Here Lies Arthur

[glenatron]

I'm always happy to pick up an arthurian retelling and among a box of books from my mum ( a mixture of returns to the library at our house and loans from the library at theirs ) I found Here Lies Arthur by Phillip Reeve. It's a very clever low Arthurian story, set in post-roman britain and centred around a young girl who is rescued by Myrddin and then goes on to be part of the world around which the myths grew. It is full of very terse storytelling - each word is carefully chosen to fit the story and carry it onwards and the cast is edited down to the bare essentials, so the number of named characters is kept very low. The whole thing is a textbook example of how to write for it's target audience ( which is probably early teens ) in an economical and effective way.

What I found interesting about it, more than anything else, was what it said about the present and our wider culture. In this story, Arthur is a brutal bully ( which is probably quite accurate for a 6th Century war leader ) and Myrddin is his brilliant myth-making spin doctor. What it teaches us is that anyone who wants to lead is unfit to do so, and that to be a leader is to be self-serving, cynical and willing to do anything to achieve your own goals.

This is what our leaders have taught us, over the last ten years or so - with Bush, Blair, Brown and surely many others that you will be able to think of, we have seen that our political leaders say one thing for the cameras and do something else when they think nobody is looking. We have seen the greed, the cynicism, the vested interests, naked ambition and the cruelty they are willing to inflict to get their way and we have learned from it. This, they have said to us, is what a leader is.

The more I have learned about horses the more I have seen how wrong that is. Because a horse needs to be lead, when they feel they are in charge they get anxious and potentially unpredictable. As far as they are concerned, they are responsible for the good of the herd- maybe they see their human as part of that herd, probably they don't, but they believe that if a lion leaps out of that hedgerow or a pack of wolves come rushing through the trees, they will have to look out for themselves. What they need us to do when we work with them is to show that we can be a reliable leader, that by listening to what we ask we can keep them safe. And this is a totally different way of thinking about leadership, it's leadership through accepting responsibility rather than leadership through taking charge. Sometimes you need firmness, certainly you need consistency and boundaries to establish and maintain that leadership, but you're showing those things not as a way of disempowering the horse, but as a way of reassuring them that the rules you have established still apply. Everything is still alright. It is a relationship where the leader gives back more than they take.

This is part of one of the core themes of the Arthurian cycle in some retellings, the notion of the connection between the king and the land- when the king is sick, the land sickens with him. The king is a part of everything and ( quite literally if you read Frazer ) sacrifices himself for his kingdom absolutely. The king who tries to impose the rule of law rather than might is right, the king who spends his life campaigning against vortigern's well established invaders and their destructive march westward, the leader who gives more than they take.

I wonder whether we have reached a turning point here, whether the arrival of a more aspirational president in the US will start to give people the idea that a leader can have something to offer them, rather than giving orders and making demands. These tides only turn slowly and storytelling often seems to lag behind the prevailing cultural trend, but I find myself hoping that a book like this written ten years from now might have a different view of what it means to be a leader. This isn't a bad book, by any measure, but the ideas reflected in it make me a little sad. It is certainly worth a read, but my recommended historical Arthur remains the one described in Sword At Sunset which is in a league of it's own.

Comments

[ribenademon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm Obama is great and all but he has set out on a political career to become president of the world's most powerful country. By definition that is a fairly elitist and self serving path to take. As for cruel and cynical etc we shall have to wait and see. I suspect he will be remembered well, but there might also be a touch of diappointment along the way...

As for how to lead, well when there is a political system and a responding society which lends themselves to giving back more than they each take well that also will be as good a day as any.

Have you read Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson? Its only tenuously connected to Arthur as I remember but thats got some interesting ideas about knightly values and such like.

:)

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

One thing that I think maybe this book gets right is that it doesn't matter so much what Obama is like, more what people think he is like. Even the greatest presidents the US ever had were politicians and probably had to do some pretty tricksy stuff over the years, but we generally remember them for the idea they represented more than their exact actions.

I haven't read the Peter Dickinson one, I'll add it to the list.

[life-of-tom.livejournal.com]

I think people want to believe in leaders, as ideals. We like the idea of someone who will redeem ourselves through their actions, and someone worth following. Arthur's story is almost god-like; he's brought up from seemingly humble beginnings, but eventually his true worth comes to light. At the end of his life, his downfall is brought about by the actions of others around him, including the betrayal by those close to him. He dies, but he will return to save us all. I've heard of some religious wacko cult who believe something like that.

