History Fridge / Earthsea

* Continuing on with the "Merlin" example and firmly cenmenting it in-story, in "The Farthest Shore", Ged meets a young prince, Arren, from the isle of Enlad. At the beginning of the book, the wizards' council speculates that the world is going wrong because the prophesied High King of Earthsea has not come to rule, and while Ged agrees, he refuses to stay on Rome, and leaves to search out the cause of the loss of magic, taking Arren with him. All through the quest, Ged is Arren's teacher and mentor through the world and its people, and at the end, after Ged has sacrificed his power to restore magic, the High King is revealed to be Arren. The in-universe translation of "Arren" is "sword" -- as in '''King Arthur's sword, Excalibur''', and "Enlad" is "England" with the g and an n removed, making "The Farthest Shore" a stealth homage to T.H. White's Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing.

* Continuing on with the "Merlin" example and firmly cenmenting it in-story, in "The Farthest Shore", Ged meets a young prince, Arren, from the isle of Enlad. At the beginning of the book, the wizards' council speculates that the world is going wrong because the prophesied High King of Earthsea has not come to rule, and while Ged agrees, he refuses to stay on Rome, and leaves to search out the cause of the loss of magic, taking Arren with him. All through the quest, Ged is Arren's teacher and mentor through the world and its people, and at the end, after Ged has sacrificed his power to restore magic, the High King is revealed to be Arren. The in-universe translation of "Arren" is "sword" -- as in 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur', and "Enlad" is "England" with the g and an n removed, making "The Farthest Shore" a stealth homage to T.H. White's Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing.

* Continuing on with the "Merlin" example and firmly cenmenting it in-story, in "The Farthest Shore", Ged meets a young prince, Arren, from the isle of Enlad. At the beginning of the book, the wizards' council speculates that the world is going wrong because the prophesied High King of Earthsea has not come to rule, and while Ged agrees, he refuses to stay on Rome, and leaves to search out the cause of the loss of magic, taking Arren with him. All through the quest, Ged is Arren's teacher and mentor through the world and its people, and at the end, after Ged has sacrificed his power to restore magic, the High King is revealed to be Arren. The in-universe translation of "Arren" is "sword" -- as in *King Arthur's sword, Excalibur*, and "Enlad" is "England" with the g and an n removed, making "The Farthest Shore" a stealth homage to T.H. White's Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing.

* While I'm not repelled by its political views, I agree with those on this site that look at ''[[TrilogyCreep Tehanu]]'' as CanonDisContinuity compared to the original trilogy. However, it recently occurred to me that given that she was the one who described the "Mrs. Brown problem" in the Website/TurkeyCityLexicon (you can read her essay on this in ''The Language of the Night''), Le Guin may have had a subtler message than extreme feminism. In a typical fantasy book (which the first three ''Earthsea'' novels kind of are), protagonists have magic powers or are otherwise special. Middle-aged housewife Tenar and de-powered Ged are out-of-the-loop in this respect, and the book can be seen in this way as a {{Deconstruction}} of how a fantasy world is for the "little people." --@/{{Jordan}}

* While I'm not repelled by its political views, I agree with those on this site that look at ''[[TrilogyCreep Tehanu]]'' as CanonDisContinuity compared to the original trilogy. However, it recently occurred to me that given that she was the one who described the "Mrs. Brown problem" in the Website/TurkeyCityLexicon, Le Guin may have had a subtler message than extreme feminism. In a typical fantasy book (which the first three ''Earthsea'' novels kind of are), protagonists have magic powers or are otherwise special. Middle-aged housewife Tenar and de-powered Ged are out-of-the-loop in this respect, and the book can be seen in this way as a {{Deconstruction}} of how a fantasy world is for the "little people." --@/{{Jordan}}