Asterix and Obelix – the daddy of dynamic-duos
I was going through my old stuff, having a clear-out, and I came across a trove of Asterix books from my childhood. I loved reading their adventures then, and re-reading them I was struck anew by the exuberant timelessness of the stories and the excellence of the jokes. Then I had an epiphany. I realised I had based two of my own characters on the shrewd little Gaulish warrior and his menhir-toting best friend. I realised that Bjarki and Tor of the Fire Born series are, in fact, closely modelled on Obelix and Asterix.
I guess I am drawn naturally to double-acts. I had my gangster-ish Robin Hood paired with good-natured Alan Dale in the Outlaw Chronicles (FYI, I will be writing another one of those later this year); I had mildly autistic Holcroft Blood sharing the spotlight with his rascally father Thomas Blood in Blood’s Game, and to a lesser extent with Jack Churchill in the other two books in the Blood trilogy. (I’d like to write another one of those but I’m not sure there is enough demand for it). And my favourite historical novel series of all time is the peerless Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin naval adventures written by Patrick O’Brian.
So I like dynamic duos, or gruesome twosomes, if you prefer. What astonished me was how close Tor and Bjarki are to Asterix and Obelix. Tor is small, brave, clever and a terrific fighter, although not naturally endowed with great strength. She is Asterix. Bjarki is big, slow-witted (but not stupid!) and he has natural power as a berserkr (just as Obelix fell into the cauldron of magic potion as a baby!) I even have a Getafix character in Valtyr Far-Traveller. The only thing lacking is the jokes. I wish I had included more of them.
Having two stars works very well, I think. There is a school of thought that says you can only have one hero, but I disagree. Having two main characters gives a story a better texture, something can be happening to one character, some danger or some internal struggle, and the other character can be having a completely different experience. You get two perspectives on the plot. Stories with just one main character can sometimes seem a bit one-dimensional. In a dynamic duo, you also get dialogue between two people who know each other very well, which is nice and cosy, and it is genuinely distressing when they have an argument. It’s like a marriage, in a way, although I have never written a book in which the two heroes have a sexual relationship with each other. Perhaps I should give it a try. FYI, there is a minor romantic storyline in King of the North (Fire Born 4, above) but the romance is not between Bjarki and Tor, for obvious reasons.
Bjarki and Tor work very well as brother and sister, but they are also united by their attitudes to duty and honour, and since both are skilled warriors, there is an extra professional bond there. There is a long tradition of writing about the relationship between two men: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson; Aubrey and Maturin, Batman and Robin and it is the modern fashion to ascribe to these relationship a homoerotic element, but I don’t think this is necessarily the case. (OK, maybe Batman and Robin.) I think what is occurring between the two heroes is love. Non-sexual, brotherly, platonic love. And I don’t think the relationship is any more sexual than the love between a doting mother and her offspring. I am very relieved that nobody has ever suggested that Asterix and Obelix were anything more than good friends.
In other news . . .
I have now published all five episodes of my King Arthur fantasy story The Broken Kingdom, which are available on Amazon as eBooks for just 99p. If you don’t know the story, and are curious about it, start with Episode One: Arthur’s Bane (cover below). The final one is Episode Five: Arthur’s Battle. (No dynamic duos in this story – the novel follows the lives of young British warrior Arthur, his half-sister Morgan, his mother Igraine, Merlin, Redwulf the Saxon, and an evil sorceress called the Soothsayer.) I am thinking of publishing the whole thing later this summer as a paperback, and as an eBook, under the same title – The Broken Kingdom – but labelled “All Episodes”. Keep an eye out for that, if you don’t want to read the story in five short 99p eBook chunks.
The latest Bjarki and Tor adventure is King of the North (Fire Born 4) but if you don’t know that series, start with The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1). Blood of the Bear (Fire Born 5) will be out in October.
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