (author of The Hands of the Emperor) for a conversation about this king of tropes:
ALEXANDRA ROWLAND: Hello Victoria!
VICTORIA GODDARD: Hello Alex! Are you ready to talk about fealty and feelings?
AR: Always. How can you even ask me this? You know this is the only thought I ever have in my wretched brain. But first, perhaps, we should introduce ourselves. Or each other. I think you’re cooler than I am so I call dibs on talking about Victoria Goddard.
VG: If you insist! That gives me the great pleasure of talking about you.
AR: For anyone who, astonishingly, has not had the pleasure of reading her books, Victoria Goddard is a Canadian fantasy author who wrote my most favorite book, The Hands of the Emperor (you may have seen me screeching rapturously about it in a previous post). This book is full of both fealty and feelings between His Radiancy (an emperor idolized as a god) and Cliopher Mdang (his unshakably loyal and devoted personal secretary) as they work to reform the government so that his Radiancy can retire and finally be the normal human person that everyone refuses to see him as (except, of course, for Cliopher). There is slowburn handholding. Like so slowburn that they institute universal basic income before they hold hands. I am feral about it.
VG: Thank you, Alex! Alexandra Rowland is an American author of several splendid fantasies. Their most recent book, out on August 30th, is A Taste of Gold and Iron, which, in a remarkable coincidence, is a story about the developing fealty and feelings of an exquisitely beautiful prince, Kadou, and his even more alluring bodyguard, Evemer. This is a book about chivalry, courtly love, and counterfeiting. There may be some intense gazing as people practice their sword forms. And a hair-washing scene inside the royal baths that involves the sexiest conversation about ethics and fealty you will ever hope to read.
Buy the Book
A Taste of Gold and Iron
AR: If there is a sexier conversation about ethics and fealty in any fantasy book, please tell me about it! That kind of information is crucial to my survival. Which brings us to the topic of today’s discussion: Fealty and Feelings! As a bit of background for the readers, Victoria, we are here writing this article today because I read your book last year, lost my mind, slammed into your email inbox, and hurled my book at your head like, “HELLO WE HAVE THE SAME BRAIN AND WE LIKE THE SAME THING AND I TOO HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK ABOUT IT!”—which is of course the classic way for two authors to make friends.
VG: Yes. We Only Like One Thing.
AR: We TRULY Only Like One Thing. Before we get too frothing-at-the-mouth incoherent, we should probably make sure everybody is up to speed—what is fealty, both in real life and in literature?
VG: In the historical sense, fealty was the driving force behind the feudal system—the oaths made between a liege and their vassals. It always had a strong literary foundation in the chivalric and courtly romances, which are in many ways the forerunners of modern fantasy literature. In fact, I would argue that fealty is the fundamental fantasy trope.
AR: And of course you mean “romance” in the archaic sense, rather than our modern understanding of the word as “a love story”. The medieval romance was more of an adventure story, such as King Arthur and his knights’ search for the Holy Grail.
VG: Indeed! We can see one of the great combinations of both in my favourite medieval poem, The Divine Comedy. Dante draws on the traditions of courtly love for his relationship with his beloved, Beatrice, while his relationship with his guide and teacher Virgil are modeled after the chivalric romances, taken in a more literary style. This tradition comes straight through the early authors of fantasy, particularly William Morris and, of course, J.R.R. Tolkien.
AR: Oh yes! J.R.R. Tolkien and the other forefathers of the genre were absolutely familiar with the medieval romances and were drawing on many of the tropes and archetypes used in those stories. So from a purely literary perspective, I would define fealty as the idealized relationship between the archetypical Worthy Lord and his Loyal Vassal.
VG: From there, I’d split the fealty trope into two main types: First, the type more derived from chivalric romances, in which the lord sends their vassal on a quest (eg. Cazaril in Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion), and second, the type more derived from courtly love, in which fealty (and associated feelings!) arises or is greatly strengthened as the lord and vassal quest together (eg. Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings).
