When I’m not actively shopping for fiction, it still gets shoved upon me from various newsletter and other advertising services. One in a while something promising turns up, but a lot of the time I seem to be inundated with a certain class of SFF which has a common trope: The Chosen One.
These are books that feature a male or female (and so many are female these days) protagonist who embodies something special. They are the last heir of the old realm, or the only one who can find the dragons, or the uniquely gifted wizard, etc. It is their innate background that qualifies them for success. While the better treatments of this trope force them through a worthy hero’s journey where they must grow and strive and learn how to succeed, the lesser versions are long on unearned success.
You can recognize many of these books by their blurbs emphasizing the special qualities of the protagonist rather than the interesting challenge that person will face.
I’ve been reading the Heinlein juveniles recently. I had read many of them in the early 60s, but some of the earliest (late 1940s) were already out of print by then. They’re a bit crude and period-bound (yes, and juvenile), but they do share a common point of view which makes them still worthwhile today: an ordinary boy (yes, they’re all boys — Podkayne is not in the list — let’s just ignore the tropes of the time which never stopped me from enjoying them) is presented with character-building challenges that have large potential consequences for him, his family, his world, etc. It is the teenager’s responsibility, throughout the book, to learn what it takes to start growing up into a responsible man, in the company of other responsible, civilization-preserving men. The boy thinks about the choices he makes, and the possible results of those choices, including his own survival or the survival of others.
Heinlein is apparently (in these books) in the business of showing young men how to become adults. That’s the foundational ethical purpose of a lot of “juvenile” stories. It’s why we can read them as adults and still find their core message worthy (and why I don’t care that it’s only boys that are so represented – these are civilizational stories for all).
It reminded me of a whole class of adventure stories which are not necessarily juvenile but which carry some of the same load for an adult audience. As an example, look at d’Artagnan from The Three Musketeers. This is a young man from the provinces thrown into the company of sophisticated older companions who are presented as various sorts of moral specimens: admirable, cunning, treacherous, irresponsible, etc. d’Artagnan chooses whom to model himself after, sometimes unwisely, and learns from what he observes and experiences as he grows into a competent and responsible man.
All stories contain a hero’s journey in some form (positive or negative), and all need to set the stage with their primary character at the start and then follow him on his journey. It’s natural to make that character unique in some important way at the start, for the charisma of engaging the reader. But the man who is already marked as advantageously exceptional, a “chosen one” has less to teach us about how to live than the man who is seemingly ordinary, whose lessons learned are the ones we all need, and who isn’t operating from some innate advantage distancing him too far from us.
Frodo Baggins isn’t Chosen, he Chooses to destroy the ring. The event may be hinted at or foretold, as often in religions, but the choice is his.
Hector isn’t Chosen, he Chooses to fight one last time, knowing he will die.
Beowulf isn’t Chosen, he Chooses to fight, knowing his likely doom.
And Horatio, well:
Then out spoke brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods,
“And for the tender mother who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses his baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus, that wrought the deed of shame?
“Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, with all the speed ye may!
I, with two more to help me, will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path, a thousand may well be stopped by three:
Now, who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?’
This is braver company than the chosen one who bears the unearned badge of predestination, a handicap rather than the boon of choosing freely to rise to the occasion. Or, worse, those sad chosen ones who feel they bear an unasked-for burden and bewail their fate, seeking sympathy.
What’s your take on the fashion for “chosen ones” that seems to be stronger in recent years than ever before? Wishful thinking/fantasizing on the part of the authors? A reflection of generational differences?
Mad Genius Club 
51 responses to “The man who chooses, vs the chosen one”
Personally, I like the Chosen One trope when it’s well executed. When it’s well done the Chosen One is also the One who Chooses. Which is why the rejection of the call in the Hero’s Journey needs to be convincing if it’s going to be included. (See Star Wars the original movie.) Just because there are a limited number of people who CAN do a thing doesn’t lessen their choice TO do the thing. Especially if the criteria for being chosen don’t give any special ability to do the thing.
(The Last Heir to the Throne, may be the only one who can legitimately take the throne, but if she’s a fine lady she’s going to have a lot to over come to actually be able to get there through the machinations of the Dark Lord. It may be her RIGHT but she has to develop the ability.)
For Horatius: He was keeper of the Gate. His choice was to go out and meet the foe at the end of the bridge. I would be meeting them there, or at the gates of Rome either way, as was his duty. Is he less because he was ‘destined’ to fight them? No. No more so is a prophesied hero any less for accepting the call of prophecy and needed to be made appropriate for it.
