A boy picks up a sword. A sword of legend and destiny. His father’s sword. A sword reforged. A hero’s sword. A magic sword. A boy raises armies. Overthrows evil. Fulfills the prophecy. Claims his crown, his kingdom, his people. He marries the princess, rules justly, leaves statues and legends to tell his story.
A boy walks into a destiny. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
The literary canon is lousy with Chosen Ones. There’s always an ancient riddle to live up to, a monstrosity to depose, and a balance to be restored. More often than not, it’s your garden variety able-bodied, cisgender, straight white boy anointed the arbiter of balance. (If your hackles just went up, this may not be the article for you. Fun story: They’ve put a little ‘X’ in your browser tab for just this sort of event. May you find safer harbor in the overwhelming majority of the western literary canon.)
None of this is news; we’ve been brought up to see the typical farm boy as our cypher for a grand adventure in improbable worlds. And what’s so wrong with that? What’s wrong with walking into a story where even a humble peasant can overthrow a tyrant, where a commoner can become a king, where sacrifice is rewarded and bravery turned to song? What’s wrong with wanting to be chosen?
Well, a couple things, it turns out.
Let’s start off by discussing what’s good about the Chosen One trope. There’s undeniable power in the idea that one person can effect tremendous change, like Katniss turning her sacrificial role into the symbol of a revolution in The Hunger Games, or the Abhorsen Trilogy’s Lirael going from outcast to unlikely savior. I’m partial to Sailor Moon, in which an immature crybaby repeatedly saves the world with her Meg-Murray-esque refusal to give up on the people she loves. Especially in this day and age, when we feel isolated and helpless against problems too great for any one person to tackle, Chosen One tropes remind us that even an individual’s actions can change lives and worlds for the better. Additionally, they can inform someone’s sense of right and wrong, and hopefully inspire them to good deeds of their own. (Though if dragon-slaying’s in the mix, I’m going to have some questions.)
We’re also seeing a push for more Chosen Ones from marginalized backgrounds, which is an undisputed win—not just for the marginalized kids who get to see themselves in the chosen heroes like Alice Kingston and Aru Shah, but for the authors who are carving out a new, more inclusive space in the definition of ‘heroic.’ As more diverse authors and narrators engage with the question of what it means to be chosen, what it means to be a hero, they’re also exploring what that looks like from different cultural perspectives.
But this raises the first question: is the One enough?
This is the first crack in the fantasy. The Chosen One is presented as a silver bullet of sorts—they need to be in the right place, at the right time, hoist the magic crystal or point the magic sword, and Evil Will Be Defeated. The Evil King is cast out, the Good King takes his place. Instead of interrogating the systems and structures that allowed a great evil to come to power, we are simply content that it is gone, and that a benevolent ruler has replaced it.
This is reductive, certainly, but so is the metanarrative it reinforces: that a flawed system can be repaired by simply trading out or removing a few bad pieces. Sure, it could be quite a struggle to even get those bad pieces out in the first place, but once the fight’s over, you can wipe the crown down with Comet, toss it on the anointed one, and retire to the countryside, right? For example, the problem with Denethor’s rule as Steward of Gondor is presented as the result of arrogance and despair, rather than the product of giving unilateral power to a single person by virtue of their bloodline. This problem is then resolved by the true king Aragorn taking his rightful place, not by challenging the merits of a system that allowed Denethor to come to power.
In children’s literature, you see similar examples in the Chronicles of Prydain and in Harry Potter. The eventual High King Taran does take a gap year to learn about the land he will someday inherit, but at the end of the series, no one questions the wisdom of naming him the new High King of Prydain. This is despite the fact that the former High King failed to stop the manifold evils of Queen Achren and Arawn Death-Lord, and despite the fact that Achren was the former queen of Prydain before Arawn overthrew her. Taran is simply one more ruler in the chain of monarchs, but his claim is backed by prophecy, and thus acceptable. Similarly, Harry Potter’s story does nothing to interrogate the system that allowed Voldemort to come to power; the books are riddled with adults shaking their heads mournfully and saying “If only I’d done something sooner…” without making the leap to “How can we prevent this?” It’s enough that Harry and Ron become magic cops, and Hermione becomes a bureaucrat. The status quo remains but the players have changed, and all is well.
And this idea, that simply replacing the pieces can fix a flawed machine, has real-world consequences. Like when my fellow white Americans decided that since we elected President Obama, that meant racism was over and everything was fine. We no longer had a civic responsibility to confront the systemic racism saturating our society, we no longer had to reckon with the evils of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, because the right man had been given the power to fix it for us. I encountered this phenomenon as a field organizer for elections in 2010 and 2012—individuals whose activism stopped on November 7, 2008, were baffled or resentful that the nation’s demons had not been exorcised by February 1, 2009.
The Chosen One as a silver bullet further entrenches the idea that it just takes one humble outsider to restore the monarchy to its rightful function, instead of questioning the ethics of a monarchy in the first place. It eschews experience and expertise in favor of secret bloodlines and divine limericks, handwaving the innate flaws of a power structure because the “right person” has temporarily been empowered. And even when the Chosen One rejects or is denied the power of the tyrant they conquered, it plays into the second major flaw: the Single Noble Sacrifice.
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The Faithless Hawk
The Single Noble Sacrifice flavor of the Chosen One trope happens whether our hero bravely perishes or not. (They can’t all be Aslan, folks.) It’s the dark side of the uplifting messages about the power of individual action; if all it takes is one person to change the world, why does it have to be you? If only a Chosen One can topple the great evil, then what do we expect from everyone who wasn’t chosen? It’s the rationale behind “Somebody should do something”—someone else should give up time, energy, ambitions, a future. If Buffy’s out there slaying vampires, everyone else can go about their lives. Instead of “Anyone can wear the mask,” it’s “Someone else was chosen to wear the mask, so I don’t have to.”
Since the answer is in slotting the correct people into existing power structures, and there are clear markers of who has been chosen and who has not, the audience is absolved of their ethical responsibility to confront injustice because they “aren’t the type.” Someone else has been chosen to fight those fights, to wield the magic sword against the demon king. Someone else will put their life on hold. And unless they come knocking at your door for help, you can go on about your day.
