Unto this were all the knights sworn
Asexual and Aromantic Representation in Early Fantasy Series
Asexual and aromantic visibility in fiction began, more or less, in 2016 with the publication of Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. This is not the first book published to feature asexual or aromantic characters or themes. There have been multiple in various genres that were published prior to the publication of this novella, but especially within the sphere of science fiction, fantasy and horror, the specific combination accompanying this novella — name recognition both of the author and the publisher, a rise in asexual representation in general, an explicit use of the term ‘asexual’ in the novella — likely gave Every Heart a Doorway the boost it needed to open that door into visibility further.
It did not do this for books with asexual and aromantic representation and themes published after, such as Rosiee Thor’s Tarnished Are the Stars, Darcie Little Badger’s Elatsoe. Alechia Dow’s The Sound of Stars and more, but also for a rediscovery and exploration of the books that had come before and that may not have had the visibility and understanding that contemporary writers have been delivering in their books and where the themes and traces of asexuality and aromanticism may not be as visible.
Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, published in 1983, is currently considered to be the first modern and explicitly asexual (and aromantic) narrative in literature. Though the book does not contain any variation on the word ‘asexual’ — and certainly not a variation of the word ‘aromantic’ — it is recognised as such. Jana Fedtke’s ““What to Call That Sport, the Neuter Human …”: Asexual Subjectivity in Keri Hulme’s The Bone People” in Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives discusses the presentation of asexuality in more detail[1].
Along with Hulme’s book, this decade also saw the publication of Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy and Mercedes Lackey’s Vows and Honor series, both series featuring asexual-coded protagonists. In fact, the first book in Lackey’s series includes an introduction that explicitly refers to Tarma as asexual. To the best of my knowledge, this marks the 1988 introduction to The Oathbound the first time ‘asexual’ was used to describe a character in fiction in a way that denotes some form of “does not experience sexual attraction”. While Moon’s book falls closer to Hulme’s in leaving its depiction implicit rather than explicit in any way, all three stand out because the asexual coding, a subset of queer coding, in their narratives are deliberate, affect the protagonist and their relationship dynamics deeply, and were represented sympathetically.
Within fantasy, the earliest depictions of characters deliberately coded as asexual — and, due to their age, this includes aromantic coding through conflation — all seem to fall within a similar pattern. These characters are often holy warriors, if not outright knights or paladins; they are women in largely male-dominated spaces even when the world-building suggests more equality; they have no interest in marriage, childrearing, sex, or romance; they are, in some way, an outsider in their society; and rape is a part of their narrative.
This essay will explore the depiction of these patterns in four early asexual and aromantic (aspec) narratives: Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion (1988–1989), Mercedes Lackey’s Vows and Honor (1988–1998) series, Jo Walton’s Sulien duology (2000–2001) and Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small Quartet (1999–2002). By tracing the depictions of asexuality and aromanticism through these books, asexuality and aromanticism studies can build an understanding of the ways in which these themes and traces explore an array of relationships in our society that are frequently ignored, dismissed or downplayed.
The Deed of Paksenarrion
Elizabeth Moon’s 1988–1989 The Deed of Paksenarrion (Paks) is a trilogy consisting of Sheepfarmer’s Daughter (1988), Divided Allegiance (1988), and Oath of Gold (1989). The books follow the life of the eponymous Paksenarrion, or Paks, as she leaves home to train as a warrior and finds herself on the path to becoming a paladin as well as discovering the true heir to the throne of Lyonya. Throughout the three books, Paks is shown multiple times to have no interest in either sexual liaisons or romantic engagements. In fact, the story begins when she runs away from home to escape an unwanted, arranged marriage. The trilogy is heavily and visibly inspired by Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), as Moon discusses briefly in the introduction to the 2018 republication of Sheepfarmer’s Daughter.
With such clear roleplaying roots and with the influence of D&D on 80s fantasy in general, it is worth considering the way in which D&D presents its paladin class to examine whether any of the asexual coding present in Paks’s narrative can be found codified within the texts before exploring Paks’ narrative too closely. Neither the first edition Players Handbook (PHB)[2] nor the supplement Unearthed Arcana (UA) include many specific rules on how to roleplay a paladin. The PHB notes only that “all paladins must begin as lawful good in alignment (q.v.) and always remain lawful good or absolutely lose all of the special powers which are given to them” (p 22). The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, though certainly not one Moon would have used in the games that helped inspire Paks’s story[3], goes into more depth about the question of how to play a paladin, explaining in its introduction that “For your convenience, this book compiles and summarizes all of the relevant rules from the DUNGEON MASTER™ Guide (abbreviated DMG in the text) and Player’s Handbook (abbreviated PH)” (p 3). Its third chapter is dedicated to exploring the principles and virtues that govern a paladin’s life in a D&D campaign and notes specifically that while chastity and celibacy are both virtues a paladin character can strive for, neither are requirements set forth by the rules of D&D. Indeed, the handbook ends by offering Paksenarrion as an example of a “paladin-like heroine” (p. 121) among its sources.
The paladin class itself is modelled strongly on historical knights and, specifically, such knights as found in courtly romances surrounding the Matter of France, notably The Song of Roland but more importantly for a predominantly English-language original audience, those romances surrounding the Matter of Britain and, specifically, the story of Galahad in the Vulgate Cycle or Malory’s Morte Darthur. Establishing that the core rules for D&D do not require its paladin characters to be either celibate or chaste[4] allows us to trace the concept of Paks’s chastity and celibacy back to these much older sources. Megan Arkenberg’s 2014 paper “’A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood’: Galahad’s Asexuality and its Significance in Le Morte Darthur” covers an asexual reading of not just one of Arthuriana’s greatest knights but of the very knight that ultimately inspired the paladin class as players, and thus Moon, would understand it within D&D. Galahad, however, is somewhat of an exception to the rules of chivalry. Arkenberg points out various times when Galahad behaves significantly differently from the way his contemporary knights are portrayed, such as the way that he seeks to avoid combat (an act Arkenberg explains has strong homoerotic overtones) rather than engage with it and how he eschews any and all companionship, even when offered.
D&D, however, does not base its paladins on Galahad’s portrayal as such but on the code that Galahad so powerfully exemplifies[5]. The Pentecostal Oath the knights swear in Morte Darthur is
The king stablished all his knights, and gave them that were of lands not rich, he gave them lands, and charged them never to do outrageousity nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour upon pain of death. Also, that no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no law, ne for no world’s goods. Unto this were all the knights sworn of the Table Round, both old and young. And every year were they sworn at the high feast of Pentecost. (Le Morte d’Arthur, Book III, Chapter XV)
The only interaction with women it mentions is “always to do ladies, damosels and gentlewoman succor upon pain of death”. Nowhere does it mention anything about engaging in romantic or sexual behaviour with them. Indeed, one of the greatest Arthurian tales is the forbidden love between Lancelot and Guinevere, much to Galahad’s own shame. The Pentecostal Oath, however, is far less notable for a 70s interpretation of chivalry, as presented within D&D, than Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier. Hoby’s 1561 translation (as edited by Walter Raleigh in 1900 and digitized by R.S. Bear in 1997) offers a handy summary of the important points on how courtiers ought to behave, noting of men’s relationship to women that “His love towarde women, not to be sensuall or fleshlie, but honest and godly, and more ruled with reason, then appetyte: and to love better the beawtye of the minde, then of the bodie”. (p. 17) The rules found in this list are far more in keeping with the ones in The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, and this rule in particular suggests there is a social requirement for (male) paladins to be chaste, or at least to prioritise romantic relationships over sexual ones if not outright platonic. Yet, as the handbook shows and as demonstrated within the narrative of Paks, paladins can and do have sex. It is an ideal that Paks, like an asexual reading of Galahad, is uniquely able to fulfil.
