It’s been a weird week, and I imagine that this weekend is probably not going to be the healing salve I really need. But at least Mondaybor Day is Labor Day, so that means a short week next week.
I am thrilled to see what we’re going to get with Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, although right now I’m still slowly going through Ghost of Tsushima. Man, I go through video games a lot slower when I have a day job, huh? Wonder why that is…
Anyhow I mentioned this before, and I’m not sure what else to write about, so here we are.
Inheritance Cycle & Military Tactics
I recently re-read Brisingr by Christopher Paolini and I had a lot of thoughts. It was fine. But I had this thought which didn’t make much more than a quick note in the Book Diary and that was this: when writing this book, it was quite obvious that Paolini did not know much about how a military is organized. And I want to be clear: this is not a fatal flaw of the book, so this isn’t meant to be taken as “A-ha! He doesn’t know these things therefore he SUCKS!” No. I’m just criticizing this one aspect of the books right now. Move on with your life.
Also, it’s not as if Paolini is the only one to do this in fantasy fiction. You can probably find a bajillion different videos about how the people who worked out the battles in the HBO series Game of Thrones don’t understand how those work either. And I remember reading The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwyne and how the characters have their minds blown by the idea of a shield wall, and being very surprised that none of them have ever worked that out.
But I read Brisingr more recently, so it’s more stuck in my head right now.
When this really occurred to me was the chapter in which Eragon goes sword shopping (well not exactly, but basically). He goes to the Varden’s weaponmaster, Frederick, and they have a conversation about how it’s important to have the right weapon. Frederick talks about how his job is matching people with weapons to make sure they stay alive, and I can’t help but think this isn’t how an army should work?
Battles in Alagaesia tend to go like this: a bunch of men from one side and a bunch of men from the other side run at each other, and then they fight. Occasionally there are bits about a cavalry, or Dragon Riders blasting one group or another with fire, or whatever, but it’s mostly a big melee where everyone is fighting. That’s not how militaries tend to work. When you’re in a massive melee, that tends to be a sign that your side is losing.
If this was how battles worked, then Frederick’s advice would make sense, because then the goal of weapon selection would be to find out what weapon worked best for each person as an individual fighter. But it’s not–what we should be seeing is different units being given different equipment based on what their role is. So you’d have archers with bows, cavalry with lances and swords, pikemen with spears, and so on. Then those units would be applied in battle the way that makes sense based on their strengths and weaknesses. And yeah, that sounds less exciting, but at the same time, unless you can spend literal years training these people, you can’t count on all of your fighters to have Jackie Chan-level of skillz, so having standardized units drilled into formations and basic fighting styles makes a lot more sense. The idea of ‘Everyone just runs at each other’ seems to be drawn from movies and video games, in which it’s much more exciting to watch our heroes wading through battle that way.
The Empire is the side that tends to be depicted as having standardized units, with uniforms, more standard equipment, and more obvious officers. How the Empire manages to train as many soldiers as it does is beyond me–although they’re not very good fighters, so maybe it doesn’t do that great a job of that.
[It’s also worth noting that the Empire’s fighters are always referred to as “soldiers” when the Varden’s fighters are always called “warriors.” Make of that what you will.]
There’s a scene in Codex Alera that I think about sometimes in which our protagonist Tavi has to go undercover as a military officer, and his friend points out to him that he doesn’t know how to fight like a soldier. Tavi protests that he can fight just fine, thank you, but it’s explained to him that while he can duel, and fight as an individual, that doesn’t mean he can fight like a soldier in the Aleran army. The Alerans, based on Roman society, fight as units–men with spears, short swords, and big shields. If Tabi doesn’t know how to fight in a unit, he can’t fully understand how to apply them in battle.
I’m not suggesting that every fantasy author needs a deep grasp of tactics and battles and how armies work. I don’t need detailed descriptions of how every level of a fantasy army functions, or how it carries its supplies from one place to another (that is in fact a lot of work and another thing that many fantasy writers don’t understand). That sounds very boring, though I’m pretty sure in the right hands it could become a very interesting book.
[Perhaps there’s an idea buried somewhere in there for a story about a quartermaster trying to get supplies to the troops while dealing with a superior officer who has no idea what goes into making an army run.]
I would, however, like to have fantasy writers, both for print and on screen, have a basic idea of how armies work, and how they fight each other. That it isn’t how armies would have fought in these conditions. When your formations break down like that, you basically know you’re screwed because that’s when your plan has fallen apart (unless you get your crap back together and regroup). It isn’t just ‘our guys and then your guys fight in a bunch of cool cinematic one-on-one duels.’
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