Twelve Kingdoms: The Hero Cycle Plus The Kirin or Taiho

Kate: Twelve Kingdoms novels certainly meet Campbell’s criteria for the hero cycle. The hero/heroine collects helpers throughout the journey. Yet in Poseidon, the Taiho and his emperor stand out as almost bewilderingly prepared to forge on alone—sans helpers (and in disguise). Are they deliberately unique, the exception that proves the rule?

Eugene: In Poseidon of the East, Ono leverages the universality of the heroic journey by taking the hero and his helper halfway around the cycle. Shouryuu essentially ends up at the bottom, having lost everything in Japan and being offered a ruined kingdom as the reward. However, knowing where they end up, we can take the second half of the cycle as a given.

My favorite line:

Do you want a kingdom of your own?

I see this narrative structure as a variation on the monomyth that could be defined as its own genre. The Scooby Gang still gets together, but the dramatic arc emphasizes the protagonist leaving his past behind and embracing an uncertain future. I'd place Casablanca in this category. Rick loses the girl but gains a partner and a renewed sense of purpose

At its heart, it's an origins story, with the option of leaving the second half of the heroic journey until later. In Shadow of the Moon, Youko completes the journey, but the first half of the story is about letting go of the past. The Wings of Dreams takes a more conventional approach. Like Luke Skywalker, once the journey begins, Shushou doesn't look back. 

 

Taiki walks the toughest road in the Twelve Kingdoms. Both The Demon Child and The Shore in Twilight leave him at the bottom of the cycle. The story structure could be compared in several ways to Poseidon of the East, only spanning four separate novels.

In The Demon Child, with his shirei wreaking havoc in his home town, Taiki realizes he can no longer stay in Japan. The story ends with him waiting on the shore for Shouryuu to take him to Kei. The Shore in Twilight encompasses the events before and after The Demon Child and concludes with Taiki returning to Tai with Risai to face a precarious future.

This time, the reader has no idea how the journey will end. That resolution doesn't arrive until Hills of Silver Ruins.

Kate: The Kizan/Kirin seem to be rather like Shakespeare’s court jesters—the oddballs who are allowed to speak “truth to power.” 

It is never stated but it is implied that the kirin’s personality may have something to do with who gets chosen as emperor/empress for a kingdom. So the kirin for Kei has a tendency to pick self-effacing women, which is a mistake with the previous empress but a goldmine with Youko. The kirin of En has a penchant for rogues/outside-the-box thinkers. The kirin of Sai is completely taken in by the idealism of the emperor who eventually abdicates.

Is this possibility (kirin’s personality=choice) ever addressed? Is it a chicken-egg issue? Kirin speaks the Divine Will, and the Divine Will wishes a certain kingdom to have a certain type of leader, so the kirin who is born is the kind of kirin who will chose that type of person; however, should the chosen emperor/empress fail to live up to the Divine Will, either mutual death ensues or the kirin has to start over and do better the next time?

Eugene: It depends on the kirin. I've been struck as well by the idea that a kirin tends to pick a particular kind of emperor or empress. Keiki essentially kept marrying the same woman until he found Youko. Hills of Silver Ruins goes into this in greater depth. Heaven is doing the nudging, but Taiki takes it upon himself to see how far he can push back against those nudges, as does Rousan, who turns into a kind of Q character (with the immortality but not the omnipotence). She can't resist experimenting with the limits and conditions that Heaven imposes.

Taiki discovers that he can ignore those nudges, even when they are as subtle as a punch in the nose. Of course, if he goes too far, he'll get the shitsudou and die. Up to that point, aside from violating the Prime Directive, kirin and emperors have a considerable amount of leeway.

The kirin is the province lord (governor) of the capital province, and as such, commander of the Provincial Guard of that province, which constitutes half of the Imperial Army. 

Again, what the kirin actually does depends on his personality. Keiki is very hands on, a Gladstone to Youko's Victoria. Enki, on the other hand, delegates most of his responsibilities, as does Shouryuu. Enki seems more interested in running the equivalent of MI6, while Taiki spends much of Hills of Silvers Ruins taking back his political powers as province lord.

Gladstone was known as "The People's William" because of his popularity amongst the working class. The kirin are by nature said to represent the commoners, something Taiki is well-nigh obsessed with.