AR: That’s a really interesting dichotomy to draw that I had not thought of before! The Hands of the Emperor (hereafter HOTE), is on one hand slightly more inclined towards the chivalric quest variation: Cliopher has so much more freedom of movement and action within the setting than his lord does, simply because he is not hemmed in by as many of the magical taboos or expectations of the court—he is following the pattern of the knight on a quest, while his lord is necessarily more passive. On the other hand, there are elements of courtly love in it as well, because the sheer extent of the necessary (and deeply hated) passivity that his Radiancy endures renders him rather aligned with the “maiden in a tower requiring rescue” archetype—the person the errant knight is questing towards. (His Radiancy is like, “I have a quest for you: Get me the hell out of here.” Cliopher is like, “On it.”)
VG: Whereas in your book, A Taste of Gold and Iron (hereafter G&I), the fealty is more the courtly love type, with the lord and vassal questing together and developing their relationship from a formal and somewhat reluctant service to true personal devotion. At the beginning, Evemer has respect for Kadou’s position but not his person, and it is only as they work together that the Feelings begin to truly emerge. But then you have elements of the chivalric romance type as well, because Evemer’s going around fantasizing about how cool it would be to die tragically and heroically in Kadou’s service. You know, like a nerd. (Kadou’s like, “I regret deeply that I must burden you with this request, but I will require you to accompany me as I pursue this task I have been assigned…” Evemer is like, “Wow. I would follow him anywhere. I would literally die for him if it meant he’d gather my corpse in his arms and cry on my face.”)
AR: LOL, ROAST HIM. This brings us neatly to Feelings, the second essential half of this trope! Fealty is such a compelling structure for personal love and devotion to develop in, and I’ve come up with a theory as to why that is: You know how we live in a capitalist hellscape? Almost everyone has experienced corporations that demand our loyalty (“We’re a family here! You don’t mind working 20 hours of overtime this week, right? Because we’re family and you should do anything for family?”), and yet there is never EVER any expectation that there is anything they owe us in return for that loyalty. There is no reciprocity of care—they are concerned only with exploiting their employees for as much profit as they can possibly manage. So then the idealized fealty relationship becomes so fucking sexy, right? Sexy like a chocolate cake, I mean—delicious and mouthwatering and desirable. Because the idea of, say, your manager at work actually caring about you is a goddamn dream. Imagine getting yelled at by an angry customer, and then your manager steps in and takes your side and defends you. Imagine your manager saying, “My employee doesn’t have to put up with being treated like that. Either apologize or get out.” Did your knees just go weak? Mine did! I had a manager like that once. I would have walked through a burning house for her.
VG: Yes, that reciprocity is crucial!
AR: Reciprocity, and also balance: the lord is a person worthy of respect, admiration, and love, and therefore the vassal can willingly and even joyously devote their own great skills and nobility of character to his service.
VG: When I was working on HOTE I deliberately wanted to explore that dynamic. I have always thought the intimacy and yet careful hierarchy of the vassal-lord relationship fascinating. There is such an extraordinary degree of love that is possible in both directions, because it contains admiration, respect, and genuine devotion. You see this in military stories, between officers and their soldiers (sometimes specifically one aide, sometimes their entire platoon or equivalent), and I think it underlies a lot of the love of fantasy literature for monarchies. It’s not because we all think that monarchies are the best government system, but because we really, really love the fealty.
AR: You know, I’ve had some interesting experiences in talking about how much I love fealty, because I’ve found that lots of people agree that it’s great, but they rarely are able to identify fealty specifically as the thing that they’re responding to and swooning over.
Buy the Book
The Hands of the Emperor
VG: I can see that. I was consciously thinking about the servant-lord dynamic when I wrote HOTE but I didn’t name it as fealty until we started talking about it. And I have a doctorate in Medieval literature! Actually, when did you start thinking about fealty as a thing? Because you wrote G&I that way on purpose, right?