Ultimately, the greatest appeal of the Chosen One trope isn’t that it handwaves questionable power structures or lets the average civilian off the hook. It’s the fantasy of having the power to protect what you love, and fight for what you believe in. More and more creators are engaging in the complexities of the trope, and in new and interesting ways. Take, for example, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Slight spoilers follow). Adora’s story begins as a classic Chosen Warrior to Defend the Defenseless narrative, but uses that foundation to interrogate the pillars of the Chosen One trope. The show deliberately raises uncomfortable questions about the weaponization of superpowers, about forming an identity when you’re the manifestation of an ideal, about the ethics of asking someone to sacrifice themselves. As a result, it manages to give depth to the Chosen One trope without losing the empowering elements.
And it’s one of many new stories pushing the trope into new areas. But at the end of the day, the long wars aren’t won or lost by a Chosen One. They’re decided by the battles we choose.
Born and raised at the end of the Oregon Trail, Margaret Owen first encountered an author in the wild in fourth grade. Roughly twenty seconds later, she decided she too would be an author, the first of many well-thought-out life decisions. The Faithless Hawk, sequel to The Merciful Crow is available August 18th from Henry Holt and Co.
My inner chlld when I read a Chosen One story. “Cool.”
My outer adult self. “A ten year old is the only one who can save the world? We are so screwed.”
China Mieville inverted the Chosen One trope so cleverly in his YA novel ‘Un Lun Dun’ by focusing on the sidekick of the ‘Schwazzy’ (from the French ‘Choisi’), the person who is generally acknowledged in the book as the Chosen One. It’s one of my favorite Mieville novels, and a total delight.
I read a fantasy book a few years ago called “Kill the Farm Boy” that gleefully turned the Chosen One trope on its head, and was full of egregious puns of all varieties. Highly recommended.
Brandon Sandersons Mistborn series comes to mind. So many delightful ways the ‘chosen one’ trope is played with….this is the chosen one, no she is the chosen one…or maybe they are?? And overthrowinf overthrowing the evil king turns out to be a collossol mistake.
I can’t decide if I enjoy these types of posts or not. On the one hand, they are thought provoking but on the other I find myself thinking that some of them ask a lot from authors.
I’m not an author or any type of creative person. I don’t know what the creative process is like but I think that stories will come to an author, or maybe it’s a character or a plot device or whatever. I don’t think it’s much like the scientific method, where you choose upfront what problem or issue you will tackle and then gather data or design experiments based on that.
So saying that authors rely on tropes and that they should question underlying power structures or whatever social issue today’s society is currently facing is asking for a lot and not necessarily from the right persons.
If an author wants to address these issues that is great. However, I don’t think it should be a requirement for a story to do so and I don’t think being « woke » or whatever to these issues necessarily makes for better art. A story is not a sociology essay. Most likely the author is the product of the society they live in. By and by, some will contribute to change that society for the better. When they do so, I believe they rarely set out specifically with that purpose in mind.
I think the issue is more loaded towards the editing and publishing side of the business. There are definitely authors out there who represent all the diversity of our society and who do have the types of stories in them that will make us question the status quo. However, they are not always those that are selected or their stories will be altered to fit a wider audience or their publication will be more limited.
There was a recent post here that criticized the binary nature of the magic system in the Wheel of Time series. Some may find a flaw there in the author’s work, but I don’t. I think it’s highly improbable to account for all variations of the human experience when writing a story. That post made for an interesting discussion though, and that in itself is a very good thing.
Tropes appeal to us, that’s why they’re tropes. Publishing is like any other business in that it will try to maximize returns while minimizing risks. Tropes are safe storytelling devices. I think authors will continue to write the stories they have in them, tropes or not, and I think that’s just fine. The best we can hope for in our capitalist economy is that sometimes publishers will take chances on weird stories and maybe these stories will change how we look at things for the better.
To be fair, Buffy the tv series questioned and subverted the chosen one trope continuously. To an extent, the series and even the movie were written as a critique and parody of the trope.
Norman Spinrad likes to critique books with Chosen One protagonists, under the rubric “the Emperor of Everything”. He focuses on the questionable morality of Chosen One stories, wherein anything that the Chosen One chooses to do is correct, because the Chosen One. The CO may be remorseful and penitent afterwards for choosing actions down to and including genocide, but that contrition is the prerogative of the CO and again reinforces their moral rectitude in all things, including evildoing. Ender Wiggins (of Ender’s Game and sequels) was his archetype for the EoE.
For a while, I thought you were going to talk about the Chosen One’s support team. No Chosen One acts alone, and there are usually a lot of people around him or her who are needed to make sure they are in the right place at the right time. I think that, from a literary sense, maybe that support team is why so few authors worry about the future after the Chosen One has fulfilled their role. It’s not bad that Harry Potter becomes a magical cop, because he’s a good cop who maintains the idealism needed to make the system work humanely, and his BFF Hermione becomes a lawyer who makes a lot of reforms in the way the MOM does things. Harry isn’t just becoming a new cog in an old machine, because of the support of his friends, their families, his teachers, and so on. On the other hand, in at least some versions of the Arthur mythology, Arthur sleeps with Morgause and conceives his killer Mordred, only after Merlin has been taken out of the picture.
I think that when the Chosen One is portrayed as both moral and has a strong support team, the inference of the writer is that they will make the system better, not just perpetuate it. If that couldn’t happen, then there would be no point in voting for [idealistic politician X] because as soon as they got to [the seat of power] they would become part of the system instead of reforming it. If we have hope that idealistic politicians can remake the faceless system into a better one (whatever that means for you personally) why is it wrong that our literary Chosen Ones succeed in doing that?
This is a very good analysis and has given me a lot to think about. Thank you.
— Michael A. Burstein
@8 – I think you’ve missed the point a bit here, because even if The Chosen One has their friends with them, you still have the exact same problem that the structure itself is flawed. Even if Harry, Ron, Hermione and company use their authority well, what happens when they retire? Even if Aragorn is a perfect king, what happens when he dies? A system shouldn’t rely on exceptional Chosen One leaders to function — if history shows that the system is vulnerable to abuse, the system should be changed, not perpetuated.
@5 – your response sounds as if the author of this article declared a permanent ban on Chosen One stories. She’s not requiring anything of anyone, and your comment about “being woke or whatever” makes me wonder if you should’ve left the article when she invited you to near the top.
