What are the attributes of Grimdark?

[Toby Frost]

But they won't ever win, because the author won't let them - and for me that's the thing that makes a novel grimdark rather than "gritty" or "realistic".
Progress is impossible, because the author won't allow it. But perhaps my definition is rather narrow or extreme.

 

[Juliana]

I watched a virtual con panel this past weekend on Grimdark with, among others, Joe Abercrombie, Marie Brennan and Rebecca Roanhorse, and one thing they all seemed to agree on was that grimdark emerged as a reaction to 'classic fantasy', which tends to a more simplistic good/bad viewpoint. Joe said that characters who are grey and a mess feel more authentic than those who are purely black and white.

I definitely agree that this 'greyness' is a major factor of grimdark.

 

[The Big Peat]

I think another angle that's missing is class differences. Mainstream fantasy has upper class characters - we follow the nobility and demi-gods of the world, the financial elites. In "grimdark" works such as by Joe Abercrombie, we're just as if not more likely to follow low class characters who scrape by from day to day, and otherwise have little if any financial security. The Heroes is a great example of this.

This is probably reflected in attitudes - princes feel entitled to crowns and kingdoms as their birthright, even if initially hidden, and we're expected to root for them because their only eligibility to rule is their blood line, not personal qualities. The Lord of the Rings really underlines this. Lowest class characters do not share that sense of entitlement, and might feel reasonably cynical about the nobility,

I'm not sure I agree with this. One of the main protagonists of The First Law is a very privileged noble. Prince of Thorns and Prince of Nothing are about, well, princes. And Lord of the Rings' main true hero is the most humble of them class wise. Looking at some other trad fantasy... the main characters of The Wheel of Time are common rural folk. The Belgariad is about a farm boy who's bullied onto a throne. Claiming the throne is a secondary plot in The Riftwar Cycle with much of it focused on keep orphans, ******* blacksmiths, and common tribesmen doing remarkable things. The Fionavar Tapestry is about five ordinary real world teenagers. And so on. A more cynical look at class? Maybe. But a different focus on the class of characters? I don't think I see that.

And I really don't think after two and a bit books of selfless and wise service, we're meant to root for Aragorn being king because of his bloodline and not because of his personal qualities. Yes, Tolkien attaches a lot of importance to bloodline and the divine right of kings, but he really goes out of his way to show that Aragorn has the personal qualities - and personal qualities attached to having lived a humble life.

I watched a virtual con panel this past weekend on Grimdark with, among others, Joe Abercrombie, Marie Brennan and Rebecca Roanhorse, and one thing they all seemed to agree on was that grimdark emerged as a reaction to 'classic fantasy', which tends to a more simplistic good/bad viewpoint. Joe said that characters who are grey and a mess feel more authentic than those who are purely black and white.

I definitely agree that this 'greyness' is a major factor of grimdark.

I very much agree it's a reaction to Wheel of Time/Lord of the Rings/Belgariad/Riftwar/Valdemar/Dragonlance/Shannara.

But I do sometimes think it's a reaction to a rather simplistic memory of them, like Zapp Brannigan in Futurama is based on a cultural memory of Captain Kirk that doesn't fit what actually happened. There's definitely a difference in tone but I'm sometimes not sure how much difference there is in the actual skeletons.

 

[Toby Frost]

But I do sometimes think it's a reaction to a rather simplistic memory of them, like Zapp Brannigan in Futurama is based on a cultural memory of Captain Kirk that doesn't fit what actually happened.

I think this is a very good point.

 

[Toby Frost]

In fact, I think many of the things that fantasy writers think they're rebelling against don't really exist. Has anyone been writing the "farmboy plot" in the last 20 years without including some very large revisionist twist? I remember reading an old review of Mythago Wood that praised it for neither following nor rebelling against Tolkien, which suggests that the idea of revisionism in fantasy is pretty old.

Off the top of my head, Lord of the Rings has incompetent or corrupt rulers (three including Wormtongue, IIRC), severed heads being thrown over walls as a terror weapon, and what is effectively a Benthamite surveillance state - all of which seem like very grimdark tropes, although they're not treated as especially surprising. Perhaps it's that lack of dwelling on them that's the point.

 

[The Big Peat]

In fact, I think many of the things that fantasy writers think they're rebelling against don't really exist. Has anyone been writing the "farmboy plot" in the last 20 years without including some very large revisionist twist? I remember reading an old review of Mythago Wood that praised it for neither following nor rebelling against Tolkien, which suggests that the idea of revisionism in fantasy is pretty old.

Off the top of my head, Lord of the Rings has incompetent or corrupt rulers (three including Wormtongue, IIRC), severed heads being thrown over walls as a terror weapon, and what is effectively a Benthamite surveillance state - all of which seem like very grimdark tropes, although they're not treated as especially surprising. Perhaps it's that lack of dwelling on them that's the point.

Time (and intensity with which shown), and character reaction, has a lot to do with it - and to a certain extent ending too because most of that gets fixed (insofar as we see), although I think people gloss over LotR's ending too, with the despoiling of the Shire and Frodo's PTSD.

But yes. People capture snapshots of a book, a genre, in their mind, and carry them around. It never captures the full picture. Which, tbf, I'm sure will happen to Grimdark too.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'm not sure I agree with this. One of the main protagonists of The First Law is a very privileged noble. Prince of Thorns and Prince of Nothing are about, well, princes. And Lord of the Rings' main true hero is the most humble of them class wise. Looking at some other trad fantasy... the main characters of The Wheel of Time are common rural folk. The Belgariad is about a farm boy who's bullied onto a throne. Claiming the throne is a secondary plot in The Riftwar Cycle with much of it focused on keep orphans, ******* blacksmiths, and common tribesmen doing remarkable things. The Fionavar Tapestry is about five ordinary real world teenagers. And so on. A more cynical look at class? Maybe. But a different focus on the class of characters? I don't think I see that.