When Paks becomes a Paladin candidate, she learns that “paladins never married unless — and this was rare — they retired from that service to another. Yet although celibate on quest — Paks saw someone frown, across the room, and wondered if he would drop out — they might have lovers in Fin Panir or elsewhere, as time allowed”. (The Deed of Paksenarrion, p. 689) Moon’s version of a paladin then only requires celibacy while on a quest and does not enforce a strict type of asexuality on them. As Amberion continues to explain to Paks and the other candidates in this scene, “But those you love most are in the most danger. (…) Choose your loves from those who can defend themselves, should Achrya’s agents be seeking a weapon against you. We are here to defend the children of others — not to protect our own. And if we had children, and were good parents, we would have no time for Gird’s work.” (idem). Paks, then, is uniquely suited to the life of a paladin because she is asexual, but she is not asexual because she is a paladin. As such the depiction of asexuality straddles an uncomfortable line between both explicitly being held separate from paladinhood, thus suggesting that her asexuality is simply a part of her and not solely a result of Moon’s desire to write a paladin character, and yet still implicitly being tied to paladinhood — one of the reasons she is one of the best paladins is, after all, because her asexuality means that she will not have lovers or a family that can be used against her by the forces of evil.
Yet, asexuality is not the only thing that makes Paks stand out as an exemplary paladin among the others in the trilogy. Especially the latter half of the story repeatedly notes how Paks has become a paladin in an unconventional manner. Several characters discuss the ways in which the gods used to select paladins themselves rather than existing paladins sending their candidates through a rigorous training regime. In the Oath of Gold, the last book in the trilogy, an old druid Paks has befriended tells her of the origin of paladins, noting that
Once the gods themselves chose paladins, chose them from among those mortals who desired good and would risk all danger to gain it. The gifts which all expect paladins to have were given by the gods, some to one, and some to another, as they grew into their powers. The heroes whose cults have grown up over the world — some of them now called saints — were chosen and aided the same way. Or so it is said. But after awhile, the cults themselves began to choose candidates, and prepare them, and — so it is said — began to intervene between the gods and the paladins. Although, once chosen, the paladins were supposed to take their direction from the saints or gods —
(…)
I’m not attacking the Girdsmen,’ the Kuakgan said slowly. ‘Though it must sound like it. The Fellowship of Gird has done much for these kingdoms, and the fighters it trains have at least some care for the helpless. But what was once a grace bestowed freely by the gods — flowers wild in the field and woods — has become a custom controlled by the clerics: flowers planted in safe pots along a path. The flowers have their virtue, either place, but — ’ He stopped and looked at her. ‘It may be, Paksenarrion, that once in a while the gods decide to do things their way once more. If you are, as you declare, no longer depending on man or woman for your guidance of good and evil — and yet you have, as you’ve shown, some of the gifts found in paladins — ’ (The Deed of Paksenarrion, page 873–874)
It will take Paks a while longer than this conversation to accept that, as a paladin, she falls outside of the saints’ fellowships that the Kuakgan is describing, but it fits surprisingly well within the context of an asexual reading of her character. After all, one of the tropes surrounding asexuality is that of being alone. While the books note that this loneliness is common for paladins, the Girdsmen — the only example of a paladin order given in the trilogy — have their own fellowship and base to return to. Paks is only loosely affiliated with them and received all of her paladin powers outside of this societal structure. Divided Allegiance even ends with her arguably undergoing even more rigorous training than she would have received as a paladin candidate within the Girdsmen order, as events strip her of any and all ability to defend herself for a time to better understand how regular people feel when faced with the kinds of danger that she found joy in confronting as a warrior previously.
Notable, as well, is that the climax of Oath of Gold sees Paks undergoing not just torture but rape to ensure the redemption of a large group of people. By choosing to explicitly include rape with the torments intended to break Paks’s faith in her gods, the books end up presenting Paks’s virginity as the most important aspect of herself that she could lose. Throughout three books, it is the only thing she has never lost until that moment and, perhaps equally crucially, it is the only time she explicitly asks not to be rescued by her friends or anyone mortal.
Though the world of Paksenarrion suggests that the narrative aims for an egalitarian setting, with both men and women being able to rise through society equally, it is still a more patriarchal narrative, from Paks’s father’s attempts to marry her against her will at the start of Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, to the way most all of her role models are men. It is possible that this narrative reflects Moon’s own experiences in the US Marine Corps, but this falls outside the scope of this essay.
Given how early depictions of asexuality are tied with both depictions of aromanticism and agenderism, it is little surprise to find that the books also have moments where Paks is linked to manhood in some way, such as when Paks has a brief discussion with a tailor:
‘You’re as big as a man,’ [the tailor] said, a little nervously.
‘Even in the neck — ’
Paks laughed. ‘It comes of the fighting,’ she said. ‘Wearing a helmet every day would thicken anyone’s neck. Makes it harder to cut through.’ (The Deed of Paksenarrion, page 496)
While this is not outright misgendering Paks, it still maintains a tenuous link to the idea that to be asexual one must also be in some way androgynous or outside of a gender binary between ‘man’ and ‘woman’. As this only happens with Paks, it implicitly links her asexual-coding to the idea that she does it fit within that gender binary. This way of thinking is no doubt influenced by the thoughts on gender and sexuality that developed within the late 19th and early 20th century. In Alison Moore’s “The Invention of the Unsexual: Situating Frigidity in the History of Sexuality and Feminist Thought”, she discusses and remarks on the way in which frigidity has helped shape allonormativity or compulsory sexuality, though of course she does not label it as such.
While the narrowing of the definition of “frigidity” from humeral (as late as the mid-nineteenth century) to perverse (at the fin-de-siècle) to phallic (in the interwar period) helped to delineate heterosexual normativity across this period, it also served increasingly to define and assert the all-pervasive status of the sexual. (Moore, p. 188)
As obvious from this citation, the usage of ‘frigidity’ in the time period she discusses does not look synonymous with asexuality and the paper shies away from offering clear definitions, yet all of them revolve around the same thing: a lack of sexual desire in women, and once the words ‘lack of sexual desire’ enter the narrative its overlap with asexuality stands out like a bonfire. Asexuality, after all, has historically (and often still is) described as ‘a lack of sexual desire’. Frigidity is a specific form used to criticise and pathologize women’s sexuality in particular[6]. If, as Moore argues, frigidity was used to create a specific idea of heterosexual normativity (heteronormativity), it is a method that likely also paved the way for an allonormative idea of what sexuality ought to look like[7].
These earlier discussions of frigidity tie it strongly to pathologisation, treating it as something that is inherently wrong with a person. Later feminist discussions of frigidity, as Moore notes, cast frigidity as a product of patriarchy, implying that frigid women have bought into male ideas of sexual pleasure that can be discarded the moment they are introduced to feminine ideas of sexual pleasure. Neither discussion leaves much room to consider the possibility that some people, in this case specifically women, simply do not experience sexual desire or sexual attraction at all. They are women and, therefore, they must experience some form of sexual desire.
