Becoming the High King

While The Lord of the Rings is a more complex and serious work, I’ve found Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain more personally affecting.  A recent re-read of The High King reinforced my love for Alexander’s vision (and I was delighted to find that my map holds true!).  Plenty of “traditional” fantasy lies caught in concepts of noble birth: the farm boy is nearly always of a far more august lineage than once assumed.  We can chalk this to medieval romances, since tales of hidden ancestry were common enough.  Worth was tied almost exclusively to ancestry within feudal societies.

Lloyd Alexander’s message was quite different.

(The following discussion necessarily involves spoilers, so consider yourself warned.)

Taran begins as a lowly Pig-keeper with a shadowed past.  Over the course of five books we watch him  mature from a foolish boy yearning for adventure to a mature and wise young man.  His ancestry is always in question: while the culture and politics of Prydain are far looser than strict feudal practices found in continental Europe during the High Middle Ages, blood is still important.  Taran’s growing affection for Eilonwy, the princess of Llyr, is problematic because of Taran’s humble beginnings (and the social expectations pressed on her also run contrary to what she wants to do in life).  The sword Dyrnwyn, while a a supposedly powerful artefact, is nearly useless for Taran in The Book of Three.  According to Eilonwy’s translation of the old runes on the scabbard, “only those of noble birth” can draw the sword.

In Taran Wanderer, our hero spends the book’s entirety trying to find out about his past; a near-obsession with discovering the truth of his bloodline.  However, we never find out who Taran’s parents were.  

Because it doesn’t matter.

That was one Lloyd Alexander’s overarching lesson in The Chronicles of Prydain, perhaps the most powerful.   Eilonwy’s translation is wrong.  The actual inscription on Dyrnwyn’s scabbard reads “only those of noble worth”, and that makes all the difference—in The High King, Taran can draw the sword (it is, in fact, vitally important for him to do so) because he is worthy of it, not due to lineage.  Through his own growth and development, Taran shows himself to be the worthy successor to Gwydion as High King of Prydain.  His heritage means nothing.  Neither does a prophecy.  What does matter is his own worth, his own wisdom…elements he can shape.

The end of The High King is similar to The Lord of the Rings.  The passing of enchantments.  The departure of the sons of Don to the Summer Country.  But Lloyd Alexander uses this situation not as a shallow copy but as a moving response: Taran’s decision is the opposite of Frodo’s.  He rejects the prospect of immortality in the west because he loves the land of Prydain and feels a deep responsibility to those who don’t have a chance to leave.  He remains to heal the land after Arawn’s defeat, and it is that decision, above all others, that demonstrates his right to rule.

I know I can’t be Aragorn.  But Lloyd Alexander showed us we could all be Taran.    

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