I'm trying to show political relationships among nations in a fic I'm writing without focusing too heavily on the leaderships' interactions and affairs. Since my story is being told from the perspective of a foreigner and a nobody, I thought it would be weird to start describing what King X is discussing with Satrap Y, since the protagonist has no business being anywhere near them.

I could use some pointers about how to show rather than tell my audience how one country feels about another. It seems random to just insert some citizen and have him start spouting the official tagline. I can't use any modern forms of media either, like TV and the internet, to convey these relationships, since the setting is modeled after the Persian empire. These things didn't exactly exist back then.

 

If you go that far back, you'll also won't be able to use books or newspapers, because script was used almost exclusively for administrive purposes. Most people barely knew about anything the people living in another satrapie, never mind those living outside the empire. It didn't really matter to them either. Your best bet will probably either be declarations from representatives of the king/satrap about wars and threaties. Or go for traders. It would be their business to know about the relations between several states, because these often dictate the possibilities for trade as well. So get him into a discussion with a group of traders for example or make him travel with them. Almost all his information will have to come from direct interaction with other people, seeing as, like you said, there was no such thing as media.

 

This, traders and sailors would be the ones with the info, as old and outdated as it would be. Mercenaries or other travelling types (troupes etc.) may also provide info.

 

Even shopkeepers and simple farmers can be used in a pinch, since they tend to keep track of what prices in the major trade hubs, which The Name of the Wind used quite well in describing the Penitent King's war (mentions food prices have gone way up, every farmer in the village is growing beans bar one idiot, and that another tax will be on the way to fund the war/collect fresh recruits). That should be enough to adequately introduce a war setting, or a preparing for war setting.

If it's not one of those though, I'd go for sailors and merchants. They're the gossip mongers of the medieval fantasy setting.

 

You might consider other "nobodies" who live in border areas between the two states, or if they aren't adjacent, you could try people in a region common to both, or have border-area people from either state thinking about the differences between people from the relevant nation and people from a nation that separates the two or has a common border.

I hope that made sense; I'm in a hurry here!!

 

Interesting question.

If there's a history of dislike, or at least conflict, between the nations, there'll be a sort of national racism that goes both ways. The same will apply if they've been good friends for a long time. Communities tend to stereotype other communities - Nation X is full of brutes raised in pigsties, Nation Y are posh snobs, etc. Everyone in microcosmic communities, including the lowliest peasants (specifically those like peasants, who have very little in the way of actual contact with foreign elements), will spout the doctrines their parents have layered into their subconscious throughout their lives, who in turn have spouted them because their parents have, who in turn have spouted it because their priests used to preach it, or their politicians, or because One-Armed Ajid in the Inn once had a run-in with some of 'em, back in the day. Without the presence of those foreigners to dispel the myths, they'll survive, and in some cases be blown out of proportion - the dictator of Nation Z a century ago who used to have babies staked might well have inspired a commonly-held belief in the present day that Nation Z is full of baby-eating savages - and, perhaps more importantly, these micro-communities, spread across entire nations, will live up to their own stereotypes in the eyes of others for as long as they remain closed off from the rest of the world.

So, there we have National Stereotypes, some of which will be fair, some of which won't. The lower classes will cling to these beliefs as strongly as they cling to religious faiths - because they aren't exposed to anything else. These stereotypes are important in portraying a political situation, because the common-folk will outnumber everyone else 99:1, and everyone comes from somewhere. Even if the characters are smart enough to know better, the stereotype still exists and is acknowledged, even if in that case it's just to snort at it, or disprove it. Said stereotypes can also be used by politicians, clerics, war-leaders, etc to stir up a populace, or as virtually any other type of propaganda. There's masses of historical examples of this and you'll need to develop yours accordingly in order to build a thorough world. It also applies to a greater extent than you'd think in the modern world.

You also have to have this foundation in order to effectively use the next tier of society - the scholars and cynics. Perhaps more importantly, in an archaic environment, the religious leaders and clerics who have an extremely dominant place in society - everything is subject to religious scrutiny, approval and appeal. Priests of any faith have their own dogmas and stigmas and proselytise accordingly, from their completely different plane of existence, either inline with the lower-class' opinions or contrary to them.

