A Parody Fantasy Epic

Emperor Vergeron has been designated as the "villain" in a fantasy epic and knows it. What aggravates him to no end is that his arch-nemesis Caleb the Star-touched and his allies have been designated as the "heroes". This despite the fact that Caleb himself is a spoiled brat who sees the world as his own personal playground and anyone who won't do things [U]his[U] way as vile and treacherous obstacles in the way of his glorious destiny while the rest of his cohorts either too blinded by religious belief to notice the dark side to their "chosen one", know the truth but are so opportunistic they don't care as long as there they gain something from his rise to power, or know the truth but have fatalistically given in to the inevitable however much they dislike it.

Meanwhile the reign of Vergeron been a golden age compared to the old order his predecessors crushed and which the religious zealots who gather around Caleb seek to revive.But none of that matters, because Caleb is the "hero", and the "hero" always wins. That is how the Storyteller tells it, and that is how it shall be. But no matter what, Emperor Vergeron is not going to let that victory come easy. He and those still loyal to him are going to make those star-touched fools have to struggle for every territory they manage to take while he curses the Storyteller the whole time. Because in the end, that is all he can do.

That is what I have so far in terms of an idea. What do you think?

edited 6th Apr '12 8:04:28 AM by goldenerasuburb

What are you going to do that hasn't been done in any of the other fantasy parodies out there?

Having not seen any fantasy parody that riffed off of how the "evil" overlord is often really not so evil and the "hero" is really anything but, I figured that was original enough a take. Taking the whole notion that the "good guy always wins" notion and playing it for tragicomedy (the good guy is - again - anything but yet will inevitably triumph over the villain no matter how much good he does and no matter hard he tries to defy fate) also adds points for originality as far as I know. Am I mistaken?

So you're parodying, what, Eragon? What about Sword Of Truth and Wheel Of Time? There's a great deal of material to milk from those, like the author trying to force their point of view about how communism is bad, BDSM is bad, etc.

Here's some criticisms/comparisons to get you started:

• http://www.members.tripod.com/~sotiscrap/
• http://www.members.tripod.com/~wotiscrap/
• http://www.angelfire.com/wizard2/comparisonsite/

edited 7th Apr '12 6:37:31 PM by Zenoseiya

I don't even read much parody or epic fantasy work but just off the top of my head I can say that Terry Pratchett and Michael Gerber have both used a similar idea of the designated hero figure not being very heroic and the designated villain figure not being a bad guy, although they both used it in a slightly more complicated way than simply 'a good guy is the villain and a bad guy is the hero but the hero always wins anyway', which comes across as rather simplistic.

Your idea reminds me of The Sword of Good, although that is a serious work.