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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8340164" data-attributes="member: 42582">From The Phoenix on the Sword:"When I overthrew the old dynasty," he [ie Conan] continued . . . "it was easy enough. . . "When I overthrew Numedides, then I was the Liberator - now they spit at my shadow. They have put a statue of that swine in the temple of Mitra, and people go and wail before it, hailing it as the holy effigy of a saintly monarch who was done to death by a red-handed barbarian. When I led her armies to victory as a mercenary, Aquilonia overlooked the fact that I was a foreigner, but now she can not forgive me. "Now in Mitra's temple there come to burn incense to Numedide's memory, men whom his hangmen maimed and blinded, men whose sons died in his dungeons, whose wives and daughters were dragged into his seraglio. The fickle fools!"And from The Scarlet Citadel:The streets of Tamar swarmed with howling mobs . . . The barons had deserted the royal capital, galloping away to secure their castles against marauding neighbours. The well-knit kingdom Conan had built up seemed tottering on the edge of dissolution, and commoners and merchants trembled at the imminence of a return of the feudalistic regime. The people howled for a king to protect them against their own aristocracy no less than foreign foes. I don't think that the texts bear out the notion that Conan is indifferent to the suffering of the common people. I think The Hour of the Dragon would reinforce this. What makes it S&S rather than political melodrama is the cause of King Conan's problems. In The Phoenix on the Sword, Prospero begins by blaming the poet Rinaldo, who "sings songs that make men mad"; but Conan responds that "thre is something hidden, some undercurrent of which we are not aware". Of course that is Thoth-amon. In the Scarlet Citadel, the ultimate threat is not the armies of Ophir or Koth but Tsotha-lanti. And in The Hour of the Dragon its Xaltotun. We can see (some of) the difference between REH's Conan and LotR in the relationships between politics and evil wizardry. In JRRT's work, victory over Sauron means re-establishing the rightful king and feudal regime. Establishing Faramir as a vassal of Aragorn in Ithilien is a good thing. Whereas in Conan, feudalism is caused by dark magic (and Stygia, which is REH's version of an "ancient and mysterious land", we have even darker magic giving us even less desirable and less modern forms of goverment) and defeating the evil wizards is a victory for individual will against social conformity.</blockquote>

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