I think you’ve missed the point a bit here, because even if The Chosen One has their friends with them, you still have the exact same problem that the structure itself is flawed. Even if Harry, Ron, Hermione and company use their authority well, what happens when they retire? Even if Aragorn is a perfect king, what happens when he dies? A system shouldn’t rely on exceptional Chosen One leaders to function — if history shows that the system is vulnerable to abuse, the system should be changed, not perpetuated.
But is there such a thing as a system that can’t be subverted by bad players? I’d think any power structure (or anarchist nonstructure, if you’d like) has the potential for corruption; at most, it’s foolproof except under extreme circumstances, and by golly, we’ve got extreme circumstances happening right now!
Since LOTR has been referenced, I think that we should acknowledge that Tolkien’s picture (shaped of course by his faith) is considerably subtler than this. The overthrow of the oppressive system is achieved by accident through the actions of a psychopathic addict; the person who was supposed to do this actually defects at the last to the enemy side due to the same addiction, and is mutilated and left with unhealable psychological damage, and on returning home (to a political system that was somewhere between an elective local democracy – there’s a mayor; a squirearchy and a benign anarchy – there is no evidence anyone pays taxes) those who played a major role in saving the world discover that most of what they valued at home has fallen to petty dictatorship and been environmentally blighted, a situation requiring much ongoing hard work to correct. It’s not exactly ‘he married the princess and they lived happily ever after’.
SPOILERS FOR THE FINALE OF HBO’S GAME OF THRONES
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One of the wryest moments in the finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones was when the council of surviving leaders assemble to figure out how the Seven Kingdoms, without its Iron Throne, ought to be governed. Sam Tarley suggests a representative democracy, and everyone laughs and smacks him upside the head. It felt like a nod to all the speculative fan discussion about what should happen, given that there weren’t many morally upstanding answers to the question of which one person should rule all the land. Sure, Westeros finally got a god-king, capable of seeing all of history and maybe even changing it, but would the common folk of Westeros ultimately benefit under the reign of King Bran? We don’t know. That wasn’t the story.
Just like the fate of House-Elf rights was never the Harry Potter story, or droid sentience and rights was never the Star Wars story, though in both cases, those issues were raised–in the background.
Margaret Owen is correct: these tales of shifting power don’t involve the interrogation and reconstruction of political and social structures, to build a more perfect union. Those themes might make an interesting story, told well. But they definitely don’t fit the structures that most epic fantasies follow.
It beckons the question of what such a story would look like. Game of Thrones poked fun at it, as if to say, “What do you want now, a season that’s nothing but the drafting of constitutions and parliamentary debate? (Remember how everyone mocked The Phantom Menace for all the parliamentary “drama?”) No–you say you want that, but you don’t really want that.” But there are political story templates. Hamilton comes to mind, just because I saw it again on the 4th of July. Characters who are passionate about principles, and give rousing speeches to sway the crowds, and in the back rooms, cut ruthless deals to ensure that their vision comes to pass. People who put social movements in motion, leading protests with uncommon courage and conviction. The movie Gandhi did a good job of portraying that. In all the Star Wars movies, The Last Jedi probably came closest to addressing the things the original post calls out: a self-perpetuating military-industrial complex, a flawed Jedi/Sith dichotomy, the democratizing of the Force. But, alas, those ideas never found purchase in the conclusion of the saga, because Star Wars was never that kind of story. At least not in the forefront.
There’s definitely scope in the fantasy umbrella for political stories, but the shape of those stories will be very different. It won’t be a Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. It won’t be fighters and wizards waging war against each other. In other words, it probably won’t be the things that most fantasy readers (or publishers) are likely to pick up. But there are patterns for those kinds of stories, and maybe some day they’ll find purchase.
As somebody or other wrote, and I’d really appreciate being reminded who, ‘The Senator from Elfland’s Daughter just doesn’t work’.
@3. I love Kill the Farm Boy and its sequels No Country for Old Gnomes and The Princess Beard. The sequels don’t riff on the Chosen One trope as pointedly, but all of them star lovable groups of outcasts and misfits who destroy fantasy tropes and forge their own destinies in a weird world of wordplay and crude humor.
@@.-@: I like to say tbat the Mistborn series basically starts in Mordor and then turns apocalyptic.
I don’t know if the commentary on the Final Sacrifice was intended as a subtle criticism of modern Christianity or not, but it certainly is a valid one. Being Christian should mean something more than simply accepting Jesus as your Savior, especially since most things He did in His life were pretty radical challenges against the religious power structure in His day (interestingly, Jesus seemed much more sanguine about flawed political structures.)
One of the most fascinating and razor-sharp takes on Harry Potter I’ve ever seen. I say this as someone who has read the entire series and enjoyed most of it most of the time.
I keep thinking about how Chosen One plots are exciting as all get out – why write a novel about someone whose life is pretty quiet and uneventful? – but they’re also trite enough that subverting them can pay off wildly (I’m thinking of Patrick Ness’s deadpan, playful The Rest of Us Just Live Here). There’s something I like about this paradox.
And: well, the more everyone thinks about it, the more everyone is aware of what the world looks like through lots of eyes, the more everyone decides not to relegate this kind of thing to ‘sociology’ or not to turn a Black synonym for ‘aware’ into a sneering insult, then the greater our chances of together building a better world.
As someone who has consumed a not insubstantial amount of manga in my time, I often find conflict in enjoying a Chosen One narrative (of which there are many in the medium) versus a general cultural and personal desire for someone of unremarkable origin. Naruto comes to mind. The story starts with a protagonist who despite his name being on the marquee is described in story as the kind of guy who couldn’t have a manga written about him. He’s undereducated to the point of idiocy, an orphan who is societally abandoned to the point of imposed isolation, ostracized for something he had nothing and everything to do with and knows nothing about, and every single thing he gets is because someone took a chance on him and he grinded to the hilt to maximize the return on those investments in his person.
As heroes in all stories are wont to do, he begins pulling off the improbable and then the seemingly impossible and rises to be the guy whose name should be on the marquis a bonafide hero. But the near the end of the story the aspect of him being a product of his own hard work is called into question in a number of ways, including a good ole fashioned prophecy. And that took a little something out of the sails. At the start of the story he directly challenged the concept of the Chosen One and also the concept that people couldn’t change their situation or their fate. By the end he was kind of the poster child for “it is written”. It kind of hurt to me because instead of an aspiring every man he was more of a lost prince. Which is a shame. I still like the kid.