Paks, however, is never shamed for her lack of desire, though it is remarked upon multiple times. The trilogy, in this way, rejects the idea that a lack of sexual desire is automatically a bad thing in need of correction. However, Paks’s narrative is still one in which celibacy is clearly valued. The acceptance of her asexuality hinges on her road to becoming a paladin. None of the other characters in the book are presented as asexually coded. As we have seen, not even the Girdsmen, whom we might assume are continuously celibate, are explicitly forbidden from engaging in sexual intercourse. They may simply not marry or raise children while being a paladin due to the likelihood that their family will be used against them by the forces of evil and the way their oaths would be broken by being unable to provide true parenthood to children[8].
The depiction of asexuality in Paks, then, has several specific characteristics: 1) Paks is a female warrior in a largely male-dominated space (presenting her as Other to a small degree); 2) Paks has a clear link to the divine, having been chosen as a paladin by the gods themselves; 3) she displays no interest in marriage or raising children and shows a clear lack of interest in sex and/or romance; 4) though she is not often mistaken for a man or seen as androgynous, small moments do still contain that link; 5) at some point in the narrative, she experiences rape, though notably this happens near the end of her narrative, as part of the reasons she is such a strong paladin, rather than at the start as part of her motivation and as possibly explanation for her lack of sexual desire; 6) while Paks is immediately accepted within most groups, her status as a paladin specifically chosen by the gods rather than themselves marks her as an outside to how society normally functions.
Vows and Honor
Mercedes Lackey’s Vows and Honor (Vows) series consists of three books: The Oathbound (1988), Oathbreakers (1989) and Oathblood (1998)[9]. Set in Lackey’s famous Valdemar setting, these books take place in a different part of that world and feature the warrior Tarma and her mage partner Kethry as they battle evils and, more often than not, protect women in need of aid. The series began, however, as short stand-alone stories and novellas. The Oathbound is an adaptation of some of these stories, tying the narrative loosely together in an episodic novel. Oathbreakers is a full stand-alone novel, allowing the protagonists’ path to cross with characters from Valdemar. Oathblood is a collection with both a new novella and all the series’ published short stories as they were originally published rather than the selection that The Oathbound wove into a single narrative.
Like Paks, Vows has some clear inspirations and connections to popular fantasy culture at the time. The episodic structure of Tarma and Kethry’s adventures is pure sword-and-sorcery (S&S), though likely more inspired by the strain of S&S that was popularised through the 1960s-1980s than the original tales written by authors such as Robert E. Howard and C.L. Moore. As A Short History of Fantasy notes “[t]he version of Conan handed down to us is of a not terribly bright, muscle-bound, oversexed adolescent fantasy hero” (p. 36), Mendlesohn and James go on to say that
Robert E. Howard’s Conan set the model for a new kind of hero, but also for a new kind of tale, one frequently episodic and set beyond the kind of fey civilization that the late-nineteenth-century British fantasy writers had constructed. It is not stretching a point to argue that Howard (along with authors we have not discussed because their work is not strictly fantasy, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs), constructed both an “American” hero, and a frontier landscape in the historical settings they chose. Almost all sword-and-sorcery tales take place in worlds reminiscent of the Roman, Greek or early medieval worlds. There are decadent empires and violent barbarians, and conflict is often over conflicting ideas of morality and honour. The stories are told in a context in which gods, demons and the supernatural are an ever-present and assumed reality. Unlike the quest fantasies to which they sometimes seem allied, they are almost always episodic. Frequently, the hero breaks up other people’s grand narratives. (p. 36–37)
Vows’ first and third book clearly fit the mould described here. Tarma lives, along with the other clans of her nomadic people, on the Dhorisha Plains and it is not difficult to draw parallels between them and the Plains peoples of the United States. Though most of the narratives take place outside of the Dhorisha Plains, the majority of the stories is still set along the outskirts of the lands readers would be familiar with from Lackey’s Valdemar books and Tarma is familiar enough with the laws of these lands to use them to her advantage[10]. While the narrative of Tarma and Kethry’s adventures is lean on decadent empires, arguably their explicit feminist slant lend themselves well for the genre’s conflict focusing on morality and honour. And, of course, Tarma’s warrior goddess, the recurring demon antagonist Thalhkarsh and Kethry’s own magic are an assumed reality within the setting.
In the introduction to Oathblood, Lackey also explicitly lays a link to Vows and S&S, as she explains that Tarma and Kethry were both created to be a counterpoint to S&S stories that “were about brawny C*n*n types, strong like bull, dumb like ox, iron-thewed, and not something you’d invite to a nice restaurant” (p. 479). Lackey’s description of the genre’s heroes matches that of Mendlesohn and James’s description of the turn S&S had taken from the 60s onwards. Lackey was influenced by at least Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress series, published from 1984–2015[11], as she explicitly credits these anthologies and Bradley in her introduction.
This introduction also makes it clear that her understanding of the genre leans queer, saying that she thought “it would be nice to have at least one token heterosexual female hero. And hey, not every fantasy hero or heroine has to be as highly sexed as most of the then-current crop seemed to be!” (p. 479) It is also notable, as Mendlesohn and James point out briefly, that S&S had some strong homosexual subtext in its imagery which may explain why Lackey, in creating her own feminist take on these narratives, wanted to create an explicitly heterosexual main character and a warrior/mage partnership that could not be interpreted as homosexual.
S&S, however, is clearly not the only direct influence on Vows. Like Moon, Lackey finds herself drawing on the concepts of paladins in D&D with her depiction of Tarma. Interestingly, the concepts of what makes a paladin may themselves draw on S&S. Poul Anderson, whose Three Hearts and Three Lions was a strong influence on the D&D paladin class, was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers’ Guild of America (SAGA). SAGA was a group of American fantasy authors noted for their S&S works active in the 1960s through to the 1980s. It is not far-fetched to assume that his work influenced both early depictions of these asexual and by extension aromantic warrior women.
Lackey’s introduction is somewhat ambiguous about which of her lady protagonists is heterosexual, but it does not take much to determine that she is talking about Kethry. Not only does it follow this note up with immediately describing Tarma as ‘asexual’ and Kethry as ‘definitely fond of men’, The Oathbound explicitly uses the term ‘asexual’ in relationship to Tarma multiple times. If its usage is clearly not the exact meaning it would have today, it is still recognisably intended to mark Tarma as someone who does not experience sexual attraction.
More specifically, the introduction describes Tarma as “celibate, chaste, and altogether asexual” (p. 479), thereby clearly linking the concepts and imagery associated with their words together. An echo of this can be seen in the introduction of Warrl, a neuter highly intelligent and sentient wolf/cat hybrid known as a kyree, who, like Tarma, has no interest in or desire for sex. While Warrl’s lack of sexual attraction is clearly biological in nature, Tarma’s is not. She is asexual specifically and explicitly because of the vows she has taken as a swordsworn (or kal’enedral), a vow which creates an artificial shield around Tarma’s ability to experience sexual or romantic attraction. In the glossary at the end of Oathbreakers, it is described as
vysaka: (visahkah) — the spiritual bond between the Kal’enedral and the Warrior; its presence can actually be detected by an Adept, another Kalenedral, and the Kal’enedral him/ herself. It is this bond which creates the “shielding” that makes Kal’enedral celibate/neuter and somewhat immune to magic. (Vows and Honor, page 448)
Though readers who started with The Oathbound will have encountered this bond before in the stories where Tarma and Kethry fight the demon Thalhkarsh. While the demon only threatens to break Tarma’s bond to her goddess in their first encounter, he succeeds in breaking it during their second, leaving Tarma feeling lost and bereft until the bond can be restored.
