Zenobia vs Zareta

A response to Zareta, Igraine & Zenobia - Three Great Loves of Fantasy - A Comparison

This is a response to Zareta, Igraine & Zenobia - Three Great Loves of Fantasy - A Comparison, by

The Brothers Krynn

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beautiful woman portrait long black hair black eyes

Okay, I also prefer Zenobia.

Zenobia "at once confesses her love for Conan". This is not exactly true, although it does occur very soon, and this matters from my point of view.

I had the preconception going in, which I admit was WRONG, that Zenobia was a weak, fearful woman whose only role was to be the sexy eye candy for Conan (and by extension, for the male audience) and drop in required plot items to get Conan from plot point A to plot point B.

The initial introduction of Zenobia did not, in fact, counter my expectation. She is constantly described, not just in terms of her beauty, but also in terms of those aspects of her beauty most easily connected with weakness: she is slender, slim, supple, lithe. She is wearing very little. And Howard consistently uses words for her connected with fear: she trembles, catches her breath in fright, tears sparkle on her long dark lashes. It struck me as a soft porn version of the useless woman needing rescuing.

But that’s not what it was.

Courage is not the absence of fear. And she does not fight like a man, who needs to hide his fear from the enemy. Then her confession of love started with a refutal of what my original impression of her was: "... I am no painted toy;..." Because that was exactly how I was looking at her. And she declares her love because she must, not to trigger his protective instincts. He will not trust her otherwise, and without his trust she cannot save him.

Because actually, it is she who must rescue him. Zareta will need much rescuing, but Conan will not rescue Zenobia until the end of the book, by taking her from Tarascus, who was never aware of the jewel in his seraglio in the first place.

And how does she rescue him? She breaks him out of his prison, and gives him the means to fight and escape. And she knows exactly what he needs to fight and escape: knowledge; a poniard, not a stiletto; and a battle horse. She doesn’t physically fight for him. She gives him the means to fight for himself. And we see that even when terrified, she is able to keep her wits about her.

But how is it that a woman whose entire job is to be beautiful in a powerful man’s seraglio knows anything about weapons and horses?

King Nimed, and then later King Tarascus didn't bother to bed her, despite her beauty, so I think she was a political gift and not an actual choice of either King. This could very well imply that she was born, or became, a slave very early in her life. And that she was kept from the King either through the jealousy of a Queen or seraglio politics. She strikes me as a woman who has been marginalized by other women. Not as a woman trying to avoid the King.

She knows the palace, she knows the politics, she knows what a warrior needs to escape. Because under weak and venal kings, relegated to last place by the women in the palace, these are things she needs to know to survive.

Zareta is actually less well explained than Zenobia. I knew nothing about Igraine, but if Zareta is based on Igraine, it sounds like Igraine could be a better founded version of Zareta. I did very much like the scene where Zareta makes clear to Kull that consent from a slave girl cannot be assumed simply by her acquiescence. That is exactly one of the (many) problems with slavery – it makes true consent, while not totally impossible, very equivocal and difficult to determine.

However, especially during the middle part of the movie, during Zareta's travels with Kull, my main thought was "Why is she there in the first place?" He had already rescued her, and while the plot did turn out to need her with him later, we didn't know that at the time. The fighting or help she provided was not something that his other friends / shipmates couldn't have provided, and her skills were either not believable or were on the narrow edge of credibility. And she still needed rescuing! In other words, she looked like an over-powered girlboss. Not as bad as they got in movies later on, but I could see it to a certain extent.

I can't speak to the archetypes, because I'm not that well-versed in them, so I’ll just try to understand what you mean by "purity.” Simple virginity? She has that, but only because she is so little valued. And that also does not seem to be why Conan values her.

Because her love is pure? Yes, I can see that. And it also fits the “love at first sight” trope, which I personally don’t like very much. It seems to me that people use that trope too often to avoid dealing with people who have no reason to actually fall in love that fast.

But I think it works in this context.

First of all, the “love at first sight” actually happened years ago, when Nimed was King. Since then, Zenobia has had plenty of time to learn about Conan from reputation, which would only have reinforced her first impression. So even I will accept that this could be a “cosmic something” that just happens to people sometimes, and isn’t put in there because the plot needs it to happen.

As for Conan’s quickly taking to her? Well, it’s fast, but besides his hot-bloodedness, she does take an awful lot of risks on his behalf in a very short period of time. He has evidence. And then, just as in her case, actual events afterwards bear out that he was right to trust her.

So in summary, I can only refer to Zenobia and Zareta, but between the two, I also prefer Zenobia.