Elric in the Dream Realms - Michael Moorcock [159]
An interesting light on the classic hero-villain comes in J.G. Ballard’s Drowned World, one of the best novels to appear since the War. Ballard’s hero-villain Strangman is not the central character of the book, but he tends to dominate the scenes he appears in.
His handsome saturnine face regarding them with a mixture of suspicion and amused contempt, Strangman lounged back under the cool awning that shaded the poop deck of the depot ship …
“The trouble with you people is that you’ve been here for thirty million years and your perspectives are all wrong. You miss so much of the transitory beauty of life. I’m fascinated by the immediate past—the treasures of the Triassic compare pretty unfavourably with those of the closing years of the Second Millennium.”
Strangman’s studied interest in things which seem to the other characters mere trivia shows us the Byronic hero-villain for what he probably is (if he exists in real-life at all today) a brilliant, but bewildered man rebelling against the entire order of things, destroying them because they baffle him, fighting a lonely, hopeless battle against forces which are sure, in the end, to destroy him—even courting that destruction as Oscar Wilde did. Wilde, incidentally, changed his name to Sebastian Melmoth after his release from prison, seeing himself as the character created by Maturin, his kinsman. They all seem to have this quality—Marlowe’s Faust, Milton’s Satan, the Gothic villains—and Byron himself. We admire them because of it.
EARL AUBEC
OF MALADOR
EARL AUBEC OF MALADOR
Outline for a series
of four fantasy novels
(1966)
EARL AUBEC, CHAMPION of Lormyr, Earl of Malador, first appeared in the [attached] story “Master of Chaos” (originally called “Earl Aubec and the Golem”) in Fantastic, May 1964.
“Master of Chaos” will not be incorporated into the novels, but is [enclosed] to give some idea of the character and background etc., of the projected series.
Background
The world of Earl Aubec is The Age of the Bright Empire—the same as the world of Elric, only set some time earlier than the Elric stories. The Bright Empire is flourishing. It is the most powerful on Earth and the influence of the Dragon Princes of Imrryr is felt everywhere (though whenever possible they disdain contact with the race of true human beings of the Young Kingdoms). Elric’s ancestor, Gadric the Eleventh, moody son of Terhali, the Green Empress, sits on the Dragon Throne, close consort, it is rumoured, of the Dukes of Hell, particularly Arioch.
The Lords of Chaos, in fact, still have the greater part of the power over Earth. At the edges of the world, Chaos Unbound still exists (in “Master of Chaos,” Earl Aubec’s task was to make a little of that Chaosmatter stable).
The cosmology, therefore, is the same as the cosmology of the Elric stories, as is the basic geography [see attached map], but the Young Kingdoms have not yet risen to power and the Dreaming City of Imrryr dominates the world by virtue of her sorcery, her Dragon Masters, her golden battle-barges and her pact with Chaos.
Central Character
Earl Aubec of Malador is a big, powerful warrior in middle years, his sole companion his cat, who travels everywhere with him and has a great sense for danger when it threatens.
Aubec’s patron gods are the Lords of Law, and he has something of an ally in the sorceress Micella of Kaneloon whom he loves secretly and hopelessly, hardly daring to admit it to himself, for his loyalty, according to tradition, must be to the dead Queen Eloarde of Lormyr. (These characters also originally appear in “Master of Chaos.”)
Events
Earl Aubec, deprived of his lands by the machinations of Queen Eloarde