On another subject, the Lord of the Rings is an interesting look at this, as while Aragorn is the Chosen One King, Frodo is the Chosen One ring bearer responsible for ending the conflict once and for all…but it’s Sam who gets the job done when it all goes to hell. I like that division of work.
@17
Which makes sense. Jesus was much more concerned about the affairs of getting people to an eternal kingdom, than the transient concerns of this world’s politics.
Old chestnut; I don’t remember where I read it.
Our protagonist is a schlemiel. Does paperwork all day. Goes home alone at night. Nobody likes him. Nobody respects him. Nobody bothers with him.
A wizard steps out of nothing and proclaims, “I’ve been looking for you! You were born in the wrong time and place! Come with me and you will fulfill your destiny!”
That sounds good to Our Hero. “Hell yes!” quoth he.
The wizard drags him into nothing and emerges somewhere else. “Finally! My task is done! The Balance of the Universe is restored! You are in your Proper Place! The Royal Stable!
“Grab that shovel and muck out the stalls.”
This is certainly the kind of thing that I’d at times think about especially in terms of Lord of the Rings (perhaps the American in me, lol) – like, why do we need a King anyway? What happens when the King dies and his descendants aren’t as great (and actually, Tolkien started writing and abandoned a sequel that touched on this very thing, because it was too depressing. Tolkien never viewed anything as happily ever after – he was actually more on the pessimistic side and knew all victories were only marginal/incremental and that in some future generation there’d be another battle to fight).
Interestingly I always felt Harry Potter somewhat subverted this because of the things others bring up – Harry is shown continually as working as part of a team, and I also don’t think he, Hermione and Ron joining the Ministry is some type of betrayal. Yes, systems sometimes need to be revamped/torn down but there’s also a point where you’re just replacing it with another corruptible system. Just like there’s no Chosen One, I don’t know that there is a Chosen System either.
Star Wars is kind of an interesting case too and while the movies were so uneven, I agree TLJ at least started teasing at some of these ideas – I truly was hoping the sequels (starting with TFA, which already disappointed me) would have leaned a lot more into Luke discovering more about the Force and broadening his understanding of it and what the Jedi were. And even though Rey Nobody was still a Chosen One in the sense, I do like the idea that, when needed, a Chosen One can arise from anywhere. (I don’t totally hate Reypatine either since there’s also some potential for her being an interesting mirror of Anakin if you subscribe to the theory that Palpatine was influential in both of their formations, but it wasn’t foreshadowed well enough, unless you could some musical cues).
5,271,009 by Alfred Bester is one of the best resonses to the Chosen One trope. If you’ve never read it, you should.
Yes, fine. But for some reason The Chosen One Stories (along with Hero’s Journey) survive the Test of Time and others are thrown into obscurity. Even if for a moment they shine as something that stands out from the crowd.
In my opinion the right approach is to cleverly and boldly play with The Chosen One / Hero’s Journey convention but only to some extend. If you want to write something that will not be covered by dust when you’re gone. For some reasons that is how our minds work (you name them: Jungian archetypes, monomyth, etc) .
Lisamarie @@@@@ 21: What happens when the King dies and his descendants aren’t as great (and actually, Tolkien started writing and abandoned a sequel that touched on this very thing, because it was too depressing.
Well, in a sense Tolkien was repeating himself. He’d already written *that* story into the history of the line of kings in Númenor.
There is also the added problem that the Chosen One trope promotes the highly problematic Great Men of History approach to history. Which is the idea that progress is made only by exceptional individuals (most commonly men, and white cis-het men at that) doing exceptional things. This completely ignores the complex societal forces at play.
For example: yes, Julius Caesar was an influential individual, but he was able to be as influential as he was because of the support and actions of thousands of soldiers and many more inhabitants of the Roman republic who were sick of the ongoing political strife.
The Great Men of History approach is a simplified, white-washed and idealized (from the perspective of white cis-het men) view of history from the 19th and early 20th century with many disturbing implications that still infects many of our Fantasy stories.
@@@@@25. Ha, good point.
@@@@@ 21 I do feel that this discussion eschewed the Chosen One for the Chosen System. I know there is a lot of discussion in the current zeitgeist about “tearing down the system” but the danger is always what do you replace it with? There is a very good chance that you change one corruption for another, especially if seeking to give more power to those in power to “protect” everyone. Trusting in a few to protect the many. If the “few” are corrupt, then the “many” are screwed. From personal experience: We just had our dishwasher break and there was definitely a thought of throwing the whole thing out and getting a new one. But, it turned out that just replacing a broken piece was all that was needed. The system was fine once the bad part was replaced. The appliance actually did what it said it was supposed to do.
Regarding the point of the post, I actually agree that the stories of how the system changes after the climactic battle can be really cool. Someone brought up Mistborn and that’s actually the main thrust of the second book – which I enjoyed. There are others, too, that do this. A short film I really enjoy is called “A More Perfect Union” and goes over some of the debates during the Constitutional Convention. I find the aftermath compelling and it is a fundamentally different story than the “Chosen One”, but still interesting and the natural follow-on. As King George III once sang,
“What comes next?
You’ve been freed
Do you know how hard it is to lead?
You’re on your own
Awesome…”
I think the narrow view of the chosen one as a sci-fi/fantasy trope damages the idea. I could argue Huck Finn or Heidi is a chosen one. The crux for any chosen one is the making of a choice to be more than just a force but to actually accept moral obligations and duties. Literature is full of chosen ones that fail this (See Bible for a few handfuls). the issue with fantasy is the end result always seems to be restoring something but on the best it’s something much deeper-the chosen one must find fellowship and a space in and not above the community. Taran for example earns kingship and decides to stay to struggle with his community. Huck decides to go against his society by finding fellowship with Jim. I know the response will be that’s not fantasy but that suggests the hero’s journey began outside of regular everyday quests. If anything the chosen one or hero’s quest reflects each individual’s struggle to find a place in the world, to find a place or role with meaning, and these are the steps we need to take to get there. This is the opposite of seeing the chosen one trope as something outside of human experience-indeed, for all its cliches and misuse, the chosen one motif specifically reflects the struggle we all have to find our place in the world, to live up to expectations. I know I’m a better person for reading about Taran and all the Narnia kids and Huck and not because they won but because they learned how to be human, alive and empathetic. And that is the chosen one’s biggest quest.
