Fantasy Race
June 2023 | by Dani
Essays | Writing | Worldbuilding
In high fantasy, we have this idea of a peculiar little thing called "race". We don't use the term in the same way as in the real world, we're instead talking about Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and any other more original races that authors come up with.
In this post, I'd like to explore what fantasy race is, looking at both its history in the fantasy genre, and its real world "counterpart" — ultimately to try and figure out how we should present race in fantasy.
Heads-up: This post was born out of a pet interest I had a while back, and it isn't the most well-researched or academic. It's just some ideas that have been floating around in my head that I would like to put to paper.
Race in Fantasy
Before Tolkien, before George MacDonald, and before the Brothers Grimm, we didn't have the genre of fantasy. What we had was folktales — stories not told by any singular author, but instead passed down through oral traditions; stories which are intimately linked with religious beliefs and cultural practices.
In folklore, there aren't fantasy races. There are spirits: Fairies, Yōkai, Jinn, Nymphs, Yakshas, Angels, Demons, and so on. These spirits aren't parallel civilisations to humanity; they're beings that comprise entirely separate cosmological groups. They're not seen as people, but more so as things that are to be, in some cases, revered, and in others, feared.
In the Renaissance, folktales began to be written down. There were collectors like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, and that's not to mention the other writers who adapted the style of folklore to spin their own tales. Through them, a new genre was born — the literary fairy tale — a genre which later writers like George MacDonald expanded into the genre of fantasy.
But race as it is found in modern fantasy didn't really begin until Tolkien. Earlier writers still talked of elves and fairies as spirits, but Tolkien took those spirits and slotted them into his world as parallel societies. They still have different fundamental natures to humanity — Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves are connected to nature and divinity in a way that Humans are not — but he also gives them unique societies, languages, and cultures.
Tolkien's works use the term "race" to refer to this combination of cosmological nature and societal culture — and by being the prototypical example of high fantasy, they set the precedent still used in almost all works of the genre today.
Race in the Real World
I find problems in how Tolkien writes his fantasy races, and to frame this, I'd like to look at it in context of what "race" means in the real world, to highlight how fantasy race is different. I am, by no means, qualified to explore this topic, and so I am leaving out a lot of depth here.
At its simplest, race, in the real world, is a category of people created based on perceived physical qualities, such as skin tone, eye shape, or facial structure. These are features which, on a biological level, have no significant impact on people's lives. They're as inconsequential as hair or eye colour is.
However, there is no doubt a cultural significance applied to these perceived qualities. This significance is constructed, often for some purpose. In the best cases, it's to allow people to create identities for themselves and find a sense of belonging amongst their peers. In the worst cases, it's to let people exclude and categorise others. To vilify, control, and justify killing and stealing from them.
The other consequence of race being culturally constructed is that different people will understand it differently; they'll categorise people differently, and see different traits as being typical of a particular race. How one person understands race is necessarily different to how people from other cultures will understand it.
Returning to fantasy, there are two ways the Tolkienian style of fantasy races are significantly different from this.
Firstly, Tolkien's different races actually are of different natures to Humans, both biologically and cosmologically. Elves live thousands of years and grow wise in their old age. They have a connection to magic and divinity, and cannot survive without it.
Secondly, Tolkien's races aren't portrayed as culturally constructed. He doesn't discuss how different people understand race, or why and how it's constructed as it is in the first place. Race is instead created and presented by him, the author. Race is almost god-appointed; impressed upon Middle Earth by a divine creator. Tolkien's races aren't quite spirits, but they aren't quite people, either.
How Should We Present Race?
With this in mind, fantasy races feel a bit iffy, to me, at least. I don't want to write fantasy race, which shares a name with the real world construct, as being other than culturally constructed.
The obvious solution to this dilemma is to cut off that comparison. Change the name; you can call it "species" and be done with it. This has been done in the past, and like, I guess it works. It's fine. But to me, it still feels icky to talk about different people having different natures, even if we choose to call them different species. Unless they're completely alien to the human experience, they still appear as people. [Note] The polar opposite to this approach is to write fantasy race as analogous to the real world social construct, and abandon the idea of having races be biologically different. I dislike this, because it cuts us off from some interesting worldbuilding opportunities. Tolkien's Elves aren't like people, sure, but that means he can look at the ways they're different. He can explore how they are immortally tied to magic, and what that means, how that does affect people's lives. If fantasy races didn't affect people's lives, why have fantasy races at all?
So, in my worldbuilding, instead of disconnecting race from culture, I instead emphasise that it is culturally constructed, or at least culturally influenced. The main idea is to only ever describe race in the fiction as it is perceived by the people of the fiction. There is no god-appointed authorial description of race, only the mudded cultural perceptions of it.
In my worldbuilding project, Ittoril, I have four main "races": Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs. Together, I describe these as a single biological species, but the individual groups are constructions of culture. Of one culture in particular; that of the Leonid Empire. The Leonids use "Elf" as a term of reverence to describe the people of the seafaring nation that used to live on the Meridán. Leonids will brag about any slight Elven ancestry they might have to assert their superiority over other groups, calling themselves "Half-Elves" even when in most cases, the vast majority of their ancestors would've been thought of as Humans.
With this method, I can still have and explore biological differences, but only insofar as people in the world conceive of them — I portray these differences as culturally invented, or, when that's not possible, I maintain that the significance of those differences has to be culturally interpreted; Elves in Ittoril have demonstrably longer lifespans than Humans, but while The Leonids interpret this as making them glorious and powerful beyond the other races, other groups completely disagree.
And, at least for me and for my worldbuilding, I find this a better, more meaningful way to construct fantasy races, rather than just calling them "species". [Note] Tabletop RPGs further complicate the issue, because race also serves a game design purpose, in that it allows players to better understand the world and integrate their characters into it. It doesn't help that TTRPGs are derived from wargames, which require all things to be reducible to numbers and categories, including race. I think the best solution to this is to do something like what Pathfinder 2nd Edition does; combining species and race into "ancestry", which retains the benefits of being quickly picked up by new players, while also only giving suggestions of characteristics; never having it be absolute or fundamental.
But like I said before, this isn't at all an academic essay, and I, frankly, don't really know what I'm talking about. You don't have to pay mind to any of what I'm saying; you can live your life how you want, and you can write your own silly little make-believe elves however the hell you want.