Whether readers first meet Tarma in The Oathbound or in the short story Swordsworn, however, it is soon clear that Tarma experienced at least some kind of attraction to her fiancé, Dharin. The Oathbound offers a summarised version, but makes the significance Dharin had to Tarma quite clear through her keeping what is, in effect, his betrothal gift. Swordsworn goes into far more detail regarding what happened. That short story heavily implies that Tarma and Dharin were already in a sexual relationship before deciding to get married. While depictions of asexuality do not have to exclude sexual relationships, for a variety of reasons, and while celibacy and asexuality are two different things — the former is behaviour, the latter is a physical experience of sexual attraction — earlier depictions of asexuality often treat them as interchangeable much like how they treat romantic attraction and sexual attraction as intrinsically the same, as is the case with the way Lackey uses ‘asexual’ and ‘celibate’ to both mean something like ‘does not have sex’.
Moreover, this citation from the glossary shows a link between gender and sexuality in that it implies that asexual people must also be genderless. Curiously, Tarma and Kethry meet a celibate priest during their second encounter with Thalhkarsh who both has a gender (male) and clearly expresses sexual attraction to Kethry, so Lackey does make a single clear distinction between asexuality and celibacy in the narrative. That gendered link, however, remains for Tarma, who is described at one point as a ‘mannish swordswoman’ (p. 36) and at another as “no kind of beauty; her features were too sharp and hawklike, her body too boyishly slender; and well she knew it” (p. 482). Though overall descriptions of Tarma’s looks are more likely to focus on being hawklike and cold, tying in to other aspec stereotypes[12], Tarma also occasionally dresses up as a man and, in Oathbreakers, is shown to be on board with pranking someone into thinking she is “a eunuched boy” (p. 302) in order to teach him a lesson.
The glossary entry is not the sole time Tarma’s imposed lack of sexuality is mentioned in the narrative. Within the stories she learns quickly that as part of her Oath, “her body no longer felt the least stirrings of sexual desire. The Swordsworn were as devoid of concupiscence as their weapons” (p. 492), thus directly tying Tarma’s asexual-coding to her existence as a holy warrior within the narrative itself. In keeping with asexual stereotypes, Tarma is, at least at this point in her life, closely associated with death as, when she fights the bandit chief, she is perfectly content to perish along with the men she has sworn vengeance again “[f]or when they were gone, what else was there for her to do? A Shin’a’in Clanless was a Shin’a’in with no purpose in living. And no wish to live.” (p. 500) This link is countered by Tarma’s strong longing for a family and a home; Tarma’s motivation after achieving vengeance is to rebuild her destroyed Clan and secure the funds and reputation to do so. She and Kethry also decide that they want to start a school that meshes both martial and magical training.
Outside of actually achieving both these goals in Oathbreakers, Tarma’s desire for home and family is most exemplified by the end of Swordsworn, where she asks Kethry, a woman she still barely knows, to become a blood-sister and, as such, the first new member of Tarma’s clan. Kethry, whose wanderings as a White Winds sorceress mean she is just as lonely, is eager to swear the oath without fully understanding it and belatedly asks Tarma
“I’m not sure how to ask this — Tarma, now that we’re she’enedran, do I have to be Swordsworn, too?” She looked troubled. “Because if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not. I have very healthy appetites that I’d rather not lose.”
“Horned Moon, no!” Tarma chuckled, her facial muscles stretching in an unaccustomed smile. It felt good. “In fact, she’enedra, I’d rather you found a lover or two. You’re all the Clan I have now, and my only hope of having more kin.” (Vows and Honor, page 503)
Here, Lackey gives a clear indication of their respective sexualities, though she does it in a way that casts the very concept of asexuality as unhealthy in the way that Kethry describes her libido. Due to the nature of Tarma’s asexuality as part of a plot device, this sentiment that Tarma’s sexuality is unnatural shows up multiple times albeit generally more subtly.
This does not, however, mean that Tarma herself is portrayed unsympathetically. She is, after all, the central protagonist in the same way that Paks is. Tarma, however, is an outsider in the majority of societies her stories take place in. As respected as she is for her skills, as much as she settles into her life among a different culture, and as much as her narrative is about restoring and rebuilding her clan, the books never forget that she is an outsider in the society she moves in, that her ways are Other. Here especially the narrative begs for an intersectional approach I am ill-equipped to address, but attempting to look at it from solely an asexual and aromantic perspective, Vows is a text which unwittingly tries to undermine the very stereotypes it builds on much like Paks did before it.
Tarma, though she is described as cold several times, is clearly a passionate person. She makes friends easily and enjoys her friendships; she enjoys debating theology with others who do not share her fate; when her friends are in trouble, she will drop everything to come to their aid; when she and Kethry are low on food, most of her share goes to her horse… There may be times in the narrative where Tarma is bored, but she is never heartless. When Tarma loses the vysaka and her connection to her goddess, she feels its loss keenly. There is no revelling in the potential to feel sexual attraction once more.
“It’s gone,” she choked, unable to comprehend her loss. “The vysaka — the Goddess-bond — it’s gone!” She could feel her sanity slipping; feel herself going over the edge. Without the Goddess-bond — (Vows and Honor, page 222)
To Tarma, it is a clear and keen loss of an important part of her identity that, for all its explicit divinely imposed restrictions, renders Thalhkarsh’s actions as nothing short of a fantastical version of conversion therapy that is, possibly surprisingly as it affects an asexually coded character, treated as a horrible violation of her person and identity rather than a thing to be celebrated. By the end of The Oathbound, Tarma’s lost bond with her goddess is one that needs to be restored. A helpful priest instructs Kethry in how to contact the goddess to accomplish this.
“Just try to tell her Warrior that the bond has been broken and needs to be restored — or Tarma may well — ”
“Die. Or go mad, which is the same thing for a Shin’a’in.”
Kethry knelt at the priest’s feet on the cold marble of the desecrated temple floor, Warrl at her side. Tarma remained where she was, sunk in misery and loss so deep that she was as lost to the world around her as Thalhkarsh was. (Vows and Honor, page 233)
While the passage does not go into much detail about how the bond is restored or what this means for Tarma, or even how this passage addresses a late 1980s understanding of recovery from trauma, it is explicit in the fact that Tarma, as she is in these stories, would not be herself — would not even be alive — without her goddess-created asexuality.
The depiction of asexuality in Vows, then, has several specific characteristics: 1) Tarma is a female warrior in a largely male-dominated space (though it bears keeping in mind that in her own culture this is not out of the ordinary); 2) Tarma has a clear link to the divine, having sworn herself to her goddess as a swordsworn; 3) she displays no interest in marriage and a clear lack of interest in sex and/or romance; 4) she is repeatedly described in ways that render her genderless or sexless by the narrative; 5) she experiences rape at several points in the narrative; 6) while Tarma finds it easy to make friends, her race and the importance her culture has to her continuously mark her as an outsider to society.