How is this making them more distant from us? We’ve all be in over our head. We’ve all had things we think we HAVE to do or should do that we feel unsuited for. How is this any different just because the stakes are higher? I can feel at home with wizards and space ships and adventurerers that hunt monsters for a living. How is a Chosen One so very much different?
In a historical sense: Look at Joan of Arc. She was called, and started very unsuitable. She trained herself. Yes, there was divine assistance. Is she less because she was called? No. She is not. It adds a different dimension to here character: She was willing to say ‘yes’ to her calling even when she was manifestly unsuited for what she was being asked to do.
I will caveat with this: I prefer call it literary chiaroscuro. Even in small stories, darkness and light, and the light wins, whether it is a simple piece sharply focused, or a rich tapestry of dark and light and a wide array of colors both vibrant and ominous. You seem, from what you’ve said here, to prefer muddier tales with less contrast. I think this is a factor, your personal taste doesn’t run to these stories, and I don’t think it’s generational.
For the modern trend… I think The Chosen One is at least one part simplicity. In another it’s clarity. For simplicity, especially in the badly done ones, it’s something that is straightforward to latch on to for what propels the protagonist forward. A lot of these have given up on the light vs. dark and created a grey washed world where one motivation is no different than any other motivation. The Chosen one becomes a simple way to structure the story around a specific person. This leads in to the next point.
Clarity: If you remove many of the conventional concepts of morality, if everyone is equally right and equally wrong, or if the morality factor is not at all clear to most readers (say based on unstated flavors of victimhood) how do you clearly signal who is the protagonist? How do you signal which side is the ‘right’ one? And that something should be done. The moral ‘this is right’ reasons that drove Beowulf, Horatius, Joan of Arc, Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship, High King Peter of Narnia (‘This faun saved my sister at his own risk Mr. Beaver, I feel we must do something for him.’), etc. The Chosen One becomes a clear way to signal what path is the ‘right’ one. It has trouble because the things that make the Chosen One work tend to be the very things left out. So it becomes puppets of Destiny which IS a dull way to do things.
Left out a part of a thought: After the Narnia parenthetical quote: the moral reasons that drove (the list above) are removed, so there is no real path forward for the story. There is no drive and no way to signal when the protagonist is making a mistake.
In Hunger Games, the heroine chooses to participate to save her sister. After she has won, she is essentially the chosen one moving forward, uniquely qualified. But having chosen the first time, the remainder is just plot development (what happens as a consequence) — we’ve established her character. After all, the one who chooses might not succeed — it’s the choosing that makes the hero. The ticket is good for one life-changing incident.
And Horatius is the Captain of the Gate, not the Suicide Defender of the Bridge. Yes, he has a duty, but it’s not the same thing. Here it’s a case that as the Captain of the Gate (a position that we must assume he earned, not that he was born to) he must choose to fight to the death, not with his comrades (in bulk, not the other two), but hopelessly, as a useful sacrifice. Just because one is in the military doesn’t mean that choosing certain death for a good cause isn’t heroic.
Yes, the choosing makes the hero, whether there’s destiny involved or not. “Destiny” doesn’t change the choice. You maintain that ‘chosen’ means they’re not as worthy therefore not as interesting. Your thesis is, essentially, that because there was a selection process of some sort (prophesy, destiny, whatever) their choices to answer that call rather than fight it makes them less worthy and less interesting. Basically that their choices don’t matter. Someone who is CHOSEN might not succeed either. They’re the ones with a chance.
I’m not saying that Horatius isn’t heroic. You’re saying the chosen ones are less heroic because of ‘destiny’. There by saying choice only matters if there’s nothing else involved. And the minute you say that, duty becomes a disqualifier of choice. Morality becomes a disqualifier of choice. If you’re going to disqualify chosen ones as less interesting because something else got involved you have to remove everything else. You also have a bad habit of comparing good examples of things you like to bad examples of things you don’t. If you want to actually evaluate the effectiveness of the chosen one trope compare good ones to good non-chosen ones not good non-chosen to bad chosen ones.
The Hunger Games trilogy might be a prime example of what you’re talking about, actually. In the first book, Katniss made choices and had to live with their consequences, and I rather liked it. In the second book, she might as well have been a blowup doll for all her decisions mattered to the plot; she was simply dragged around and had little-to-no influence on even her own actions, and I wanted to hurl the book against the wall!
(The third was a mixed bag as far as Katniss’s ability to choose goes, but the evil vs. evil aspect of it made me hate it even more.)