We've thought things like this about our heroes before- Elvis will return to save music, Lawrence of Arabia didn't die in a motorcycle accident, he's just on a mission (naked stealth maneouvers, perhaps?), Drake's Drum will summon him in Britain's hour of need. I think that's one of coded messages that myth leaves to us, and the same message is contained within the phrase 'cometh the hour, cometh the man.' We look to leaders in difficult times, and will excuse their faults, even overlook them entirely, if they can make us believe in the potential within ourselves.

I think Obama's very much aware of this, or at least someone working for him is. I found it interesting that in some joke speech he made at a dinner (where McCain, to be fair, was actually far more funny than he was, but you don't really want someone funny in charge, do you? imagine the horror of America voted for Robin Williams, or such), he talked about being sent from Krypton by his father Jor-El to save earth. Of course, he doesn't believe he's perfect, or at least, I would hope not. But people like the idea of perfection rising up from the ranks of humanity, and will do a lot to fulfill that ideal.

In a lot of ways, I think a politician's job is to surf a wave, to create an image that will motivate those around them to be what they can, and to not do anything too bad to betray that image, which is something difficult in an age of media access. They also need to know that events will one day lead to their removal. I think the most wonderful check and balance was the man that the Romans would employ to sit next to a general at his Triumph, whispering 'remember, you are mortal.' I quite hope that there's someone like that in the Obama camp.

Oh, and Sword at Sunset is fantastic.

Well said

[(Anonymous)]

Totally agree. Oh and don't worry, Obama has someone to say that. It just won't be that polite. Rahm Emanuel will say something more along the lines of: "Remember, bitch, you're f*£$ing immortal and I'll kill you if you forget it. Bitch."

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

It is an interesting thread isn't it. I guess maybe someone like Mal in Firefly may be a good example of fictional leader in the way I'm thinking about it. I really should watch the rest of that.

Is it even possible to lead fairly a community as huge and diverse as ours? Can the sheer wisdom required exist? I don't know.

I do know that our leaders over the last decade haven't shown anything close to it and I think their belief that the message is more important than it's content, that you can lead simply by telling people what you think they want to hear, has been a contributing factor to that.

[z111.livejournal.com]

Fascinating post. Thank you.

[oifonly.livejournal.com]

Some very interesting thoughts about the nature of leaders there. I wonder if a horse's ideas about what makes a good leader and our ideas about it vary so much because of the prey/predator difference in perspective? In which case I'd say the prey have it right....

Sword at Sunset is a great book - though I have to admit I still love Mary Stewart's Merlin-centred stories - The Crystal Cave and so on.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I don't think they do really. I think someone who is a good leader of humans in the way I understand it, will almost certainly be a good leader for a horse as well. I doubt it is co-incidence that so many great historical leaders were regarded as excellent horsemen in their time. I don't think by any means it is just because they belonged to classes that could afford the finest teachers or that they belonged to a horse-powered culture. Those things may have contributed, no question, but I suspect that the qualities that people responded to were the same ones that horses do.

[oifonly.livejournal.com]

So can you explain why people are, in general, so monumentally RUBBISH at electing good leaders? Or do you think that there have been more leaders who have just grabbed power and thereby messed things up, than there have been leaders who were actually democratically voted in? Maybe it takes lots of experience of bad leadership before people wake up and start looking for a good leader? After all, George W was elected twice (er...sort of) before America woke up and picked a different direction.

I reckon the human race is its own worst enemy.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Because people don't pay attention to the person they are voting for, they pay attention to what they are told about that person and they tend to look for the simplest and easiest to follow message, which is unfortunately also often a dangerous one.

Also, picking a bad meal when you have a menu containing only two items, neither of them appetizing, is not a huge suprise.

Democracy really isn't a good way of choosing a national leader anyway. It's the best one, but it's not good. I'm not sure it's working at all really.

Come to think of it, maybe part of what this leads me to think is that our prime ministers and public figures are maybe not our leaders at all. Perhaps the people we choose to follow in other respects are our leaders. Perhaps modern nations such as ours are just too big to ever be truly lead in peacetime.