The Protector of the Small
Tamora Pierce’s The Protector of the Small (Protector) series consists of four books: First Test (1999), Page (2000), Squire (2001), and Lady Knight (2002). Unlike the other series in this essay, Protector is not aimed at adult readers but at teenagers. Set in Pierce’s realm of Tortall, Protector follows the coming-of-age and adventures of Keladry of Mindelan, the first female knight in the realm after Alanna. Pierce notes that she wrote Kel’s story because she “hadn’t really explored the idea of female knights to the fullest when [she] wrote Alanna’s story, and that [she] wanted to give it another try” (FAQ). The first two books of the series see Kel work through the four years of training to become a squire. The third sees her training as a squire along the King’s Own, due to her potential as a commander and attaining her shield. The fourth sees Kel put in command of a refugee camp and seeking out the mage who facilitated Scanra’s superior weaponry.
Much like Paks and Vows, Kel’s narrative has several smaller arcs, as each book stands on its own, but unlike them the influences of D&D and S&S are less visible within the overall narrative. This may be because Kel’s position in life is fairly static, compared to Paksenarrion and Tarma. While there is travel within the first two books, it is limited to what are, effectively, school camping trips. Kel does not see the same level of roaming through the countryside as Paks and Tarma until the third book, and then only briefly. In the same FAQ answer, Pierce makes it clear that this is on purpose: “unlike Alanna, who is a loner hero, Kel is a good commander” (FAQ). The Song of the Lioness, the quartet about Alanna’s rise to knighthood, more clearly fits the trappings and influences of those genres. More importantly, though, it means that Kel’s more obvious difference from Paks and Tarma — her ability to make friends with anyone — ensures that Pierce’s depiction of Kel does not fall into the stereotypes that asexual and aromantic people are distant, cold and emotionless.
That is not to say that these stereotypes are gone entirely, however. Early on in First Test, the reader learns that Kel has spent her formative years living on the island of Yamani, which is heavily based on Japan, and most all of Kel’s emotionlessness in the narrative ends up leaning on stereotypes about the Japanese. Throughout the series, the narrative makes references to how her ability to act emotionless is due to her Yamani upbringing. Though Kel herself is Tortallan by birth, the narrative’s frequent reminders, especially at the start, that she was raised in a different culture, aid in a sense of othering that runs underneath the bullying and hazing that she deals with for being a girl. Like with Tarma, this creates a tie between Kel’s asexuality and aromanticism and Kel’s removal from the book’s dominant cultures however unintentional it may be. Like with Tarma, it runs into an intersection of identities that I am not best equipped to speak on. It is, however, notable as even Paks and, as we’ll see later Sulien, both arguably also have a sense of otherness tied to their place of birth.
Kel is confirmed as asexual and aromantic by Pierce directly in a FAQ on her website where she states that “[i]n short, Kel is both aromantic and asexual”. While the full answer has its issues in defining asexuality and aromanticism both as ‘not interested in romance’, it is a powerful one, not least because Kel, unlike the other characters on this list, explicitly engages in romantic behaviours. This does mean that Kel may not read as aromantic or asexual to all readers. She experiences a strong crush on her friends Neal and Dom and enters into a romantic relationship with Cleon. She and Cleon are interrupted just as they are starting to get ready for intercourse multiple times during their relationship and Kel’s sexual attraction to Cleon in those moments seem clear enough. If one believes that asexuality and aromanticism can only be depicted one way in fiction, it is easy to dismiss Pierce’s answer about Kel’s sexuality. Yet asexuality and aromanticism are both spectra and Kel’s experience would fit neatly into the grey areas somewhere. Of possibly even more import to this change in depiction of sexuality is that Kel is a teenager and exploring one’s sexuality is often a large part of these types of coming-of-age narratives aimed at young adult readers. Protector is, to date, the only narrative we have that follows an explicitly asexual and aromantic character from her early teens all the way to adulthood, and it clearly depicts Kel as oblivious to romance in a way that is likely recognisable to a lot of asexual and aromantic readers.
“Romance? Isn’t that love-stuff?” she asked finally.
“It’s more than just love. It’s color, and — and fire. You don’t want things magnificent and filled with — with grandeur,” he said, trying to make her understand. “You know, drama. Importance. Transcendent passion.” (Protector of the Small Quartet, page 79)
Throughout the series, Cleon refers to Kel with dramatic and overly romantic gestures, such as called her ‘my pearl’ or grand, dramatic requests found in epic romance narratives, such as requesting his lover to wear a handkerchief near her heart should he perish. Cleon flirts with Kel most every chance he gets, but she consistently fails to recognise that this is what he is doing and tends to respond with either confusion, as her question about romance in this citation, or matter-of-fact practicality. Though plenty of asexual and aromantic people understand and enjoy flirting, a lack of comprehension is universal enough to make it stand out as an example of ace or aro coding in fiction. Likewise, while confusion at romantic feelings and sexual attraction is certainly not an uncommon aspect of YA narratives that include (or are) romance, Kel’s responses seem atypical in that she is clearly depicted as unhappy and as someone for whom these feelings do not crystallise into a romantic pairing. When Cleon reaches out to her to tell her that circumstances keep her from marrying him, her immediate response is relief that she will not have to be the one to break off their relationship rather than upset at the loss of her lover.
The narrative also remarks several times on Kel’s desire not to have sex, or babies, or to get married, all staple responses ace-coded characters give as an explanation for their lack of romantic or sexual relationships, and Kel’s romantic attractions are exclusively to friends she has known for a while, suggesting that Kel could be read as demiromantic[13]. Kel’s crushes also seem largely free of descriptions of how her body responds to them.
For a dizzying moment, she thought they were close enough to kiss, and swallowed hard. Neal destroyed her romantic daydream by straightening her collar in his most businesslike way. “I will not repeat even the littlest bit of this happy experiment of ours, if that’s all the same to you. And I should think you’d feel the same.” They walked into the room together, to join the pages already there. (Protector of the Small Quartet, page 285)
While this example does include descriptions of Kel’s physical reaction — she swallows hard and is momentarily dizzy, after all — this also the only description. There are no butterflies in her stomach, no heat in her loins, nothing to really suggest that Kel is experiencing some form of physical and sexual attraction to Neal. If anything, the narrative casts Kel’s apparent desire for a kiss as romantic, strengthening the reading that she may be demiromantic asexual, as she may experience romantic attraction without experiencing sexual attraction at the same time. As such, reading Kel as aromantic and asexual is clearly supported by the narrative even when it encompasses a wider interpretation of what asexuality and aromanticism in fiction look like.
Moreover, Protector is the only series discussed here that does not include the threat of rape towards the protagonist. This difference may be explained by the fact that Protector is a young adult series, though that is not to say that Kel is free from all forms of sexual violence. The bullies during Kel’s training attack, among other things, her sexuality.
“Maybe, maybe not. I think they’ll reconsider, next time they want to start fights over your virtue.”
Kel blinked at him. “What has my virtue to do with anything?”
“I’m surprised they didn’t try it last year. Oh, I suppose they made dirty little jokes with each other, never mind that a real knight is supposed to treat women decently. Maybe they thought saying you’re a lump, and not as strong, and on probation, was bad enough.”