The “Chosen One” story arc is at the core of Religions all around the world. I would say that it began when humanity first tried to make sense of things they couldn’t control. I mean, we all feel helpless at times. Whether we want to do something, or of we feel powerless and want to be saved, the “Chosen One,” gives us a sense of hope and therefore encourages us to persevere through dark times.
Yes, it is important for us to take the bull by the horns and try to guide society into a Utopian ideal. But first, we need to vanquish the ones that have caused the evil in the first place.
So, even if it is not realistic, as long as characters are three dimensional, escaping into a world where good vanquishes evil is necessary for the human psyche.
Early stories of The Chosen One were during periods when everyone believed that those on top of the chain of power were both reflected upward and downward. (As above, so below.) The king was a reflection of God because he was ordained by God to be in that place of power. The king was also reflective of those below him. He was the “father” of his kingdom as other men were father to their family. The good news is that kings gained a lot of power from this. The bad news is that his poor choices were reflected on his world. King Oedipus, as a story example, poisoned his kingdom because of his folly for marrying his mom. The land lost its fertility, babies died, etc. So, The Chosen One character is as much about the choices the world makes as The Chosen One makes.
As we’ve discussed here, the small team around the hero Chosen One, reflects and strengthens his actions, and those below reflect the same actions. Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione’s personal fight against Lord V and the Death Eaters ends up starting a rebellion that others lead and fight.
I’ve read a lot more critiques and subversion of the Chosen One idea than I’ve ever read a straight-up example. Even the examples presented here have to be twisted to fit the author’s thesis, as most of them are arguably subversions or don’t even fit the trope at all. (Katniss a chosen one? Have you even read the books?)
I mean, is there even really a straight up example besides King Arthur?
Most “chosen one” prophecies are plays on Greek Tragedies. Bad guy discovers a prophecy, usually about the person who will destroy them. In the process of trying to prevent the prophecized events, the bad guy instead fulfills them, leading to their own destruction. This is the basic outline of Harry Potter, of Willow, etc etc etc.
Don’t forget the darkside Chosen Ones.
The first one of those I saw was in Damien: Omen II. He was just living an ordinary kid’s life (well, as a rich kid, military school, athlete, etc.), when he finds out he’s the Chosen One … but he’s the Chosen One his entire society is supposed to reject and fight. He runs and runs to the lake and to the edge of the pier and shouts at the universe, “Why me?!”
At the end of the movie, he survives and has accepted his destiny. He will be the king he was meant to be.
Not exactly sure where I was going with this, except as an example of a Chosen One on the side of evil.
And, who chooses the “Chosen One” anyway?
@26: The thing about the Great Man stuff is that it is absolutely, completely, and in 2020 utterly undeniably, true that the actual individual decisions made by people in important roles are both important and not the result of faceless social pressures but of that particular person’s own personality and abilities.
The individual is important.
@34, God, a god, fate or some other supernatural agency usually.
Thought provoking essay. Thank you.
Although Babylon 5 had its chosen one moments, it also played around with the trope in quite a nuanced way, I felt. And although much maligned, I actually quite enjoyed season 5, which focused on what came after, on building something better, on reconstructing (or, in the case of the Centauri, the consequences of missing those opportunities).
Ah, but what about the flawed fantasy of the superhero? The superhero (who usually shares a similar origins-type story with the chosen one) doesn’t try to change the power-structure. He or she ignores it and enforces their own brand of justice. Their qualification? Their super-powers.
And therein lies the problem: that superpower could be invisibility or enormous strength. Or it could be a gun.
Interesting post!
I thought Hermione’s talents would have been better used teaching research at Hogwarts, since she has that sort of mind . . . but was her ministry job canon?
Could a Chosen One overhaul the system? Chosen specifically to overhaul the system?
Seems like a big part of Harry/Ron/Hermione’s challenges were to deal with the fallout of what happened when the previous generations were young.
@13 There is also Sam, who isn’t a Chosen One, but is a regular guy who steps up.
I’m not particularly fond of the Chosen One trope. I far prefer demonstrations of teamwork.
Harry seems to carry the Chosen One designation lightly in general at least as per how others view him but also with irritation because of the Ministry’s attitude. There’s also that scene in Half-Blood Prince when in the library Hermione and Harry are talking about the Slug Club Christmas party and Hermione points out Romilda Vane and that she’s only interested in Harry ’cause she thinks he’s the Chosen One and Harry sasses back, saying “But I am the Chosen One.” It’s always fun to see the humorous scenes in the films (like the “emotional range of a teaspoon” scene in Order of the Phoenix).
Harry is the Chosen One because Voldemort chose him, inadvertently, to be his nemesis. I love the irony.
@38
This reminds me of Frank Herberts thoughts on superheros , which were an absolute negative.
Which then leads to Dunes deconstruction of the shining happy future that Chosen Ones are supposed to create. Paul Atreides’s created future will lead to the death of billions after all
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/dune-is-a-deconstruction-of-classic-chosen-one-narratives/
That’s an interesting piece, Eoin – it also touches on how I think there’s an overlap re superheroes and the chosen one. If you’ve been gifted with a particular set of powers, then surely it’s inevitable that you’ll use them? Atreides ends up the chosen one because he was part of a breeding programme to produce precisely that.
I never read Dune, but I did see the movie many moons ago – in general I think a lot of nuance can get lost in the transition from the printed page to the screen, and this was clearly a case in point. However there are also plenty of creatives who’ve managed the tricky art of having it both ways. Poe’s Law just proves that what a narrative means is entirely dependent on your audience. Verhoeven, in particular, was a past master at this – most of his films can be read in two entirely different and mutually exclusive ways (Total Recall being a classic case in point).
The Myth of the True King, of which the Chosen One is a subtype, actually functioned to help stabilize smallish kingdoms: It gave the people a buy-in to the institution of kingship even when the current incumbent didn’t amount to much, and it prodded the sons and grandsons of warlords to prove the truth of their kingship by trying to act for the good of the group instead of squatting there as stationary bandits. Now, our groups are too large and diverse to function as kingdoms, and the Myth is socially destructive. One of the insights of the Enlightenment is that there is no reliable way to get the right people into power — power corrupts, and those who long to be corrupted strenuously seek power — so the trick is to dole out power in such a way that the wrong people can’t do much damage. This isn’t very emotionally satisfying, because power that can’t do much harm, can’t do much active good either, but in a diverse group this is actually a benefit, because we have different definitions of good, and my right people doing active good might be your wrong people being tyrannical.