And I really don't think after two and a bit books of selfless and wise service, we're meant to root for Aragorn being king because of his bloodline and not because of his personal qualities. Yes, Tolkien attaches a lot of importance to bloodline and the divine right of kings, but he really goes out of his way to show that Aragorn has the personal qualities - and personal qualities attached to having lived a humble life.

@The Big Peat - that's a great reply, and when I first read it I thought you'd clearly demolished my argument. However:

The ethos of the nobility is that they are superior to the rest of humanity because of their bloodlines, and therefore must lead by example in this. The Lord of the Rings underlines this philosophy at every opportunity. Aragorn is not a noble because he is a great person - he is a great person because he is noble. I'm not so familiar with LOTR than many others here, but I would be surprised if any kings were ordinarily shown in a bad light - where they are it is shown to be due to magic and other evil influences (Theoden). While lesser men may be capable of acts of nobility (Farmir), their impure blood makes them incapable of being truly noble, which is why the Lords of Gondor may never be kings, only stewards, with Denethor and Boromir demonstrating the weakness of lesser men.

Bilbo and Frodo extend this as expressions of country gentry. They have no job or employment commitments, merely a comfortable financial position that allows them time for idle leisure and travel if and when it suits them. They are therefore absolutely neither common nor working class. Samwise, however, is, and therefore must respect Frodo as his master, a point repeatedly made. Despite any allusion to friendship, Samwise will never be Frodo's equal.

As for Abercrombie, he subverts these class values in his First Law trilogy: Jezal is nobility who is selfishly interested only in protecting his own social position, and ultimately incapable of putting compassion for others first; Glotka, on the other hand, has been expunged by the nobility into a low class position, and despite the horror of his employment, proves to be the only character capable of caring for others. Logen is just a commoner whose story in the First Law trilogy ends with him in exactly the same position as he started.

Back to nobility - Feist and Jordan both write about farm boys with hidden heritage/destiny: Rand and Pug are both demi-gods in the making, so their low-class origins become meaningless. Am not familiar with the Belgariad, but I will be surprised if it's about commoners winning out against the nobility.

Prince of Thorns read to me as a YA book, and I'm not sure it's particularly grimdark - that reputation seems built entirely on Jorg claiming that he is a rapist at the start of the book, but the content is otherwise relatively docile.

Lord of the Rings has ... grimdark tropes

If we define "grimdark" by content then LOTR is a very grimdark and depressing book. After all, everyone fails, and most of the characters "die" at the end! But we've seen multiple arguments about defining what "grimdark" is on these forums over the years. I suspect that trying to define it by content is a distraction: simply put, I would suggest that grimdark in the fantasy genre is nothing more than a reaction to the simplistic morality of classic fantasy where nobility is good by default. Thus by rejecting class as a fundamental designation of what is good and evil, "grimdark" becomes dependent on relative morality, resulting in "grey" characters and "grey" plot developments.

Or, perhaps grimdark is nothing more than a secular rejection of traditional religious morality, of which the divine right of kings (and the extended nobility) is simply one facet?

Anyway, just thinking aloud.

 

[HareBrain]

I'm not so familiar with LOTR than many others here, but I would be surprised if any kings were ordinarily shown in a bad light - where they are it is shown to be due to magic and other evil influences (Theoden). While lesser men may be capable of acts of nobility (Farmir), their impure blood makes them incapable of being truly noble, which is why the Lords of Gondor may never be kings, only stewards, with Denethor and Boromir demonstrating the weakness of lesser men.

I'm not sure about this. The Stewards of Gondor might not be kings as such, but they are still the high ruling class and from more or less the same stock. If you exclude them, then Aragorn and Theoden are the only true kings shown IIRC, which is a very small sample from which to draw a conclusion. Plus the appendixes to LOTR, and the earlier histories (such as that of Numenor) show many kings behaving with the greed and venality we get in history. The Nazgul were kings of men, and they were originally corrupted by their own greed, not magic. Having said that, I think it's true that there's a feeling that these are exceptions, or at least ought to be.

 

[Toby Frost]

Whatever Grimdark is, I think it definitely isn't literature "of the working man" or something like that (not that anyone's really claiming that it is). The theme of pure grimdark, surely, is that the rich are inevitably corrupt and that the poor will inevitably be crushed. Books like 1984 say that if the poor could only get it together, they would win and improve the world. Grimdark says that any hope of improvement is pointless, which is one of the reasons I find it hard to take entirely seriously at its purest. After all, if that was true, I'd be some kind of serf.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Or, perhaps grimdark is nothing more than a secular rejection of traditional religious morality, of which the divine right of kings (and the extended nobility) is simply one facet?

Or perhaps we can simplify further and say that grimdark is nothing more than the rejection of institutional morality?

 

[nixie]

The thing is we can accredit elements of different sub genres to anything we read, @Toby Frost's fantasy series I would class as adventure fantasy but there are elements of Grimdark.

 

[Toby Frost]

Good point! I actually came up with the first one years ago, before grimdark was really a concept, and thought of it as "fantasy, but noir", but there's definitely an overlap. I think both noir and grimdark have to be murky and have some element of intrigue and moral ambiguity.