“Are you making sense yet?” Kel wanted to know. This conversation had taken a very uncomfortable turn.
(…)
“Well, so, they decided to try new insults today. And talk of different kinds of sex makes people crazy.”
“Your point is…?” she asked. Her mother had explained how babies were made. Nariko had taught the court ladies, including Kel’s family, how to preserve their honor from rapists. That didn’t seem to be what Neal was talking about.
“See, Kel, if all of a sudden everyone’s getting into fights about your virtue, maybe the Stump will get rid of you after all.”
(…)
“I’m eleven,” she said at last. “That’s too young to be lying with men, Neal. Much too young.” (Protector of the Small Quartet, page 246–247)
This passage clearly shows that while Kel is oblivious to this tactic, her friends are not. At first glance the conclusion, Kel’s statement that she is eleven, may seem like a reason to dismiss the ace coding in Kel’s response. After all, she is eleven and much too young to be considering sex. Yet the text also makes it clear that Kel is not unaware of what sex is or what it does. Where Kel’s understanding falters is the connection between what she knows of sex and the fact that, in a largely patriarchal, heteronormative, allosexual world, certain expressions of sexuality are deemed an insult by some.
Kel’s confusion may be exacerbated by the fact that she is generally accepted by her friends as ‘one of the boys’. Early on during her first year of training, she explicitly and deliberately decides that she will dress as a girl when she can so her fellow students will not forget that she is one, yet small bits of the text still equate Kel with not being a girl, such as when she tells herself that she’s just like another boy to Neal, when Owen tells her she’s “practically as good as a fellow” or when she wants to remind Cleon that she is a ‘sexless’ fellow squire. Other aspects of Kel’s depiction include frequent references to her height. Kel is tall, even for a boy, and though this is clearly noted as a trait she inherited from her mother, it aids the feeling that Kel is physically more boyish than most other girls in the book.
Lastly, while Kel lacks the immediate link to the divine that was such a large aspect of older warrior woman narratives, she is not entirely free of a supernatural link. As the series progresses, the reader is introduced to the Chamber, a chamber in which the squires hold vigil before they are knighted. The chamber has a supernatural sentience that, ultimately, sends Kel on a mission to find someone she refers to as the ‘Nothing Man’, the series’ ultimate antagonist in Lady Knighti. The narrative notes that “As far as Kel knew, no one else had been given any visions of people to be found once a squire was knighted” (Protector of the Small Quartet, page 758) and Kel is described by a seer as having the hand of fate on her. Kel, not explicitly chosen by the gods or explicitly choosing the gods, is nevertheless depicted as someone touched by them, and by the end of the series she has earned herself the nickname ‘Protector of the Small’, a concept which well suits the depiction of paladinhood in Paks as well as the depiction of a Swordsworn in Vows. Kel’s own honour is what sees her diving head-first into enemy territory when the civilians she was responsible for are taken prisoner.
The depiction of asexuality and aromanticism in Protector, has several specific characteristics: 1) Kel is a female warrior in a largely male-dominated space, and though she is not the first girl to become a knight she is the first to go through the same training as a girl; 2) though the narrative points out several times that Kel lacks the magical and divine help that Alanna received, Kel is still given a mission by a supernatural being in a way, the worldbuilding implies, no one else has been; 3) while Kel shows some sporadic interest in romance and sex, she ultimately lets go of both as an adult and the narrative contains no elements that outright contradict reading Kel as an aroace teenager exploring what she wants and thinks she should experience; 4) Kel, at times, is described as large for a girl and there are several moments during which she is compared to or described as thought of as a boy; 5) Kel, while Tortallan by birth, spent most of her formative years in Yamani and part of the narrative over the course of the series sees her reintegrating into Tortallan society. As such, Kel spends a good part of the series, notably most of her page training in the first two books, othered for her knowledge and understanding of Yamani culture.
Sulien/Tir Tanagiri
Jo Walton’s Tir Tanagiri (Sulien) series rightfully consists of three books: The King’s Peace (2000) and The King’s Name (2001), which make up the Sulien duology, and The Prize in the Game (2002), which is a prequel delving into the lives of two side characters who played a prominent role in the Sulien duology. As such, Sulien ap Gwien does not appear in the third book and only the first two books are considered here. The Sulien duology is roughly describable as a second world fantasy retelling of the legends of King Arthur[14]. The first book sees the rise of Urdo, the equivalent of Arthur, and the second his fall, both through the eyes of Sulien ap Gwien, the story’s counterpart to Lancelot du Lac. It is, like Paks and even Protector, closer to military fantasy, though its strong dose of political manoeuvring may surprise people.
Sulien may be the first book with an asexual and aromantic coded heroine that does not appear directly influenced by D&D or S&S. This may simply be because its Arthurian roots are so strongly visible, though it is likely also that the way the story is told is less clearly broken up into smaller arcs structurally and the end result is a narrative that is less episodic in nature or feel. Like Paks and Kel, Sulien is quick to make friends when she joins Urdo’s forces and, like Kel, she is a good military commander, thus once again undermining commonly held stereotypes about asexual and aromantic people today. Even the concept that asexuality and aromanticism is Other finds itself muted, despite the fact that Sulien is the only character coded this way in the duology.
It is not that this othering is absent, only that it takes a different form, one more akin to the othering in Paks than in the other two series discussed. Unlike Tarma and Kel, who are cast to some extent as outsiders to the lands they live in, Sulien is deeply integrated with the land and the culture she grew up in. That culture, however, is in decline as one from a generation ago and it is this decline that leads to Sulien’s sense of Other within the duology. Veniva, Sulien’s mother, is repeatedly referred to as ‘the last of the Vincans’ and, as the books make clear with its religious conversions and Sulien’s steadfast refusal to do so, Sulien could easily be seen as the last of her people, holding on to their values and beliefs, as more of her people convert to the White God.
Within the low fantasy setting of these books, magic is a real if subtle part of people’s lives, seen in the way people’s prayers to gods can result in the healing of small wounds or strong blacksmithing. The lords are tied to the gods of the land and a discussion in The King’s Name makes it clear that the actual land may reject this conversion.
“I am no traitor to the High King, and he knows it.” [Galbian] looked at Urdo, then back at Veniva. “I have taken the pebble. But that is for myself. I will not force anyone to do that when I am Duke, though if I can bring Magor to God I will.” He looked at Urdo again, a little defiantly.
(…)
“Father Cinwil says it is willing,” Galbian said.
“It is for you to say, and no priest nor anyone else,” Urdo said, very sternly. “That is part of what it means to be a lord. Your grandfather knew that. Magor has been waiting patiently the seven years since he died for you to be old enough to speak for it. It is a great responsibility, that has come to you early.”
Galbian drew a breath, let it out again, straightened his back, and looked at Urdo. “I will let you know if the land is willing,” he said. Veniva smiled. (The King’s Name, page 116–117)
In this discussion, Sulien and her mother, Veniva, are likened to a demon by one of the characters for refusing to embrace the White God. However, this likening is clearly countered and called out. Later, when Raul, one of the White God’s priests, and Sulien discuss him seeing her as a demon for having a different faith to him, the discussion is centered around why and how this view is wrong, as well as how Raul, though fully aware of the fault in his logic, it was easier to believe that Sulien was Other than to adjust his worldview to allow Sulien to exist in it as a natural part of the world. The fact that this type of othering happens to other characters, such as Sulien’s mother, as well helps mitigate some of the sense that Sulien’s differences from the majority of other characters are due to her asexual and aromantic coding.
