Asterix and Obelix: the original dynamic duo
As a seasoned author with 22 novels under my belt, I realise that I have some patterns the I repeat when I’m creating a series. One of these is that I invent pairs of heroes. Almost all my books have two main characters, rather than a single protagonist. And today I was wondering why I continually do this.
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 the Viking heroes of my Fire Born series are, in fact, quite unconsciously 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 publishing another of those this summer to follow on from Robin Hood and the Heretic Prince); I had mildly autistic Holcroft Blood sharing the spotlight with his rascally father Thomas Blood in Blood’s Game. 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 guess I like dynamic-duos, or gruesome twosomes, if you prefer. What astonished me – I really did not know I was doing this – was how similar 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, almost magical 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 heroes works very well, I think. There is a school of thought that says you can only have one – a protagonist – but I disagree. Is Jack Aubrey the hero or his friend Stephen Maturin? Neither. Both. Their friendship is the real star of the show. Having two main characters gives a story more 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 to write 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 will give it a try in some future novel. Probably not. I’ll likely stick to my double acts.
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. I played a little trick on my readers in The Last Berserker (warning: Spoiler coming at you), in which I hinted that Bjarki and Tor might have a sexual relationship at some point, before ruling this out with the revelation that they have the same berserkr father. My apologies to those of you who were expecting a love story!
There is a long tradition of writing about the relationship between two men: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Aubrey and Maturin, Frodo and Sam, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, even Batman and Robin . . . and it is the tiresome modern fashion to ascribe to these close male relationships a homoerotic element, which I don’t think is necessarily the case. (OK, I’ll give you Batman and Robin.)
I think what is occurring between the two heroes is love. Non-sexual, brotherly, platonic love. And that bond, I think, is something to celebrate. I don’t believe the relationship between any of my pairs of heroes is any more erotic than the love between a doting mother and her baby. And I am very relieved that nobody has ever suggested that Asterix and Obelix were anything more than good friends.
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