Medievalism and Identity in Skyrim
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Fantasies of the North: Medievalism and Identity in Skyrim Victoria Elizabeth Cooper Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English June 2016 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Victoria Elizabeth Cooper to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Victoria Elizabeth Cooper ii Acknowledgements I must express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisors, Dr Alaric Hall and Dr Andrew Warnes. I am indebted to them for their wisdom, support, and unwavering energy and enthusiasm in helping me bring this project to fruition. I would also like to thank my examiners, Andrew Elliot and Emilia Jamroziak for their valuable advice during the examination process. I have been privileged to have been part of several excellent research communities here at Leeds. I am very grateful to have been a member of the community of medievalists at the Institute for Medieval Studies, and for the encouragement, support, and the many opportunities offered to me by the IMS. I’d like to express my gratitude to the School of English for providing me with an environment in which to develop this project, and especially to the staff who have pushed me to become a better scholar and teacher. Although the saga material ultimately didn’t make it into the thesis, I’d like to thank the members of the Old Norse Reading Group and Icelandic Conversation Group for helping me develop my language skills over tea and biscuits. This project bears the marks of many friends and colleagues who have influenced the thesis and shaped my thinking in various ways. In particular I’d like to thank Helen Price, Rose Sawyer, Kit Heyam, Katherine Miller, and Mary Poellinger for their support and shared love of medievalism in its many forms; Edward Powell and Kenny Parsons for helpful conversations, ideas, and game recommendations; the wonderful friends from various gaming communities who have inspired me, especially Lawrence Cooper for all the awful jokes and cheerleading, and Jeffrey Freij; the anonymous participants who gave their time to complete my player survey; Paul Sturtevant for the thought-provoking discussions on medievalism as well as excellent advice and friendship over the years; N. Kıvılcım Yavuz for always knowing what to do; and the denizens of Le Patourel Room whose solidarity and camaraderie made the process so much more fun. I would have been unable to embark upon this project without the generous support of my family. I would like to express my gratitude to my parents for their generosity and encouragement of my academic pursuits, and also for giving me my iii first computer game twenty-five years ago (and many since). Mum and Dad: you only have yourselves to blame. My sister, Emma, also deserves much praise for the endless supply of reassurance and laughter. Finally, I am extremely grateful to my partner, James Hill. His encouragement, challenges and critiques have been very important to the completion and final shape of this project. The writing-up process would not have been the same without his compassion, humour, and the many cups of tea. iv Abstract The primary text of this thesis is Skyrim, a fantasy roleplaying game released in 2011 to huge commercial success and critical acclaim. Through this text, the project explores the intersection of medievalist fantasy, politics, and whiteness. It investigates the parallels between political medievalisms, playful medievalisms, and the ways in which medieval fantasy is used to reinvent or reaffirm white identities. The Middle Ages, as a time period, an imagined geographic space, and an ideological concept, is often nostalgically recalled as a key element in Western nationalism and identity formation. Skyrim provides a major case study through which to interrogate the tropes of medieval fantasy in order to understand how the genre situates itself as a space of creativity and resistance, but in fact maintains conservative social values. Furthermore, it asks how players engage in identity play in medieval fantasy games, and to what extent Skyrim’s politics encourage discussion and reflection. This thesis is highly interdisciplinary in its form and utilises multiple methodologies to explore the construction of the self and the other through medievalism in fantasy. Traditional humanities methods are combined with a survey of players’ narrative choices and modes of identification with characters and factions within Skyrim, as well as analysis of ‘gamer’-activism in popular politics. Ultimately, although the games explored are established to be highly conservative in their modes of racial representation, the thesis finds that players are actively engaged in identity play. Although this is limited in many ways by game design—especially where medieval fantasy genre conventions are heeded—the potential for game worlds to destabilise racial boundaries and provide a space for identity play is acknowledged, opening up several avenues for further research in the fields of enquiry. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... iii Abstract ............................................................................................................ v Table of Contents ........................................................................................... vi Chapter 1 Introduction: Games and Medievalism ....................................... 1 The Significance of Games ...................................................................... 4 Medieval Fantasy ................................................................................... 11 Methodology .......................................................................................... 13 Survey: Design .............................................................................. 15 Project Outline ........................................................................................ 18 Chapter 2 ‘Realistic Fantasy’ ....................................................................... 22 Establishing Realism .............................................................................. 22 World-building: Spatial Narratives ............................................... 25 World-building: Technical Factors ............................................... 27 Cartography ............................................................................................ 31 Culture and Ideology .............................................................................. 38 Chapter 3 Neomedievalism and The Politics of Medieval Fantasy .......... 52 All fantasy is political ............................................................................ 52 Gamers are dead ..................................................................................... 56 Defining Neomedievalism ...................................................................... 63 Neomedievalism in Art ................................................................. 63 Neomedievalism in International Relations .................................. 67 Relation to Neomedievalism in Games ......................................... 70 Skyrim: Reflections on World Politics................................................... 73 Chapter 4 Race and Identity Play ................................................................ 88 Race in the Fantasy Genre ...................................................................... 89 Current Models of Race in Gaming ....................................................... 92 Problems with Race - Case study: The Khajiit .................................... 101 Freedom Fighters .................................................................................. 109 Playing with Race ................................................................................. 115 Chapter 5 Whiteness ................................................................................... 124 Defining Whiteness .............................................................................. 124 White Bodies ........................................................................................ 126 Character Creation ....................................................................... 126 vi White Readers .......................................................................................137 White Female NPCs ..............................................................................141 Women in Power ..........................................................................144 Masculinity and White Myths ...............................................................154 White masculinity ........................................................................154 White Masculinity: Ulfric ............................................................161 Conclusion .....................................................................................................165 Reflections.............................................................................................169 Appendix 1: Quantitative Results ...............................................................174