Limited Government: The less we have to agree on, the fewer things we need to fight over.
@20 The Destiny of Milton Gomrath, by Alexei Panshin, Analog Dec 1967 – I just read this recently, as the issue is available online.
Jo Clayton did good work in presenting alternative ways to counter bad systems, often with ground-roots resistance movements. I find her a good counter to apathy/despair.
Semi-relatedly, can anyone recommend fantasy that deals with reconstruction after the Big Bad is defeated? There’s probably as much conflict and peril involved in dealing with leftover armies/weapons/resentments/factions as in the original battle, but at the moment I can only think of sf examples.
@47: “Semi-relatedly, can anyone recommend fantasy that deals with reconstruction after the Big Bad is defeated? There’s probably as much conflict and peril involved in dealing with leftover armies/weapons/resentments/factions as in the original battle, but at the moment I can only think of sf examples.”
Not sure if this example fits, as it doesn’t involve a Big Bad per say, but the coup against the King of Adro in the original Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan is over and done with in the first 50 pages or so. The rest of the novels are all about dealing with the fallout from the King’s death, reforming the country and defending this nascent Adran Republic from internal, external and metaphysical threats. Well worth a read.
@47: Mistborn, particularly the second book, Well of Ascension. (Admittedly, it only does this for the initial Big Bad; the third book ends with “apocalypse averted, fade to black”, and the sequel series doesn’t pick up until three hundred years later).
@6: Buffy is an excellent example. In the finale Buffy brings about a situation where her own “chosen oneness” is effectively destroyed forever. She ceases being the “chosen one” and becomes one of many, which is a very powerful ending and subverts that moment in an early episode when Giles despairs because the Slayer is supposed to work alone and not have wacky sidekicks, a working mother and homework to worry about.
@48: Tad Williams recently wrote a trilogy, The Last King of Osten Ard, thirty years after his original Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series in which thirty years have passed in-universe as well. It turns out that sticking an 18-year-old kitchen scullion in charge of a major kingdom might not have been the best idea ever, and Simon’s well-meaning and trying-to-be-fair leadership policies, although all well-intentioned, have had some negative consequences and the story unfolds from that. I know some fans have reacted negatively to it, feeling that the original story ended “happily ever after” and this sequel series has been a dose of cold water to their imaginings of how the ending should have been. Others are huge fans of the realistic approach to the ending.
Another good example is Babylon 5, which plays around with the Chosen One motif a lot and has our heroes overcome the enemies and achieve a lasting victory in two wars on two fronts in Season 4, and Season 5 immediately addresses the question of “what happens next?” It’s about empire-building and it’s as torturous and messy as can be imagined. The dramatic impact is diluted by the opening half of Season 5 focusing on a really awful storyline and drawing it out for too long, but the second half of Season 5 is excellent at showing that just because our heroes have defeated the Big Bad, it doesn’t mean everything is going to nice and amazing forever and they still have a lot of work to do. The Season 4 finale, which has flash-forwards to historians debating the impact our heroes have on the world, is particularly interesting as the historians debate the “great man” myth of history and how it applies to the characters (even, rather cleverly, insinuating that other characters would have stepped up to their roles, a sly nod at the various recasting the show did at various times and swapping characters around when actors needed to leave).
I never liked the Chosen One narrative arc anyway, but not for the reasons the author gives. I usually find “chosen ones” difficult to relate to, not because I wouldn’t want to be the hero, but because I keep finding myself thinking things like “Man, if I were in that situation, I’d be so screwed.” So of course we admire competent and driven people. All heroes, whether they are chosen ones or not, are power fantasies of some sort. It’s no use to criticize the Chosen One arc for absolving the average person from taking responsibility for the world’s problems, because powerlessness is exactly what birthed it to begin with. What exactly is the average person supposed to do? Not everyone is capable of being a hero.
And it’s a heck of a lot more work to try and rebuild from scratch than it is to attempt to reform existing power structures. There will never be a utopia, and hierarchies will always exist. Without a comprehensive plan to remake society, “the right person in charge” is a more realistic attainable goal than something vague like “tear down existing power structures and usher in the utopia”, which more often than not yields tyranny and chaos.
Of course, one possible way of subverting this trope might be to have these expectations thrust upon the protagonist by the setting rather than the narrative itself, so that s/he is faced with internal pressure no matter what s/he believes; either to live up to these expectations or to disprove them.
So, essentially you’re mad at fantasy for not being a revolutionary genre? I’m not saying that there can’t be fantasies with more revolutionary implications, but I am saying that this just isn’t the genre to expect them in.
As to the chosen one trope, I agree that it’s overplayed. But come on, now. You’re writing on a fantasy site, it can’t be news to you. It sure wasn’t news to me and, in any story I’ve had a hand in telling, I’ve tried to avoid this trope. I prefer narratives where the heroes aren’t chosen to overcome Evil, but choose to. (See: Dragonlance.)
And now, some quick, related side thoughts on two of my favorite fantasy video games.
SOME VIDEO GAME SPOILERS AHEAD (granted it’s for games that are on the older side now)
One of the things I found a tad disquieting about “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” was its reliance on the “chosen one” trope, and one of the things I liked about “Dragon Age: Inquisition” was that your character at first appeared to be “chosen” but then it turns out he or she just, literally stumbled into shit. It then was up to him or her to decide to do the right thing despite the path being laid out by pure chance.
I guess it comes to how good the author is. A trope can be subverted as per Sanderson or played straight as per Robert Jordan I guess it comes to how good the author is. For Jordan’s work the chosen one is crucial, but the rest of the world still has to do it’s part still has fight.. if they don’t the Evil may be defeated, but the world will be left in ashes with dark minions running all over the place.
@47 The YA novel Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore centers on young queen Bitterblue having to put her country back together after the evil king, a psychopath who could brainwash people (and also her father), is killed. It’s one of the few YA books I can think of that addresses the trauma of genocide and confronting the past in order to move forward, as well as taking a hard look at the institutions that allowed the evil one to take power in the first place.
For some reason, whenever I see the words “Chosen One” I hear…
“He’s not the Messiah, he’s a Very Naughty Boy”
I love this article. Chosen Ones are kind of a pet peeve for me as a reader and writer both, and in my stories they tend to get splatted a lot. But there are some real serious issues here that I hadn’t thought about. Thanks very much for bringing them up.
