On magic, power and inheritance in fantasy
I find it interesting that fantasy fiction of all kinds tends to have something of a focus upon people who are born with, or inherit special powers that set them apart from the rest of humanity. This usually simultaneously sets them up as special, and powerful, while also marking them as 'different'. Where they go with this depends on the story.
Some stories simply use this as a chance to show an ordinary person discovering that they are in fact part of a powerful elite group, like the classic 'farmboy becomes king' hero's journey archetype. On the other end of things, you get the kind of story where all the protagonist wants to be is 'normal', and suffers due to their difference from others. In more extreme variants of this, their special powers mark them as a target for dehumanising levels of discrimination, and their 'special powers' are subject to prejudice vaguely along the lines of real life bigotry. Moreover, these powers will, in such formulations, often come at a cost- the powers may be dangerous to those around them, giving some justification for that bigotry against them. Â
Yet, it's interesting that there's no such thing as anything even vaguely analogous to this in real life. There are no talents or skills or abilities that only select potions of the human population inherit among themselves. The powerful elite are not powerful because they have greater skill in any capacity whatsoever and where social status is inherited, the variability of human nature means that even if a great leader shapes their offspring for leadership their entire lives there is no guarantee they will lead with anything like the same aptitude.
On the other end of things, there are no groups who are discriminated against because they are inherently more powerful and/or more dangerous than any other. The situation of a legitimately dangerous group of people with, say, uncontrollable violent powers, or a need to sustain themselves on human blood, is obviously not analogous to any kind of real life group subjected to discrimination and bigotry.
This may overall seem like an obvious point- fantasy is not like reality- but I just find it interesting to reflect upon the ways in which we keep returning to ideas of inherited 'special powers' and creating fantasy elites and marginalised special groups in stories, when this has no real reflection in how real human abilities or real human discrimination have tended to work.
There is nothing that an average human being, given fairly ordinary capacities, couldn't learn to do if given sufficient training. Supposing there was magic in a society, it seems to me to make more logical sense that there would be the APPEARANCE that only an elite could practice it, because only they had the means to access the extensive training, with the occasional self-taught exceptional student from outside the wealthy elite serving as 'the exception that proves the rule'. Supposing there were small groups of people with dangerous powers, logically it seems likely that they would be saught after and used within power struggles, not simply shunned and witchhunted to near-extinction. Some would indeed seek to quash it as a threat to their power, but others would pursue the advantages it brought, and that's not even getting into the potential for the group themselves to establish their own power. Â I'm sure some stories do take more of the latter approach I mention, especially with the special group becoming potentially exploited for their powers, but I do think it's an area with some untapped potential and under-examined implications.