I didn’t read Captain’s Courageous when I was a kid. Riki Tiki Tavi was the only Kipling I was exposed to in school. When I did finally read it I was very, very disappointed with my high school English classes for pushing Moby Dick on us instead of Captains Courageous. It would have been a much better book to profile to young people coming of age. I swear that a lot of the junior high and high school reading assignments are designed to turn young people off of reading.
For the most part I don’t mind either of the Chosen One or One Who Chooses stories as long as they’re done well. I see quite a lot of stories out now that are Chosen One with girls as the hero. And while that’s fine, so many are about girls doing boys things, just better than all the boys. And if it’s set in a fantasy world it works, but when set in the real world it doesn’t so much.
In real life, I’ve often thought that tomboys were girls who admired those (civilizational) virtues that boys did: courage, honor, resolve, steadfastness, etc. It isn’t that tomboys want to be boys, it’s that they value what the boys do, and so they share a desire for friendships and a point of view that persists until adolescence disrupts it.
So, I’m all in favor of tomboys as a type. But the current claim of super-strength, super-everything that Chosen One females tend to exhibit is ludicrous. There may well be roles for women of this inclination serving actively with the men in some capacity, and tech/mech may modify some of the limitations, but 90% of what’s out there is absurd.
Of course, the inclusion of the supernatural (e.g., vampires) can create exceptions.
Very astute – when I was a girl, I much preferred to read the ‘boy’s books’ – all about honor, duty, adventure, risk. I didn’t want to be a boy, I just wanted to have all the adventures that boys did. (In the ‘girls’ books, thought suitable at the time, it was all about the girl against the mean girls’ clique and getting the attention of the cute boy. Puke. I hated the girl’s books.)
Ditto. Most of the good books were about boys. So who wouldn’t want to do what they do, value what they value? And looking back as an adult, that’s still true, of course, though the way that strong women (traditionally considered) are valued is more about what grown women do, not girls (children, endurance, support). Women have adventures in stories, while girls mostly don’t.
Now, fairy tales do have adventures for girls… and how do they succeed? mostly with (adult) virtues of cunning, relationship savvy, misdirection — not by fighting their way out of a problem, or creating a band of brothers.
So adventure books show a clear path from boyhood to manhood, while they’re less compelling to a preadolescent about the path from girlhood to womanhood, and so the boys books provide the template, for a while.
I see quite a lot of stories out now that are Chosen One with girls as the hero.
I think this actually part of why we’re moving more to “Chosen Ones” than “Ones who Choose.” Because your average girl is not equipped to be the hero in most adventure stories. In order to win a physical fight against the villain, she’s going to need to be extraordinary in some way, whether that’s superpowers, magic, or simply the force of the author bending the universe so that she cannot fail. Simply girding up her courage is just going to leave the average female dead.
And, yes, I find this monumentally unfair, but it’s a reality that I think even most of the “women are just as powerful as men, we’ve just been held back by the patriarchy” authors subconsciously acknowledge.
I think it’s in part a reaction of despair. After all, how many people strive and try and do everything they’re taught to do – yet never get ahead, much less have as much as their parents did?
So the only option is to be “special”, or you’ll never accomplish anything.
For the most part, I believe it’s writers regurgitating the tropes fed to them by the modern education system and want-to-be ruling class. We’re seeing increasingly high numbers of people in the under-35 demographic who reject the idea that all speech is free speech. The same demo is also increasingly supportive of the concept of a less democratic, more selected government.
The “chosen one” is an echo of that, and a reinforcement of the trope that “some are born to rule.” Where this comes from originally can certainly be argued:
-Is it enemy action? We can prove that the PRC and the old Soviet Union achieved deep penetration into our education system, especially (at the beginning) Higher Ed, which after all produces all of the teachers for basic education. The growing number of states that require a Master’s Degree to teach… Uh, that gives Higher Ed six years to indoctrinate and to cul those who refuse indoctrination. It would be hard to argue that a society and culture weakened by a rejection of the founding principles is not in an enemy’s best interest.
-Or is it internally generated? There have always been any number of people in any society who firmly believe they were “born to rule.” We have an amazingly large group of career politicians, people who have never had a career outside of government and have been in elected positions for over forty years, many of these are second and third-generation political families. Pushing that agenda is certainly in their best interest.
Either way, it comes out the same. Now some tales just don’t work without a Chosen one. You can’t do Harry Potter’s tale without it, for example, nor can you do “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But many others are either lazy writers who are trying to ride the coattails of success or those who are writing what they were taught during 12-18 years of indoctrination.
John Ringo has a couple of books that are the result of him asking the question of “If he/she is the Chosen One, Who Chose him/her”?
The answer in the books is “God Chose Her” mind you, she accepted the Calling and had “just happened” to gained plenty of skills useful in her Calling long before God Called On Her.