AR: Yep! I’ve been into it since college. I was in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group, so I have personally had the experience of swearing fealty to someone. Yes, it was all part of the game, but it was as sincere as a game can be—and it really does do something weird to your brain when you make those oaths, and when you have those oaths made to you in return: “We accept your fealty freely given and promise never to sacrifice you needlessly, to reward fealty with love, service with honor, and oathbreaking with vengeance…” That meant something to everyone who was participating, it wasn’t just empty words. So I was drawing on those experiences for G&I, as well as many of the medieval romances—and historical/literary figures like Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Benkei from Heike Monogatari, because fealty is not limited to just the Western literary traditions! What were you drawing from specifically?
VG: I was thinking about what I particularly loved about Frodo and Sam’s relationship in LOTR, and also Bunter and Lord Peter in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey mysteries, and even Jeeves and Wooster in the Wodehouse books! I also wanted to think about deep love that was perhaps of a different kind than the sexy kind of romance, and how the formal, external hierarchy, which is a necessary component of the trope, provides a different perspective onto the people involved. The lord sees a different part of their vassal than other people do—and the vassal certainly sees a different part of their lord. That’s where I started—with how Cliopher saw his beloved lord.
AR: Oooh, this leads us neatly into some comparisons between Cliopher and Evemer. The first thing that strikes me as a similarity between them is that they’re both hypercompetent and embodying their half of the archetype consciously and deliberately. They know how to perform Loyal Vassal and what that means, and they are both very invested in their respective lords making the effort to embody the other half of the archetype. Neither of them would be happy with just any old lord—they are both yearning for a worthy one who is so good, noble, and benevolent that he makes them aspire to be better in turn.
VG: Yes. Importantly, I would say, it’s not so much of a performance for them inasmuch as cultural patterns they want to imitate and recreate for themselves. They are able to be more principled and better people because they are imitating the great exemplars from their own histories and legends. The other side of it is that both Evemer and Cliopher are such principled and excellent people that they make their lords also want to rise to the example and be better than they might otherwise have been.
AR: Yes yes yes, that feedback loop! In G&I, Kadou is struggling so much with chronic anxiety, court intrigue, and his own ethical terrors about misusing his power that he frets himself into paralysis and isn’t embodying the Worthy Lord as he should be at first. But because Evemer is so perfect and so confident in what his role is, it becomes… basically effortless for Kadou to grow into that space Evemer has made for him. In some ways, he doesn’t even have to think about it—it’s just a natural impulse for him to offer fierce reciprocal protection to this person who has sworn oaths to him.
VG: One of the things I explored in HOTE is how this sort of deep devotion can affect family relationships. Cliopher is not an orphan nor estranged from his family, but staying by his lord’s side has been so rewarding it has been worth those sacrifices, which include living far away from his family and having to suppress much of his personal expression of his culture to move within the imperial hegemony (and, because he is Cliopher, to slowly dismantle it). Part of the story is Cliopher’s lord realizing just what those sacrifices have been, and taking deliberate steps to offer honour and recognition in ways that Cliopher’s family and community will be able to understand.
AR: That cultural context is the biggest point of contrast between him and Evemer, isn’t it? Evemer isn’t nearly so isolated—he is within his own home culture, he has the community of the other kahyalar (the all-purpose bodyguards/servants of the royal family), he has his mother living in the city just outside the palace who he visits on his days off… He hasn’t had any struggles and obstacles to get to where he is, except for the normal ones anyone might face: striving for academic success, and pushing himself to be better and to embody the ideal. And the ideal he’s working with is one that’s familiar and meaningful to both him and to Kadou—they’re working within the same context, and speaking the same language.
VG: Yes—whereas Cliopher is a member of the bureaucracy, and while they do have oaths of service, it is very much Cliopher deciding on his own to have what others tend to see as an untoward degree of devotion to his lord once he decides that lord is worthy of that regard and service. His Radiancy understands the model, which is old-fashioned….
