Yorath: A Human(e) Hero
I admit, I was skeptical when I was first given Yorath the Wolf to read. I looked at the publishing date: 1984. The copy I was given had a pocket for a library circulation card in it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve bought and enjoyed unwanted library books before, but those books had been hand-picked by me, which is to say, I know what I like. I opened the book and read the plot synopsis: an infant prince is whisked away from the palace and grows up not knowing that he is heir to the throne. I thought I knew how the book was going to end before I even started it. Let me tell you, I was wrong.
Upon reading the first couple pages, I began to see the uniqueness of the story. Yorath is taken away from the castle because of a curse put on the royal family saying that the Great King would lie in jeopardy from a marked child of his own house. Yorath is born with a deformed shoulder and therefore is sure to be slain at the hand of his own grandfather. However, his dying mother has other plans and sends him away with her physician to live in a cabin.
Yorath’s deformity affects his self-esteem, even after his foster mother mends it nearly straight. He also grows up to be of formidable size, but while this helps him as an adult, in his teenage years the height makes him more awkward than it does authoritative. In his early twenties, he still views himself as lesser than the noble peers he trains with even though he is significantly better at combat than they are. One benefit of his shoulder deformity is that the memory of it keeps him from being vain. Despite his outward appearance as an ideal warrior, he has a modest and compassionate demeanor. And while he is extremely powerful, he doesn’t quite grow into his power until his adulthood. In fact, it’s because he doesn’t know his own strength as a teenager that causes a mistake that brings him guilt throughout the rest of his life.
This contrast of his persistent compassion not fitting the stereotype of someone with a gargantuan body immediately drew me into his character. I’ve always been attracted to dualities: the idea that someone or something can embody two apparent opposites at once. I like the complexity of it – how it’s a puzzle waiting to be pieced together. Yorath is a perfect example of this. He is big and strong and yet shy and full of self-doubt. He wants to be a soldier as a child but as he grows up he realizes how much he loves the peaceful woods. He’s a natural leader but doesn’t want to rule the kingdom. Because the finer points of his character are hidden among the many battles scenes, his love of nature and distaste for ruling were somewhat lost on me. However, this only makes me more excited to reread the book so I can catch Yorath’s subtleties.
The fact that Yorath remains unsure of himself is incredibly refreshing. We seem as a society to be unnecessarily geared towards reaching a magical day when we will be confident in ourselves and our decisions. It’s nice to have someone admit (even in fiction) that no matter what your age, you’ll never have everything completely figured out. Yorath’s youthful awkwardness stays with him as he grows up and is most visible in situations involving the love of his life, the Owlwife. I related to this completely, because most of the time I feel like a fully-functioning adult, but once in a while I still feel like a twelve-year-old who becomes dumbstruck in the presence of “Sk8er Bois.”
While he carries self-doubt in some areas of his life, Yorath remains headstrong in others. Throughout the book his elders pressure him to make decisions that are correct in their eyes but not in his own. Yorath takes this opposition and confronts it with unwavering independence. He chooses to go against what most people are telling him to do, even in the end, when the fate of a whole kingdom is at stake. Even I was left wondering if that was really the best move he could’ve made. I also questioned if it was more important to make a decision that was best for himself or best for the kingdom. It wasn’t my choice to make though. It was Yorath’s.
Yorath is a complex and engaging character. Even I, a five-foot-tall female of Wisconsin, was able to find common ground with Yorath, a seven-foot-tall man of Mel’Nir. The difficulties he faces in a medieval setting mirror our modern ones, and his dual nature make him feel like a real person instead of a two-dimensional stereotype. Don’t dismiss Yorath simply because it was released in the 1980’s, because Cherry Wilder broke through genre clichés like Yorath breaks bones.