Oh yes, I almost forgot about the ass kicker in the minivan. Fun series, I wish he would do more.
To be sure, Gandalf hints that God choose Frodo.
True.
Correct, but too many modern authors aren’t clear on Who Chose The Chosen One.
While I’m not sure if John’s thought on “Who Did The Choosing” included Misty Lackey, but her “Guardians” are apparently chosen to have “special gifts” and are punished if they don’t use those gifts to fight predatory magic-users. And there’s no hint about “Who Chose Them To Be Guardians”.
Very true.
Of course you can also have a Chooser of the One, but such a character tends to change the trope past recognition. What is this character’s agenda? Can he be trusted?
My own theory is that the modern “Arcless Chosen One” stories are pure power fantasies, like a lot of the earlier pulp and comic book stories. You will occasionally see PulpRev people argue in favor of a model of story-telling about relatively static characters having adventures. It’s not an invalid model, but it’s also not the only model. And of course wish fulfillment stories have a lot of traction in general.
This country’s founding values included a distrust of power, evolved from the Jewish and Christian philosophy that power should not be aspirational – one should have higher priorities. (The Old Testament and the history of Western Europe show us a lot about how fouled-up things get when the practitioners of those religions do *not* have their priorities straight.) Marxism, by reducing everything to power dynamics, essentially made power the only aspiration (becoming powerful one’s self in order to punish the previously powerful), so people educated by Marxists revert to power fantasies as the main form of story-telling, and have trouble grasping other forms, at least until life expands their point of view.
‘Enemy action?’
The modern academics HATE the Hero’s Journey and they HATE the Chosen One, or the notion that people are anything other than interchangeable, undifferenced widgets.
I’ll say the CORRUPTION of the Chosen One is probably enemy action: where the CO is nothing and no one and just a blank slot for the reader or viewer to project him/herself in.
And who said the Chosen One was Chosen to RULE?
The CO is supposed to be Chosen to perform a task that no one would want to, and is usually left in poor condition afterward.
Chris Nuttall appeared to have fun with the “Chosen One” trope in his School In Magic series.
In that series, the term “Child of Destiny” is the term used for a Chosen One.
Normally, a person gains that title after the fact, but an evil & insane sorcerer commanded powerful spirits to bring him a Child of Destiny so that he could sacrifice this Child of Destiny.
Well, he got Emily but before he could sacrifice he, another sorcerer called Void managed to rescue Emily.
Emily knows that she’s not a “Child of Destiny” as the people of this world think of it because her mother’s name is Destiny. 😆
Mind you, as Emily learns magic and introduces simple knowledge/technology to her new world, some of her actions point to her being a “True Child of Destiny”. 😉
You just sold me on this one.
I am struggling with this in the WIP. One of the characters has to transform essentially from one chosen to do what he does by others, into someone who makes his own choices. I can see how he starts as an almost NPC, and how his desire to please everyone without discernment causes so much destruction, and I can see how the older wiser version works once he has learned to make his own choices or chose who’s leads to follow, but I can’t quite yet wrap my head around how he grows from one into the other.
The way to force this growth in your character (or in real life) is to have choices that contradict each other but arise from the same desire (of your character to please everyone.)Then your character is stuck. How the character works through that moment determines whether he will grow wiser or not. Does he give in to the stronger will or does he choose the better character to follow or does he throw them both over and choose to eat ice cream because they are both manipulative. I just finished writing a book with this as the central problem so I’m free with advice about it.
I think I see. And that solves the problem: his decisive moment is when he realizes which thing is truly important to him, chooses to pursue that alone, burning all the other the bridges behind him. All the things he was afraid of happening because he didn’t do what other people wanted from him come to pass, but it no longer controls him. b
Because he chose what matters; the rest are now just obstacles.
If he was actually choosing between several people then *All* the things he was afraid of shouldn’t *all* happen. Presumably different bad things would come from different choices, *unless* they would happen anyway. And if that’s the case, that’s another revelation he can have, while he starts clearing out the obstacles.
Maybe to put it a different way, he has been right about the costs of the choices the entire time. He hasn’t been imagining problems that weren’t there, and finally making his choices does not make the problems go away. It just means now he can deal with them as what they are and acting to make what he wants happen, rather than simply being printed around by what ever minimizes costs.
Sounds reasonable. Especially because I doubt if what he was doing at first was cost-free.
I read the Heinlein juveniles back in the 1960s/1970s and I took a few other things about them away.
The male protagonist was typically fairly bright, adventurous, hard working, and somewhat foolish. This lead to him getting himself into risky situations in the process of whatever grand adventure was unfolding.