Even in reality I think we lean towards a chosen one. Don’t nearly all political systems eventually fall into dictatorships? Dictators seem to be the epitomy of the chosen one, at least in the story they tell.
For most of history in Western society it’s about white men because they have been the ones promoted to tell the stories. In China the stories have Chinese men and in Hindi language tales it is Hindu men and so on. This is changing slowly.
But you are talking about fantasy and what stories we want to hear. I think “we”* want gloroius tales about making a difference and feeling we are the good guys. Stories can help educate or propagandize. They can make us think about real world issues in the safety of a fantasy world that lets us see life from a different perspective. Primarily though, we want to be entertained.
*for various values of we.
Will Wight’s Traveller’s Gate trilogy addresses this. It has all the stereotypes of your traditional Chosen One story, but, well… nothing is really as it seems on the surface.
My favorite “chosen one” story is from Micro SF/F Stories on Twitter:
“You’ve been chosen,” the spirit said.
“What?”
“Save the world, make it kinder, cleaner, safer.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“We chose everyone.”
Well said. However, look at Cordwainer Smith’s Dead Lady of Clown Town – the heroes of the story don’t save the world but cause in a change in the functioning of society and eventually the Rediscovery of Man. And if anyone has read the story, remember what happened to D’joan and Elaine. No one came out of that story unhurt in some way. Mr Linebarger was far ahead of his time.
Alvin in The City and the Stars is a Chosen One; made that way by the founders of the City a billion years before, chosen to destroy the culture and open the Universe back up to humanity. He’s my favorite kind of Chosen One. He screws everything up for everyone, but ultimately it’s for the best.
I like how the late, great Terry Pratchett did this.
Does the prophecy say anywhere that the king would actually claim the throne?
There, the chosen one, knows that just because he’s the got the backing of the story doesn’t mean he’d be a good king. There’s all sorts of other things required for good government.
The Chosen One is a very old trope — cf the Biblical David. If this is really a ~white delusion, what solutions (to outside threats or internal tyranny) are presented in old non-white cultures? Or is @45 correct that the hero approach is simply outdated?
@12: just so. IIRC, “the system” did not “allow Voldemort to come to power”; it was more like a putsch by a collection of fanatics, which non-tyrannical systems are vulnerable to. There’s only so much a system of relative freedom can be shifted to permanent readiness against the Big Bad before it becomes a Big Bad itself. contra @10, Harry etc. become pieces of a structure that draws resilience from having many such people rather than depending on a Hero to save it.
@61: an interesting read of Alvin, who challenges an entire static system rather than a Big Bad — and who may have been deliberately created as a very-long-term answer (or minority report) to stagnation (or at least, defensive retirement), parallel to the shorter-term action of the Jesters.
I read The Princess Beard; I thought the attack on tropes was a fun idea but the execution was done with a sledgehammer. De gustibus…
Great read, and the comments are even better. Now I have a long list of stuff I have to read.
Joseph Campbell pinned this trope down as the “Hero’s Journey” or the “monomyth” with up to 17 stages the protagonist could go through, in his 1949 book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”. Edward Burnett Tylor, Otto Rank, and Lord Raglan explored common themes in such myths and stories prior to Campbell.
Campbell’s book has provided a map for people writing stories to fit the mold, and to break from it in every way they can.
“Jason Cosmo” features the anti-protagonist Jason Cosmo who suddenly finds himself the target of every bounty hunter in the land. He’s been pinned by some prophecy, and someone who wants to stop it put a huge price on his head. Jason wants *nothing* to do with any of it, not even his encounter with “He Who Sits on the Porch” sways him. Despite his best efforts to avoid it all, Jason does somehow end up saving the place he was prophesied to save.
The original He-Man and She-Ra cartoons were not “chosen one” tales. Adam and Adora were provided with the swords they used to call upon the Power of Greyskull but they definitely weren’t in it for all the power and glory for themselves. Each had a crew of friends and confidants (some somehow clueless about their secret) whose help was essential.
Adam was a Prince, heir to the throne of Eternia, so he didn’t *have* to be a “Chosen One”, he would eventually sit on the throne by birthright. As He-Man he arguably had an easier task than his sister, Adora. Eternia was beset by the often foolhardy big bad Skeletor and his gang of various thugs, seeking to seize control of the planet, or just cause some mayhem.
Adora, on Etheria, wasn’t seeking to sit on any throne or seat of power. She had to scramble for resources with the rest of the people attempting to overthrow the tyranny of Hordak. Hordak was *far* more competent and dangerous than the obsessed with himself Skeletor could ever dream of being.
Both were positioned as shows with adult characters of various ages established as role models with varied aspects for kids to aspire to and emulate. The characters also had some faults, always used as an object lesson. And they both had cringeworthy ersatz-child characters who did the most mind numbingly stupid things to get themselves into trouble. Naturally *those* were the ‘educational content’ shoehorned in to the half hour toy commercials to satisfy the FCC. Nevermind that many kids found the usually more subtle work with the adult characters less insulting to them.
These and some of the other 1980’s cartoons shilling toys definitely had some subtly deep layers to them, which the real life ‘watchdogs’ of childrens’ TV programming totally missed.
> the problem with Denethor’s rule as Steward of Gondor is presented as the result of arrogance and despair
The book doesn’t present much problem with Denethor’s rule. He’s emotionally distant from his son but his rule is wise and competent.
> Harry Potter’s story does nothing to interrogate the system that allowed Voldemort to come to power
If you’re talking about Chosen Ones, this seems like moving the goalposts. The story twists the whole Chosen One idea, and Voldemort isn’t some hereditary king, he’s a powerful charismatic asshole. Not like anyone has a perfect solution for those… granted, by any measure, the Wizarding World isn’t a particularly good system.
Non-male Chosen Ones:
* Jame of the Kencyrath. The character actually looks askance at the whole system; neither she nor her brother (the actual ‘king’) like it. But it’s literally divinely set up, there’s not much they can do other than be kind.
* Aerin, of Hero and the Crown. Her mother died of disappointment that she wasn’t a boy, maybe; the book is a “medieval” fantasy that comes very close to using the words “internalized sexism”.
