Fairy Morals

Sometimes I write about things people don’t care to read. Like, for instance, this.

There’s no use lying, this was prompted by the Gentleman with the Thistle-down hair who, despite being a complete and utter bastard by human moral standards, has become one of my favourite characters ever. Then again, I’ve always been drawn to bastards so what difference do human or fairy morals make? Though, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather not be thinking about this topic at all, because what I know of fairy morals comes mainly from one book which creeped me out so much I couldn’t sleep for two days. Of course this kind of knowledge actually amounts to pretty much nothing because -at least I hope- fairies are imaginary creatures and everything is fine and I won’t be creeped out this time. Coming up, fairy vs. human morals and why the Gentleman with the Thistle-down hair isn’t really a complete and utter bastard.

 

Fairy tales and fables often portray fairies as carefree, cheerful creatures who like to dance in the moonlight that can sometimes be deceitful, just for fun. It’s mostly harmless, unless an unaware passerby happens to be lured away to a fairy kingdom for a few hours, only to return home and realize 200 years have passed and all their loved ones are now dead. Or a fairy grants them a wish and they find out that the fairy has a concept of language that twists nice wishes into nightmares. These are horrible things to do which means that nymphs and pixies must in fact be evil. Why drag a person away from their world, their family, their life for a few hours of frolicking if it means that person will be miserable when they return to their realm? Why torture them with wishes that backfire and leave them to deal with the consequences? The answer is they probably don’t care.

Perhaps fairies view humans as curiosities which spark their interest until they turn out to be unsophisticated, tedious trinkets which are then discarded into a pile of rejected toys. Perhaps they only care about having their fun without considering how humans feel. That must be truly evil. Except good and evil, as we perceive these concepts, may vary slightly or considerably from culture to culture or even from person to person. Why would an altogether different species from a different realm share the same beliefs as humans? If you asked a fairy -which I wouldn’t attempt to do even if someone paid me- about why they don’t return people home sooner instead of letting them dance away a couple of human lifetimes, you’d probably find out they have no concept of time. Or in the case of wishes gone wrong, they would most likely return the blame by saying humans don’t realize language’s full potential and end up misusing it. They might not even respond because human questions could seem trivial to a fairy and why bother answering when there’s so much dancing to be done?

The Gentleman likes his fun. He likes dancing and spectacles and collecting pretty things. And of course he sees nothing wrong with that because his set of moral principles is entirely different than ours. He doesn’t see anything wrong with keeping Lady Pole awake every night because it was agreed that he could have half her life as recompense for helping with her resurrection.  He doesn’t like Jonathan Strange so why would it be wrong to badger him? Vinculus is a threat to the Gentleman and it stands to reason that threats must be eliminated.  And when it comes to snatching Arabella- she’s a pretty thing to look at, a seashell on the beach that he’s very fond of and keeping her at Lost Hope isn’t bad because he’s enchanted her to be happy there. It doesn’t matter if that feeling of happiness is fabricated, it only matters that it exists.

Trying to humanize the Gentleman, people seem to be reading more into his attentions to Steven. He spends more time with Steven than all his other toys and seems to value him more as well but still, he manipulates him and keeps him at Lost Hope disregarding the fact that Steven doesn’t want to be there, gives him gifts for which Steven has no use and despite the fact that he appears to be somewhat impressed with him, he doesn’t treat him any better than he would any servant. Steven is yet another ornament to the Gentleman and that is perfectly acceptable, by fairy standards. Each human the Gentleman associates with is precisely that, an ornament, a bauble or a gadget. Perhaps he gets more attached to some of them but even those dispensable.

That evidence isn’t enough to classify the Gentleman as evil though, because he doesn’t abide by human morals. To expect otherwise would be unrealistic (and yes, I know using the term “unrealistic” in a document discussing fairies sounds ridiculous). To us earthlings, his behaviour seems cruel and malicious because we can’t help but judge him by our standards, which are standards of a world entirely different than the one he comes from. And we can’t, of course, distance ourselves from the morals we’ve been taught and accustomed to, our perception of good and evil. But the truth is that the Gentleman with the Thistle-down hair isn’t evil. He just… is.