AR: LOL He’s taking it from his own background of reading epic poetry and the fantasy equivalent of medieval romances!
VG: They both are, and so are Kadou and Evemer! Which I think is very much a part of the trope from the very beginning, both in terms of real-world historical chivalry and the fantasy literature derived from it. It has always been a case of life imitating literature. And people have always mocked those who decide to take it too seriously—look at Don Quixote!
AR: So let’s talk about his Radiancy and Kadou now, because they too are trying very hard to live up to that aspirational ideal of the Worthy Lord, and they’re both deeply aware of the precarious, potentially dangerous power dynamics. They’re both extremely cautious of misusing their power and authority, and they are aware in every single moment how easy it would be for them to hurt one of their subordinates unintentionally.
VG: Yes! The ability (or inability) for those below them to give true consent is a hugely fraught topic for both Kadou and his Radiancy. Kadou is fortunate in this regard, as he is not the Sultan, but he and Evemer do still have many conversations about this.
AR: Yes, absolutely—and Kadou is fortunate also in that I did some worldbuilding to make sure that he would know that there was unequivocal consent when the issue arises. A tiny handful of the kahyalar, the ones who are trusted beyond question, are granted “the privilege of disobedience”, which basically means that at their discretion, they are permitted to disregard orders in pursuit of keeping their liege safe and alive. The kahyalar corps is also aware of how feelings can develop quite intensely in fealty situations, so the cadets are trained about what constitutes a criminal order and that they are permitted to decline unwelcome advances without fear of reprisal.
VG: His Radiancy, on the other hand, is hemmed in with magical and social taboos and is treated quite literally as a god-emperor, and so he keeps his actions and requests very much within the socially accepted conventions of his position. It is not until Cliopher, in service to the greater ideal of the Loyal Vassal and the Worthy Lord, chooses to overstep the social conventions that his Radiancy is able to begin to reciprocate on a genuine human level. At the beginning, when he is first beginning to make these overtures, Cliopher is genuinely concerned about being executed for treason—
AR: Cliopher, you’re fine!!! Your lord is a simp!! He only wants to make heart-eyes at you! He loves it when you do a little treason, as a treat! It makes his day!
VG: It’s true. There are other factions within the court who are less keen on Cliopher’s passionate devotion, however.
AR: Can’t relate. Neither can Evemer. Evemer’s like, “What do you mean? That’s a totally normal way to behave about your lord.”
VG: Fortunately his Radiancy and Cliopher are both the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and they’ve set their sights on being heroic figures out of legend, even if his Radiancy remains somewhat baffled by Cliopher’s insistence on also being a career bureaucrat.
AR: They’re in a much different place in terms of maturity and life experience than Kadou and Evemer are—mine are just getting to the point of figuring out who they are as individuals after all the big sweeping growth arcs that they force each other through: Kadou has to learn to be more… confident, I suppose we could call it, in the sense of feeling like he’s standing on solid ground. Whereas Evemer has to learn to be more flexible and to see the world in more complexity than his initial black-and-white morality. My boy’s not very good at nuance. But they’re in their mid-to-late twenties, and I feel like that’s a very real sort of thing for two people to be doing then.
VG: Cliopher and his Radiancy, on the other hand are late middle-aged, on the cusp of retirement, and have already been in a solid vassal-lord relationship for many, many years at the point HOTE begins. The changes begin because Cliopher wants something more for his lord, and that leads them towards true friendship.
AR: Yeah, they have literal decades of having built up mutual trust and respect in their professional relationship, whereas Kadou and Evemer are very new to each other and struggling past their first impressions.
VG: For both pairs, it’s moving the relationship forward on a personal level that takes some doing, because it takes them outside of the cultural patterns they are familiar with and into more difficult territory.
AR: A lot of rejiggering of mental frameworks and conceptions of one another, for sure!
VG: You see that in G&I with Kadou and Evemer’s gradually developing romance. It’s beautifully explicit in some of their conversations as they re-negotiate their relationship and the path forward over the course of the story. I think that’s such a cool element of your story! How it shows real conversations about consent and partnership and how to respond to changing dynamics.
