The Grumpy Author - My Favourite Themes: The REVENANT

What is a revenant, you ask? Well, for those unfamiliar with this character type, I'll explain it in D&D terms. A revenant is the reanimated body/spirit of someone who's been murdered that lingers for one of two reasons: vengeance, or to fulfill an obligation they were robbed of fulfilling by their untimely death. Usually it's the former, but the latter can be a compelling story arc as well.

Revenant stories seem pretty big in certain genres, but I personally haven't seen many of them in epic fantasy, which I find to be a shame. While undead factor into plenty of fantasy stories, they are almost universally the bad guy (except when it's a hot vampire *gag*). Game of Thrones of course famously had the Night King, and hundreds, if not thousands of other fantasy series have used similar enemies to build up the initial tensions.

Just to be clear: a revenant is not always a good guy. Many times, they're anti-heroes, a lingering spirit doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, or sometimes the right thing for the wrong reasons. As indicated in the photo below, Clint Eastwood's classic "High Plains Drifter" is about a revenant, something that's not made clear until the very end. Similarly, Clint played another revenant in Pale Rider. Both movies use the revenant in different ways, though with similar outcomes.

In High Plains Drifter, Clint's sheriff character was murdered (whipped to death) in front of the entire town, who all stood around silent and useless while the outlaws killed him. He returns as the High Plains Drifter and agrees to help protect the town from the outlaws if they'll pay him and do exactly as he says. They agree, and he enacts a bit of vengeance on them by grinding them under his hell during the preparations. When he kills the outlaws in the end, only then do the people realize who he was, only to have him ride off into the desert heat and fade away.

Pale Rider is a little different, dealing with a "preacher" who is sent to answer a prayer by a little girl. The character is shown early on to have six bullet exit wounds in his back, which is the first hint that he may not truly be "alive." Long story short, he eventually comes face to face with the man who killed him, and he shoots him six times through the chest - in exactly the same pattern. He then rides off into the mountains, presumably never to be seen again.

There's a multitude of different options to try this out in a fantasy setting. Maybe the hero got betrayed and killed before he could face down the dark lord. Maybe the dark lord won. Maybe the dark lord killed someone who had no intentions of becoming a hero but who gets forced into the role when they find they're not dead, but not alive either.

This gives an author a lot of fun new facets of a character to explore. What's it like to be undead? Do they feel pain? Do they still feel emotions other than anger or a longing sadness that they're not really alive anymore? Do they look forward to returning to their rest when they're done, or do they plan to right all the world's wrongs? The limit is your imagination and nothing else.

Know some good epic fantasy revenant stories? Feel free to share them below.

Until next time,

The Grumps