* Puella Magi Madoka Magica: [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER]
* Daenerys Stormborn, of course. Speaking of which, I thought it plausible that GoT/SoIaF could have wandered in a more democratic direction. Dany is young, entitled, and idealistic; someone could have challenged her on the whole throne idea. Tyrion and Jon have experience with alternative forms of government (particularly in the books.) There’s an idea of Great Councils for succession disputes. I wouldn’t expect a Westerosi universal suffrage, but I could see a more constitutional monarchy being set up.
* Youko Nakajima of the Twelve Kingdoms. All the kings are Chosen, by divine kirin (or by god working through the kirin.) They don’t all work out. The system is questioned (you have to laugh when one of the kirins brings up democracy) but unassailable.
* Korra
* Bujold’s Ista. Though this goes both ways: gods choose, but the human has to acquiesce; mutual choice, though not always *informed* choice.
> I mean, is there even really a straight up example besides King Arthur?
Sure. In hereditary or re-incarnating power, you’ve got Jame, Aerin, the Avatar, Aragorn, Buffy, Ista of Chalion. In being literally Chosen, Youko, possibly Bilbo and Frodo.
> Could a Chosen One overhaul the system? Chosen specifically to overhaul the system?
Youko can’t overhaul the whole system, but as someone with modern sensibilities, she banned kowtowing in her kingdom.
Jame’s divine role is as the avatar of destruction; her job is breaking things that need to be broken. Series is ongoing.
@28:
I think the narrow view of the chosen one as a sci-fi/fantasy trope damages the idea. I could argue Huck Finn or Heidi is a chosen one.
“The chosen one” is inherently a sci-fi/fantasy trope because its basis is that there’s something special about this person that makes them literally the only person who can do the job. Because of his birthright, no-one but Arthur can pull the sword from the stone and become King. Because of <spoilers> no-one but Harry Potter can defeat Voldemort. Because only Superman has his powers, no-one else can be the world-changing hero he is (less so now the DC universe is so crowded).
Huck Finn and Heidi are great characters but they are not the only people who could fill their roles. Theoretically anyone could be as upbeat and positive as Heidi if they wanted to. What makes her special is that she’s the one person who decided to. To be a chosen one means literally no-one else could fill your role – and that pretty much requires SF or magic.
@35:
The thing about the Great Man stuff is that it is absolutely, completely, and in 2020 utterly undeniably, true that the actual individual decisions made by people in important roles are both important and not the result of faceless social pressures but of that particular person’s own personality and abilities. The individual is important.
Of course the individual is important. But what tends to be ignored or downplayed is: Why that particular individual at that particular time? It’s undeniable that, for example, Trump has had a major impact on history (let’s not discuss the nature of that impact, it’s besides the point). Why is he in the position to do that? Would 1960’s America have elected Trump? If not, then why did 2016 America? What was the difference between the two times that led to such different outcomes? The “Great Men of History” approach would focus almost entirely on who Trump was and what he did, and barely at all on why America ended up choosing someone like him as President.
@5:
I can’t decide if I enjoy these types of posts or not. On the one hand, they are thought provoking but on the other I find myself thinking that some of them ask a lot from authors.
I’m not an author or any type of creative person. I don’t know what the creative process is like but I think that stories will come to an author, or maybe it’s a character or a plot device or whatever. I don’t think it’s much like the scientific method, where you choose upfront what problem or issue you will tackle and then gather data or design experiments based on that.
So saying that authors rely on tropes and that they should question underlying power structures or whatever social issue today’s society is currently facing is asking for a lot and not necessarily from the right persons.
Speaking with all the authority of someone who (poorly) completed National Novel Writing Month a few times, an author is essentially two different people: (a) the creative one who comes up with all the cool ideas, and (b) the one who takes all those pieces and shapes them into a coherent story, cutting and tweaking where necessary. #b is essentially an editor. Few authors write a good novel on the first draft and, if they have any desire to be published, they have to be their own editors long before their work ever reaches a professional editor (if it ever does).
Stories absolutely can just come to an author. But they don’t generally come as a finished, polished story. I think you’d be surprised just how much thought and analysis and research and experimentation goes into turning plot ideas, images, cool scenes and settings into actual good novels. Authors put a lot of thought into their stories.
And absolutely some of the things they think about as part of turning inspiration into a finished page-turner are questions like “What themes do I want to address with this story? How can I bring those out better?”, “Do aspects of this story have any unfortunate implications that I didn’t intend?”, “Does this story rely on tropes that make it boring or predictable or awkward?”, “Does this bit make my story worse or better?”, etc.
Good novels don’t spring pure and fully-formed from an author’s head, they’re crafted over time by authors making the effort to ruthlessly question and revise every aspect of their novel until it’s as good as they can get it. Maybe it’s asking a lot of authors to suggest they should be considering things like the underlying power structures and themes of their story, and how people in the current social context are likely to read their work. But IMO it’s a moot point – the good authors are already doing that anyway because that’s part of writing the best novel they can.
The subversion that you all are writing are still Chosen Ones. Harry Potter is still a Chosen One. Paul Atreides is still a Chosen One. I rather prefer the path of The Postman – The Institution is more important than the One. Give me socialist heroes that believe in society!
@43
I immediately thought of the Dune series, and not just the first book. It’s an odd series, because it celebrates the chosen one mythos in the first book, and then totally tears it apart in the second (one of the reasons Dune Messiah isn’t as popular – hard to watch your heroes fail and fail hard).
I would also point out, Paul was not the only chosen one in the breeding program. We see his peer, and Herbert even gives the peer a chance to claim the title at the end, and he simply chooses not to. Two “chosen ones” per the breeding program, two different choices. (BTW – the peer was omitted from the Lynch film, and given a much smaller part in the SyFy series)
This is tangential to the discussion (though there are parallels), but when you mentioned the dangers of “weaponizing superpowers” I was immediately reminded of a comic called Uber which took the old Captain America World War Two superhero trope and effectively demolished it. In the story arc “Super-soldiers” don’t shorten or win the war, the prolong it and increase the body count exponentially. A very dark (and gruesome) story.
I may be coming to this a bit late, but it might be worth your time to also interrogate the idea of magic itself. I’ve always had this niggling feeling that, just as the chosen one trope reflects the abdication of political responsibility, bloodline magic or innate-talent magic serves almost as a modern charter myth to justify the ways of the world we live in.