Like Tarma in Vows and Honor, Sulien’s story starts with the protagonist experiencing rape. Unlike Tarma, the book subtly hints that Sulien was disinterested in sex or marriage even before this event. When the book discusses Sulien’s experience with sex she notes that she “believe[s] there may be pleasure in it for some people, but I was not made so.” (The King’s Peace, page 7) The fact that this comment happens as Sulien is discussing her experience, combined with her noting that this was the only time she had intercourse, may seem at first like the text is linking her disinterest in the act as a trauma response. However, that is a link born from proximity and ignores that sexual attraction, desire and libido are all different interlinked concepts. In addition, Sulien uses the phrase “I was not made so”. If she believed she could experience sexual desire or pleasure, she would likely have credited her experience with the loss, not stated that it was something intrinsic to her experience of the world.
Throughout the narrative, Sulien repeatedly expresses that she does not wish to marry or have sex, and other characters remark on it, though it is coupled strongly with Sulien’s aromantic coding. Tracing this is somewhat harder to do, though it is clearest when Emer talks to Sulien about her love for Conal in The King’s Name as Sulien is quick to discard Emer’s description of how she experiences her attraction to Conal as ‘childish’ and yet later finds herself understanding Emer better when her friend Urdo has died. Though the novel has an underlying plot of characters assuming that Sulien and Urdo are secret lovers, this is a sign of allonormativity at work, and is most clearly seen when Sulien bluntly notes down that Elenn, Urdo’s wife, simply cannot comprehend friendships between men and women. The assumptions about Urdo and Sulien — assumptions that would not be made were they both men or both women — are allornomativity, and specifically amatonormativity, at work. Author Nicole Kornher-Stace called out the way these assumptions work in fiction in 2018 in her article “Alternatives To Romance: Nicole Kornher-stace On Writing Platonic Relationships In Archivist Wasp And Latchkey”. Her article focuses on the ubiquity of these assumptions, noting that
I realized I liked the Vasquez/Drake backstory about a billion times more if it has them being space marine buddies with a lot of history together. But I still remember the moment where I had, and then examined, this kneejerk reaction of: if a woman in a movie is willing to die to save a man, or vice versa, that’s shorthand for They’re In Love. (…)
I was a loner kid, spending all my free time reading, playing video games, watching movies. Cramming my head full of stories. (To this day I learn as much about plotting and pacing and framing and structure from movies and TV as I do from books.) And yet all the thousands of books and movies I consumed didn’t provide me any frame of reference for when one person is super into another person but has zero interest in getting into their pants. I pretty much literally never saw that represented. I needed examples of strong platonic friendships that could have turned into romantic/sexual relationships and didn’t.
Sulien and Urdo’s relationship is one such, for all that the novel’s secondary characters gossip and speculate and assume. Both Sulien and Urdo are clear on their relationship: they are friends, nothing else. They might have protested these rumours more strongly, had these rumours not made Sulien’s son Darien a perfect candidate for the heir to Urdo’s work, and the allonormativity leads to one of the larger events of the second book: Morthu’s ability to ensorcell Elenn by playing on the way these rumours hurt her pride.
Sulien, it must be noted, is not the only character in the books who has been touched or visited by the gods. The magical charms she uses are ones most of the characters use in various ways and even near the end, she is not cast as the only person who can use the elder charm against weapon-rot. Her friends and companions teach her charms she did not know, and her mother, a Vincan, taught her her first. Likewise, Ulf, her rapist who dedicates her to Gangrader, has been touched directly by that god, whereas Urdo has at least one encounter with the goddess Sulien knows as Coventina. Darien finds his life saved by the great animal spirit Turth whereas Chanerig, a priest of the White God who has sworn himself to a life of celibacy and abstince, wrestles with the gods of Tir Isarnaga and thus converts the whole island. Sulien herself, not only touched by Gangrader, finds herself drawing strength from her gods, letting the land’s powers draw poison from her body at the start of The King’s Name and standing beside Darien when the land accepts him as High King and protecting him from Morthu’s magic. It is the gods who help Sulien find her way back out of the spell Morthu cast, and it is the gods that seemingly call her home to the land when she dies.
Though we see hints of this in Urdo’s death, as his body seemingly simply disappears, the narrative notes that Urdo, in a way, has not died. He is implied to be a part of the land similarly to how the gods have been a part of the land. Sulien is not granted this and, though her interactions with various gods mark her as similar to Urdo and Darien, the differences between her death and that of Urdo, whose spirit speaks to others — but notably not to Sulien — after death marks her as yet different from them in some way.
It can also be seen in the way that the ending of the duology makes it clear that the age of Urdo, the peace and all Sulien has spent her life defending, upholding and fighting for, is dying with her. Sulien begins her narrative in The King’s Peace by noting how much her country has changed through the intermingling of different cultures, and how much of her faith and her culture has been lost through this intermingling. She notes how she is one of the last people to remember what truly happened during the years of Urdo’s adult life and actively choses to write her narrative in a language that was already in the process of being lost when she was a child, never mind when she’s over ninety years old.
At one point during The King’s Name, Sulien and Darien discuss how Sulien wanted to be the best and was given what she wanted. Here, the Arthurian nature at the forefront, her narrative would map more strongly onto that of Galahad, allowing a tie to Megan Arkenberg’s reading of Galahad as asexual in “‘A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood’: Galahad’s Asexuality and its Significance in “Le Morte Darthur””. Though Sulien does not set out seeking a grail (indeed there is no mention of such throughout Sulien) the way Galahad does, it would not be entirely impossible for Walton to have combined some of the traits of Galahad’s story with that of Lancelot. From the way Sulien is seen as the greatest knight Urdo had, to the way she is the knight the gods have elected to present the spear that ultimately proves Morthu’s downfall, but also there are parallels in Sulien’s ability to use charms. While this is not seen as particularly noteworthy in itself, Sulien is often the one called upon to cast the charms and during Urdo’s final battle, she is one of only three (four if one counts Arthur) people able to use the only effective healing charm they have against Morthu’s spell. Sulien’s retrieval of the spear and her death especially evoke links to Galahad’s story far more than Lancelot’s, after all.
The depiction of asexuality and aromanticism in Sulien, has several specific characteristics: 1) Sulien is a female warrior in a largely male-dominated space, and though she is nowhere near the first or only female warrior there are still more men than women in charge as well as cultural discussions about women in war[15]; 2) Sulien finds herself dedicated to a god she does not want and has several interactions with them, even, at the end, finding herself gifted with a spear with which to accomplish a task; 3) throughout the duology Sulien is adamant about her refusal to marry and her disinterest in sex or romance; 4) Sulien is only rarely mistaken for a man in how she is described, though she is frequently described as very tall; 5) though Sulien’s culture is a part of the land, it is a culture that is in at least religious decline and throughout the novel she is often othered for her so-called heathen beliefs.
