This abstract was written for a conference I could not pass up. The paper it proposes is to be presented in July 2014.
Fantasy author Robin Hobb is noted for attention to the mundane details of her fictional milieus and the nuance with which she treats the favorable and unfavorable aspects of her characters’ psychologies and actions. Her Farseer novels serve as prime examples of her ability to shade both heroism and villainy, presenting both as inherently human and eminently understandable even as she embeds them in the usual fantastic constructions of eldritch energies, supernatural creatures, and the relics of ancient civilizations.
One of the major antagonists of the series, Regal Farseer, is depicted in such a way. Hobb portrays the usurping king as an almost psychopathic figure for much of the series before revealing him to be fundamentally childish and spoiled, almost a figurehead for other actors of greater cunning but less scope and a conduit through an ultimately greater antagonist revealed in the larger narrative arc of which the Farseer novels are part. Doing so reinforces the banality of evil and serves to remind readers that, even amid the most fantastic constructions, that it is the unquestionably petty, myopically, understandably human that fosters most of the anguish and suffering in the world.