The main female character was often portrayed as at least a smart as the male if not smarter, but also wiser and more cautious. She was often the one getting him out of trouble with TPTB.
Overall, I thought it was a reasonable representation of common male and female roles. Men are the risk takers, women are the ones who try to rein them in.
Sorry, no.
Frodo IS a Chosen One. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, Frodo was meant to have it. The quest was his, whether he wanted it or not.
It’s just that too many in modern times have forgotten the being the Chosen One…kinda sucks.
And have forgotten that the Chosen One actually CAN reject the call and walk away. Frodo had several chances to give the thing away. He COULD have let the ringwraiths have it. He could have stayed in the Shire and ignored the problem.
And there’s a whole page on it!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RefusalOfTheCall
Indeed. As with everything it can be Done Badly. But done WELL it can really make the story.
As the cliched headline goes: HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE A HERO.
It’s an interesting story, both “but someone needed to” and “but he was the only one who could.”
I used that in Sword And Shadow.
“Glorious Destinies tend to end in glorious funerals.”
I suspect what you’re identifying as an overwhelming surge in “chosen one” stories is more that there is a political fashion for treating demographics as a moral aspect of the character– where older stories would show, say, someone giving a starving beggar their lunch, modern stories will lay out their Interesting Demographics.
The better Chosen One stories still take someone deciding to do the right thing, it just has to be them because they’re the only ones who CAN do it.
The War God’s Own does a great job of this because the main character is a prince, and the chosen one, and he quite earnestly rejects the call… and the opening scene is him being a Big Damn Hero while cussing himself out because he’s being stupid.
But he does it because it needs to be done and he’s the only one around who can do it.
That’s pretty much the whole story. ^.^ (is a GREAT ride, really should read it, holds up to re-reading well, too)
Seconded, and the rest of the series (plus a couple of short stories in various “Worlds of Weber” anthologies) are just as good.
Although the first book (where that scene happens) is titled “Oath of Swords”; “War God’s Own” is the title of the second. The series is currently shown as “War God”.
Thank you, I should’ve just gotten the dang link.
https://www.baen.com/categories/free-library/oath-of-swords.html
Well, I think Bahzell would laugh at the idea of him being a Prince. 😉
Oh yes, his father is called a Prince and thus Bahzell could use the title of Prince, but in Bahzell’s mind his father is just the Clan Chief and Bahzell is just a younger son who would slapped down if he tried to make anything special of being a son of the Clan Chief. 😀
Of course, the only thing “special” about being a son of the Clan Chief as far as he’s concerned is that he has the “Honor” of being the hostage guest of his father’s greatest enemy. (In order to keep the peace between both sides until they’re ready to restart the war).
But yes, in Oath Of Swords he gets involved in something that he has various reasons to ignore but Just Can’t Ignore.
And after that mess, he gets the problem of a god who want to Chose him and he doesn’t want to be Chosen.
It’s all part of the “I just have more duties, dang it” approach to his special status that I adore. 😀
I just LOVED the argument that Bahzell had with his “Boss” concerning Bahzell’s authority over his authority over the War God’s Own.
Left Bahzell’s ears ringing. 😆
I also like Tomanak’s point that he can’t HELP Bahzell unless Bahzell lets him. Which gets into the consequences of refusing the call.
I enjoyed the interaction between Tomanak and Bahzell during the period before Bahzell “accepted the call” but was willing to listen to Tomanak. 😆
Or just after, such as when he and Tomanak were working out which lies were acceptable….
😆
“Okay, fine. I’ll accept you telling those people to lie in order to save themselves and send the trouble after you. But no lies that BENEFIT you, understand?”
Reminding Tomanak that “Law” and “Justice” are not always the same, and unjust laws need to be undermined whenever possible.
I’m rereading that series and I’m thinking that Himself is “starting” arguments with Bahzell that He wants to lose.
And Brandark is correct, Tomanāk has an “interesting” sense of humor. 😆
Chosen One, eh, its okay for Anime. MC gets dropped into another world because the
Gods need him to whack the Demon Lord, it can be fun and it works better in the non-Christian cosmology, where you can have bigger gods, smaller gods, demons, etc.
Although, I do like it when the Chosen One is a weenie and some other Not Chosen guy has to step up and do his job. That’s often hilarious.
I’m a fan of Accidental Hero, when Nobody Special gets stuck with Special Power due to Ridiculous Accident. Like Spiderman. Peter Parker accidental hero.
That’s my guy, George McIntyre. Accidentally nanotech-ed into Post Human, suddenly realizing how careful he has to be about throwing his weight around.