Merchants, sailors and other travellers might have a slightly less archetypal - or at least one-dimensional - view of foreign elements, simply through familiarity, but there will always - just as with the religious, the peasants, the scholars, the politicians, etc - be a bias. The merchants might think in terms of profit versus prudence, or in terms of safely traversible routes, or in terms of the stinginess of certain populations, etc, but all of these - whether it's true in all cases or none - present a bias which can be just as dogmatic as a peasant's certainty that another nation is full of this type of people, thus their king is being a douche, or warlike, or pandering, or weak, or whatever.

The only people who will have a second or third dimension to their worldview are the politicians, the leaders, the gentry, the demagogues, the upper-classes, the elites, etc. Even in this case though, perhaps more so than any of the others, you'll have some ulterior reasons at play, some agenda, which will affect the divide between what they really think and what they say.

TL;DR; Have your characters getting opinions from absolutely everyone. Local drunks to poltical figures, absolutely everyone will have an opinion, and the likelihood is that they'll be wrong, biased beyond reason, or lying for their own purposes. Very few will actually tell it how it is, and they'll be the quietest voices in the crowd. The best way to identify a political situation without showing it outright is to have the torrents of infectious gossip interpreted by your principal characters, or certain auxillaries to them. Having a trader say 'this is what's really going on' midway into your third chapter is bad storytelling - write it how it really would be. People either don't know or aren't fully saying what's going on, what the intricacies of this world and that political situation are, and it comes down to the intelligence, cynicism and determination of one of your principals to figure out what's what.

The fun begins when your principals have bias of their own. Tricking the reader with your very narrative being biased, with nobody really knowing what's happening exactly, is the mark of some awesome storytelling.

And sorry for the tl;dr, but it's hardly a simple question.

 

Depending on the exact setting Town Cryers can be a very good method of almost direct exposition. Apart from them, pretty much what everyone has said, just go with the gossiping busybodies who have at least some small excuse to know something about whats going on.

 

Thanks for the advice. Would it be necessary to cover the historical roots for such prejudices? I want to incorporate a fair amount of national butthurt into my story, but from an objective viewpoint, it would be rather unjustifiable. I'm not sure how to demonstrate the "unjustifiable" part.

For example, the country I'm focusing on would be analogous to white males in the US who feel they are being oppressed. I want to illustrate this from the perspective of said "white males" in my fic, but at the same time lay the groundwork to eventually show how illogical their views are.

I want to resolve much of the collective hostility by Country Y towards this "Nation Z" before expanding the story beyond the borders of Country Y. Country Y both an inordinate amount of pride and the highest concentration of iron mines on the continent. They are also buffered from the big bad empire by natural barriers/eleventy gazillion other states and were the first to invent corned gunpowder. Thus, Country Y feels very reluctant to join an alliance of kingdoms (that includes Nation Z) to oppose said empire, partly because they're very pro-ourselves and especially because they think Nation Z is filled with Satan's spawn due to some conflict on page 20 out of two thousand in the metaphorical history books.

(Yea, I'm well aware that corned gunpowder was invented about 2000 years after the Persian Empire, but this is fantasy and I'm going to be tossing in a lot of anachronistic military technology. Call it Lutzen in Iran or whatever.)

I want my audience to see Country Y like the spoiled brat it really is without destroying all sympathy for them, kind of like how people go d'aaaaw when they see Suri Cruise yet want to smack the kid a few times too while apologizing on her behalf. Once again, I need to do this before expanding beyond the borders of Country Y, because the whole point of the mini-conflict is to reflect a lesson learned on the continental scale when the entire alliance goes up against the empire (Star Wars reference unintended).

I will keep this in mind, but when everyone lives in the same place and has no inclination of expanding their horizons because the Himalayas/Sahara/perceived Nazi's/fire & brimstone are on the other side, then there won't be many traders or wandering men floating around, and I'm back to my original question of how do I show political relationships?

That was rather long winded, and I apologize. I hope it makes sense what I'm asking? I get the feeling I may have plot-outline'ed my way into a corner. If this is true, someone give me a wake-up call; I'd be (reluctantly) open to re-do'ing my outline too, lol.

tl;dr - Without an excess of foreign interaction due to the nature of Country Y itself, how would I show that their prejudices are unjustifiable?

