A fantasy novel about assassins is the last place I’d expect to find a meditation on parenthood. After all, there’s a great gap between raising a kid and knifing people in the dark. But if R. J. Barker’s novel Age of Assassins has taught me anything, it’s to expect the unexpected.
Won’t Someone Think of the Kids?
From the start, the emotional heart of Age of Assassins lies with two characters – Girton Club-foot, teenage apprentice assassin, and his master, Merela Karn. Merela is a brutal killer, a skilled athlete, and the closest thing Girton has to a mum. Though she struggles to express it, she clearly loves Girton, and he loves her. Their affection, where it comes from and how it’s developed, shines through in their interactions and the flashbacks to their past. It creates a beautiful balance to the brutality and cold politics that are the book’s other main emotional tones.
But this isn’t the only parental relationship in the book. Its plot is driven by the desire of a mother, the queen, to protect her son. There are illegitimate heirs, distant parents, and other family members standing in for parents, all common features of feudal society. There’s a squire master who, like many a teacher, winds up in loco parentis, filling certain parental duties as befits his post. And, as the story unfolds, we see other adults with the power over children that a parent has, but with far less of their affection or care.
Parenting – It’s Complicated
In the modern world, it’s no big revelation to say that parenting isn’t one size fits all. Every family is different. There might be foster parents, adoptive parents, grandparents filling a parental role. A parent’s partner might take on some of the features of a parent, then move on when the relationship ends. Meanwhile, teachers, care workers, nannies, babysitters, play supervisors, and other adults take on responsibility and care for kids as appropriate to their role.
The way people parent varies hugely. No two sets of parents I know approach the role in the same way. Hell, even within couples there are always differences, because what suits one parent won’t always suit the other.
Despite what certain reactionaries might tell you, this diverse, fractured view of parenting isn’t part of the moral breakdown of society. It isn’t even new. Parenting varies with nation, culture, and point in history. It’s never just one thing. And the complicated ways it worked in Europe’s feudal past are there on the page in Barker’s world, from the heirs raised in different families to the relationship of master and apprentice.
Feudality and Parenthood
Medieval Europe was a famously hierarchical place. The hierarchies it handed down to us, and which shaped European society until very recently, tried to pin everyone in their place, strictly differentiated by class.
Yet the reality, especially in the post-Roman era on which Age of Assassins is modelled, was far more mercurial. “Great” men, noble houses, and entire kingdoms rose and fell. Neither monarchical power nor the inheritance of kingship was as fixed as we imagine it to be. As the conflict for control of England in 1066 showed, the “rules” of aristocratic and monarchical power, along with its supposedly rigid patriarchal structure, have always been open to change.
This is the sort of politics seen in Age of Assassins, one where a variable political hierarchy reflects a variable family one.
Parenting Over Time
Another way in which Age of Assassins complicates parenthood is its portrayal of Girton growing up. We see flashbacks to his evolving relationship with Merela. We also see their relationship changing in the present, as his growth into adulthood and revelations about his identity transform him. If one person in a relationship changes, the relationship cannot stay the same.
We see how, for any parent, the meaning of parenthood changes over time. This extends beyond Girton and Merela to the changing dynamics of other parental relationships in the book.
Parenthood as a Public Thing
Inevitably, in a book centred around hereditary power, Age of Assassins touches on parenting not just as a varying institution but as a public one.
Family relationships can be among the most intimate and secretive in our lives. But they also have a public face, and that matters. The way we define parenthood defines our society. It can expand or limit people’s options, as seen in characters in the book seeking to inherit power through their parental lines. It can shape our moral values and sense of community. Its interactions with other institutions, from government to economics to culture, affect how they all work.
Age of Assassins is a fantastic mystery thriller. But, as an accidentally wise man once said, stuff can do two things. In among the murder and betrayal, you can find a story that shows the complexity, the importance, and above all the saving beauty of family.