AR: That was very important to me! I think these sorts of things always take time and real effort from both parties. When you’ve had someone on a pedestal—which is kind of a structurally mandated prerequisite of any fealty relationship—it can be difficult to let them down off of it. And I use the word “let” deliberately: It’s hard to allow someone to be real and imperfect and human, rather than the idealized version of them that you have in your head, which is always going to be… incomplete. When handled poorly, it can feel like you’re losing something precious yet imaginary, rather than gaining something real. A beautiful, perfect fantasy of a person is always going to be… incomplete.
VG: Absolutely. Not to mention when you’ve taken very serious oaths of a certain kind of service or relationship—how to change that without being forsworn? You see this quite clearly with Evemer and Kadou, who at least have some frameworks for what happens when a kahya and their liege develop feelings. Evemer nevertheless struggles hard with reconciling the ideal with the reality in front of him, and Kadou with living up to the ideal he wants for himself.
AR: Right—whereas Cliopher and his Radiancy’s primary obstacle is that they have a bigger divide separating them, and more deeply-ingrained habits, and higher stakes that make the prospect of opening up and being vulnerable a very scary and risky move to take.
VG: Ah, my poor boys! And your poor boys too!
AR: So many poor boys around these parts! But this is another thing I really love about fealty… In most contexts, the phrase “But at least they have each other” is sort of empty and soppy and meaningless, but with fealty, they do have each other on a deeply profound and solemn level. Oaths of fealty are as binding and serious and presumed-permanent as marriage vows (don’t get me started on the medieval rituals for swearing fealty, we do NOT have space to go into that—I shall summarize them as, “Wow, that’s pretty gay, bro”), and so it is just so much more heartwarming, at least to me, to think, “At least they have each other,” about a Worthy Lord and Loyal Vassal… They have each other, and as long as they remain themselves—worthy and loyal and mutually faithful to their oaths—then they will always have each other. And that’s the most romantic thing I can imagine, in all senses of the word.
VG: Awww… Hey, what if we keep talking about fealty for another few thousand words? Nobody will mind, right?
AR: I will mind, because as long as we’re yammering here, you’re not working on the sequel to HOTE! And I will not be chill or well-behaved if it is withheld from me, Victoria Goddard!!! For everyone else’s benefit: At the Feet of the Sun, book two of The Lays of the Hearth-fire, comes out on November 1st and is available for preorder now on Victoria’s website! It is a splendid book, and if you loved HOTE, it will give you everything you could wish for in a sequel.
VG: Too kind! And of course, Alex’s fealty and feelings book comes out even sooner! A Taste of Gold and Iron is less than a fortnight away [at the time of this interview], launching on August 30th in the US and September 1st in the UK. It’s a great delight on so many levels–I’m sure you’ll fall in love with half of the secondary characters (Eozena! Evemer’s mom! Kadou’s sister Zeliha, the Sultan! Tadek!) and the worldbuilding, as one expects from Alexandra Rowland, is both subtle and splendid. Go order it now! Trust me, you want to read that conversation in the royal baths about the ethics of fealty…
Alexandra Rowland is the author of several fantasy books—including A Conspiracy Of Truths, A Choir Of Lies, and Some by Virtue Fall—and a four-time Hugo Award-nominated podcaster. They have a degree in world literature, mythology, and folklore, as well as a feline quality control manager who sternly supervises all their work. Find them at their website, on Twitter and Instagram as @_alexrowland.
Victoria Goddard is a the author of nearly two dozen fantasy books in the expansive Nine Worlds series, including The Hands of the Emperor and its forthcoming sequel, At the Feet of the Sun. She once got a PhD for liking Dante and Boethius too much, and now lives in a cozy farmhouse with a menagerie of pets and a wildly exuberant garden. Find her on Twitter as @_vgoddard or on her website.