 

If it's presented as a stereotype and identifiable as such, your reader will be aware that they're seeing smoke without fire. Most prejudices are unjustifiable. Everyone saying something is like this, without them actually seeing it, won't usually get too far past a cynical reader. Alternately, you'll be deceiving them, and that isn't such a bad thing.

The cheap way out is to introduce a 'local' antagonist - some bully or otherwise oppressive figure whom your protagonist naturally dislikes and distrusts, maybe (to pinch an idea from this thread) the town crier, a thieving Imam, or whatever, and make him the fiercest vocal proponent of this stereotype. The character, and thus the reader, will be naturally inclined to disagree with this person on principle, without the need for proof on either side of the argument. Kinda like the Draco Malfoy jibes on pureblood doctrine - perhaps commonly accepted, but because it's Draco saying it, Harry can't bring himself to believe it might be true. Just feels wrong. Doesn't fit after a moment considering the idea.

I'd avoid this, though. It is cheap. Or at least don't include it to the black/white extremes of first year Gryffindors and Slytherins. There's nothing wrong with leading a reader into believing that certain stereotypes are factual and then shitting all over those concepts later on. In fact, it makes for more dynamic writing.

 

Very interesting, Gecko. Your advice fits remarkably well with this fic I read a while ago and was never updated again about Harry being blasted into the Middle Ages, and there's this building on fire full of priests and Ollivander's ancestor wants to find out who made Harry's wand and...

ohwai

/heavyannoying


Edit: @Lindsey: I'll be back! And soon.

 

If your character is part of the culture of Country Y and doesn't have any outside influence, you probably shouldn't have him realise there's something wrong with the prejudice. Or that it's a prejudice in the first place. Don't make obvious anyway. It's very hard to change your point of view, when you've only got one.

That said, the ancient Greeks considered practically everyone that wasn't Greek a barbarian. In this case, barbarian basically means the complete opposide of Greek. So they were uncivilized, wild, decadent, politically backwards, ect (The movie 300 actually gives a fairly good idea of the image the ancient Greeks had of the Persians, despite their undeniable greater succes as an empire). Even the Romans were just "half barbarians", simply because they didn't speak Greek. You could use a similar worldview for Country Y, but exchange "civilized" (books, philosophy and politics) for "scientifically developed". That way, every country that hasn't made the same scientific developement and uses corned gunpowder is "logically" inferior. It would be relativally easy to make this generally accepted in Country Y, which can even be supported by the intellectual elite. It's not uncommon for a country to judge the worth of a people on elements they themselves excel in (or believe to excel in anyway). Europe in the Middle Ages was able to firmly ignore the scientific advancement of the Middle East, because they were just a bunch of Godless heathens anyway. And we still devide the world in First, (Second) and Third World countries.

 

Says the guy who posted a few epic chapters about an awesome Harry going back in time with Flitwick and kicking ass; and then, this guy vanishes and his fic was never updated again.

I want my freaking time traveling fics.

 

One way to really set the stage for a reveal of 'these guys don't know how good they've got it' or something along those lines is to have them complaining about something, but have the complaints get steadily less relevant and more ridiculous - food prices have gone up, it's so hard to get a good horse, that last sand storm cracked the wall of my house... which is so small, only MY family can fit in it, and this horse is ONLY 15 hands, not 16 like my father's was, money is so tight that I have to work eight hours a day, not six, like my grandfather did, etc.

Basically, go to White People Problems and start translating to your setting.

It doesn't explain the political prejudices, but it accents them, and prepares the reader mentally by showing that these people have a skewed view of the world they live in.

 

Finishing up an original. HPAC will be updated, eventually. Hopefully two chapters at once. If you want to c'mon round and share half my workload so I can write some of it, be my guest

 

Are you submitting one for Jim B.'s anthology?

 

Naw, I'd like to, but I suck at short stories, and I never release anything under my real name. I don't think 'Grinning Lizard' would look too great next to the other, far more talented, contributors.

Are you writing for it?

The one I'm on the last stretch for is an original fantasy. Noel might be having a look at it, and I'll maybe PM you after the second draft if you want a look. It's far too unwieldy to do anything with at the moment, though.

 

Yeah, I'll probably pitch in with a short story, see how it goes. I'm not that good with science fiction, but why not? Got a few stories cooking I'd like to explore.

I'm always up for a fantasy story. Hit me with a PM if you want a few more comments on it.