[Dragaera] Peasant fantasy

[Rebecca Harbison via Dragaera]

Now I wonder if peasant indicates specifically rural non-nobility (and
usually poor or at least one bad harvest from it), or if one can count
urban poor characters if you still have a feudal system.  Paks, for
instance, lived in an area where active nobility wasn't really a Thing.
The first real nobility we got was the duke she took up arms under, and a
lot of times it make him seem more like an army captain than a noble*.  I'm
contrasting that to Savn or a character like Beka Cooper (from Tamora
Pierce's Provost's Dog series) who seem a lot more aware of the class
difference between themselves and nobility, and how much shit it can get
them in if they aren't careful in navigating it.

I'm not doing all that good of a job, but Dragaera or Tortall (when we see
it from a commoner's perspective) seem a lot more socially stratified and
rigid than some of Paksworld is (the new stuff that goes in with Dorin's
family is different, but Dorin's family are also shitheels).  Or maybe it's
something that some authors are more interested in than others.

(It could also be that Paks ends up setting herself outside of the class
system of her area by the end of the novels, and Beka and Savn don't.)

-- Rebecca

* Granted, I don't know how much of that was his backstory.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 3:21 PM, Damien Sullivan via Dragaera <
dragaera at lists.dragaera.info> wrote:

> I was asking around today about fantasy novels from a peasant
> perspective.  I thought of two kind of ones: Prydain (Taran Assistant
> Pig-Keeper) and Paksenarrion (Sheepfarmer's Daughter).
>
> Later I realized that _Athyra_ is even better: from the POV of Savn, an
> actual teenage peasant, who for all his experiences stays a teenage
> peasant, rather than being someone with a peasant backstory.
>
> Haven't come up with any others.
>
> -xx- Damien X-)
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