Conclusion
These four texts have several points in common in their depictions of asexuality and aromanticism, even when they choose to handle these in different ways. For example, it is little surprise that the sole young adult series, Protector of the Small, does not deal with a rape plot the way the other three narratives do. Or that Sulien, though a strong part of the land, is cast as an outsider and demon for refusing to step away from her old ways even as her friends and loved ones do, and choses to embrace these aspects of her culture until her death, whereas Kel and Tarma’s status as outsiders through being raised in vastly different cultures to the ones they live their warrior lives are much clearer examples of straying outside the dominant culture around them.
Something which all four narratives have in common is that the asexual and aromantic narrative traits they share are used to humanise the protagonists. Rather than setting the them entirely apart from the other characters in the narrative, it is these traits that draw them closer to other people or that allow them to do the great deeds they have done. Paks’s deeply empathic nature allows her to become a paladin chosen by the gods, sacrificing all that is dearest to her to protect others. Tarma’s divine link teaches her her incredibly fighting skill and allows her to start both a school and to rebuild her own clan. Kel’s experiences in Yamani allow her to bridge the cultural gap between her two friends when they are betrothed and the discipline and fighting skills she learned there as a child allow her to easily make friends among her peers. Sulien’s grounding in her home and culture allow her to see what Urdo is fighting for and pledge her life to this role.
The origins of asexual and aromantic tropes within fantasy are thus rooted in showing readers the humanity that everyone shares, and that the bonds of friendship and family between people are powerful and important driving forces within people’s lives. They demonstrate that lives without a romantic or sexual partner can be fulfilling and rewarding.
End Notes
[1] Fedtke’s paper being one of the earliest published explorations of asexuality, it conflates the narrative’s asexual and aromantic representation in its discussion. Aromanticism in 2014 still suffered from being understood as a necessary aspect of asexuality rather than something that could exist within allosexual experiences as well.
[2] Though Moon does not specify which edition of D&D inspired Paks’s narrative, the timeframe indicates that it was almost certainly the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D), the core manuals for which were published between 1977–1979 and which were designed to make D&D more accessible to a wider group of players. The second edition of the AD&D core manuals was published in 1989, when the final book in the trilogy came out, and the original D&D rules did not allow for a paladin class unless one included the 1975 Greyhawk supplement.
[3] Rick Swan’s The Complete Paladin’s Handbook was first published in 1994, five years after the final volume in The Deed to Paksenarrion.
[4] The Complete Paladin’s Handbook explicitly discusses how paladinhood is affected by marriage.
[5] Arguably, players choosing the paladin class will be more likely to draw on the portrayal of Holger Carlson from Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, which The Complete Paladin’s Handbook cites as one of its main sources. While it is easy enough to trace the links between D&D’s paladin class and Holger’s narrative, its most important note here is that Holger is explicitly a celibate heterosexual man, not an asexually-coded man. Throughout the book he deliberately chooses not to act on his sexual attraction to the swan maiden, Alianora.
[6] For a more detailed look at the history of frigidity in particular, Alison Moore and Peter Cryle’s Frigidity: An Intellectual History is an important work.
[7] After all, Moore does not refer to the all-pervasive status of the heterosexual, though this is of course heavily implied, but that of the sexual. Like the definition of asexuality as ‘a lack of sexual desire’, ‘the sexual’ is still a commonly used phrases within academics, less so within the vernacular, to contrast allosexuality from asexuality.
[8] It may also be notable that, though Paks explicitly has at least one female teacher as a paladin, the text does not explore how this affects female paladins, who cannot simply walk away from any potential unwanted consequences, specifically. They are there, says Paks’s male mentor, “to defend the children of others — not to protect our own. And if we had children, and were good parents, we would have no time for Gird’s work.” (The Deed of Paksenarrion, p. 689)
[9] Some may also count By the Sword (1991), in which Tarma and Kethry play a large role for the first third of the novel.
[10] Tarma’s understanding is somewhat selective and driven largely by honour, however.
[11] Bradley edited volumes 1–20 with volumes 18–20 the last published posthumously. Volume 21 was edited by Diana L. Paxson, while volumes 22–30 were edited by Elisabeth Waters.
[12] The descriptions of her as hawklike may also have a racial dimension, but to examine this properly would require an Indigenous — and specifically one from the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains — examination of Tarma’s depiction. There is an intersectionality between Tarma’s race and sexuality that deserves more attention, especially since Indigenous studies of asexuality are, to my knowledge, currently non-existent.
[13] One of the stereotypes demisexual and demiromantic people face in fiction is that they can only ever experience these attractions to one person in their entire lives. Though it is likely true that demisexuals and demiromantics experience these crushes and attractions far less than allos, anecdotes suggest that plenty of them experience such feelings more than once.
[14] It is, at minimum, heavily inspired by Arthuriana even if one does not read it as an explicit reimagining within a fantastical setting.
[15] It should be noted that these discussions stem from the fact that women warriors are commonly accepted within Sulien’s culture and they are intermingling with cultures where this is emphatically not the norm.
Works Cited
Arkenberg, Megan. “‘A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood’: Galahad’s Asexuality and its Significance in Le Morte Darthur.” Arthuriana October 2014, Fall 2014 ed.: 3–22. PDF.
Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Ed. George Bul. Trans. Thomas Hoby. 2003 Reprint. London: Penguin Group, 1976. Ebook.
Fedtke, Jana. ““What to Call That Sport, the Neuter Human …”: Asexual Subjectivity in Keri Hulme’s The Bone People.” Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives. Ed. Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks. Taylor & Francis, 2014. 410. ebook.
Kornher-Stace, Nicole. Alternatives To Romance: Nicole Kornher-Stace On Writing Platonic Relationships In Archivist Wasp And Latchkey (& A Giveaway). 12 July 2018. 1 June 2024. <https://www.thebooksmugglers.com/2018/07/alternatives-to-romance-nicole-kornher-stace-on-writing-platonic-relationships-in-archivist-wasp-and-lathckey-a-giveaway.html>.
Lackey, Mercedes. Vows and Honor. Reprint omninus. London: Titan Books, 2017. Paperback.
Malory, Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur. Ed. Janet Cowen. 2004 Reprint. Vol. 1. London: Penguin Books, 1969. 2 vols. Paperback.
Mendlesohn, Farah and Edward James. A Short History of Fantasy. Libri Publishing Limited, 2012. Print.
Moon, Elizabeth. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter. 2018 Reprint. Baen, 1988. Print.
— . The Deed of Paksenarrion. Reprint omnibus. Orbit, 2010. Paperback.
Moore, Alison. “The Invention of the Unsexual: Situating Frigidity in the History of Sexuality and Feminist Thought.” French History and Civilization 2009: 181–192. PDF.
Pierce, Tamora. First Test. 2004 Reprint. Random House Children’s Books, 1999. Paperback.
— . Lady Knight. 2019 Reprint. HarperCollins Publishers, 2002. Paperback.
— . Page. 2019 Reprint. HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. Paperback.
— . Squire. 2019 Reprint. HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. Paperback.
— . Tortall Universe FAQ (Contains Spoilers). n.d. Website. 1 June 2024. <http://www.tamora-pierce.net/series-extra/tortall-faq/#whykel>.
Swan, Rick. The Complete Paladin’s Handbook. TSR Ltd., 1994. PDF reprint.
Walton, Jo. The King’s Name. New York: TOR Fantasy, 2001. Print.
— . The King’s Peace. New York: TOR Fantasy, 2000. Print.
