Today’s topic about levels of magical power comes from a question on one of the current running series of extras for patrons on Patreon. (More about the context below.) The question is about levels of power, and how Garin (and more generally Lords of the land) fit into that.
This post makes a quick tour through ‘how do we define magically powerful’. Then we’ll look at some specific character examples. I’ve avoided plot spoilers in those!
What does ‘magical power’ mean?
One of my basic premises of the magical worldbuilding for Albion is that there are multiple ways to do things. (I think that’s true for our world, too.) There are different approaches to shapeshifting that exist at the same time. There are different ways to be an Alchemist or a specialist in Warding or Incantation or any other subject.
Thinking about this, I think a lot of this comes back to my experiences with horseback riding in my youth. More than other sports, there are a great number of ways to be a good rider. Some people get there by having more natural physical talent. Others people do it by being able to build a really amazing connection with their horse. Some people build specific skills that take advantage of the things that come easier to them. Others people put in a great deal of time and deliberate learning to build skills.
Most people do more than one, but in varying proportions. These different approaches won’t all be successful the same way, but they can all be extremely successful at doing what the rider and horse want to do.
For magic in Albion, there are roughly four buckets of ‘how does someone have magical power or oomph’. These are raw power, ability to tap into power, training, and experience.
Raw power
This is both the simplest and the most complicated. Some people have more raw capacity to draw on and use large amounts of magical power. There’s a downside to this. If they don’t learn to manage that raw power, it can be dangerous for them and everyone around them. Rufus and Jasper Pride are both good examples here. Both of them have a substantially larger capacity than most to funnel magical vitality and do things with it.
Ability to tap power
Some people have access to sources of pooled magical vitality or power. Most obviously, these involve the Lords and Ladies of the land, and their Heirs. These people have an explicit ritual connection to the demensne estates, the large demesne, and the people there. To some extent (depending on their skills) they can draw on that to fuel their personal magic.
Training
Of course training plays a huge role in how someone uses their magic. Someone without a lot of raw power can still be extremely effective by honing their skills to best use the magic they have. Someone who perfects a small set of skills can be – in practice – far more powerful in the world than someone who dabbles at dozens. The Five Schools developed in part to identify and teach those skills. The Schools also give people tools to use the magic they have more effectively.
Experience
Finally, experience helps a lot. As humans, we learn more (hopefully!) over time about how to do things that work best for us. That’s just as true for magic as for anything else. Someone in their fifties who has paid attention to that and developed their skills to play to their strengths (and avoid their weaknesses) might well have an edge over someone younger but more magically powerful.
(Witness the fact Magni is still duelling effectively in his eighties. He’s using less raw power, and more of his magic is going to avoid injury and help him move nimbly. But he has a lot of tricks up his sleeves for the duelling itself.)
The role of family
Some of these do have at least a little bit of a genetic component. Though as the Great Families have discovered, inbreeding is not good for magical potential. Families that have a more diverse lineage are somewhat more likely to produce people able to work with larger amounts of raw magical potential.
But a lot of it comes down to nurture. Someone who grows up in a family with folks with strong magic is more likely to develop it themselves, especially if the family provides useful guidance to grow with.
Different magical roles
One of the parts of this question was whether the Lords and Ladies of the land are inherently more magically powerful – and how that plays out for the Council.
Lord and Lady
This is one of those places where causality gets a bit tangled.
The Lord or Lady of the land does have access to a lot of stored vitality. At least if their lands are well-tended (and have been for a while). They certainly have access to a number of resources to help them with that too. Those include staff, techniques, etc. that allow them to make the most of what’s there. (For people who’ve read the Mysterious Fields trilogy, Dagobert makes use of this vitality for the rest of his life after the conclusion of the trilogy. But mostly he does so in ways that are not very visible to anyone other than his wife. Including his sons.)
On the other hand, the landed families do tend to breed for magical potential deliberately. This works better for some of them than others. There’s a whole line of genealogical theory out there about which marital relationships are most likely to be successful. When Alysoun and Richard marry, the omens at their wedding (in Pastiche) mention that the prospects for their children are promising. Everyone looking at Gabe 20 years later: “That wasn’t entirely what we expected?”
However, sometimes goes differently. As with all deliberate plans of this kind (especially with a somewhat limited and interrelated gene pool), there’s a range of results when you’re looking purely at ‘magic and ability to do things with it’.
And finally, of course, someone expected to become Lord or Lady in their own right almost certainly has also received a lot of deliberate education in how to best use their magic. That comes both through formal education (Schola, mostly), and through private tutoring (both for people who don’t attend Schola, and for those who do).
Council
The question of magical power for the Council members is much easier. Yes. They have it. How it comes out in their lives and the world varies a lot. But at a basic level, all of them have a substantial capacity for magic, all of them have training in using it deftly, and all of them have at least some ability to tap it from external sources. (And generally, they come in with substantial experience, and certainly gain that in the process of being on the Council.)
This doesn’t mean flashy magic! Mabyn, for example, rarely makes a show of her magic other than in very controlled circumstances (the stillroom or alchemy lab). Hereswith, who is Head in the 1880s, mostly uses hers as a diplomat and leader. Her skills help her read the emotional state of the people in the conversation and guide it. Those forms might be subtle, but they can also be exceedingly powerful.
And of course, we have some people who are very flashy about their magic. The duellists, for example, or the people who do larger ritual magic or visual magic spectacle.
Use it or lose it
One other aspect here is that magic is a skill. The people who use their magic regularly and in varied circumstances are, on average, going to get better at using magic than the people who don’t. There are plenty of people who’ve had a perfectly good magical education. They use slices of their training, but lose capacity and skill in the parts they don’t use.
A few examples
Let’s look at a few examples. (Do you have someone you’d like to see me discuss in more detail? Drop me a note. I have plans to visit some characters in blog posts this year.)
Cyrus : Most of his magical effectiveness comes from his skills as a ritualist, with a particular focus on elemental ritual. When he can use that toolset, he has a quite effective lever to move the world. His approach is also what helps him be so successful as Head of the Council. It’s the same ability to bring disparate threads together and do something useful with them.
Alexander : So, Alexander has a tremendous capacity for raw power. But what actually makes him terrifying magically is the fact that he has a whole set of magical techniques not widely known in Albion. These include Ritual approaches, but also Naming magic, which only a handful of people in Albion know in his lifetime. Alexander’s formal apprenticeship in Ritual magic was quite conservative in approach. However, he’d already done an apprenticeship with his mother and a far more wide-ranging set of techniques.
Garin and Isembard: Both of them have quite a large capacity for magical vitality. Garin can far more easily draw on the land magic of the demesne (though Isembard can do the same for Schola, when it’s relevant). Garin’s magic is, however, far more tuned toward Alchemy on one hand (small, precise applications) and duelling on the other. As a duellist, he’s still more precise than many, but using far larger amounts of magic.
In contrast, Isembard is a skilled duellist and fighter. Unlike Garin, he spent years of his life fighting in life-or-death circumstances, which absolutely sharpens the skills. He’s also had the benefit of working with Alexander and Perry, both of whom were able to take existing techniques and expand them. All of this makes Isembard arguably more functionally powerful than his brother, it just doesn’t show often. (And for folks who’ve read The Changing Door, it takes until Isembard is in his late 40s before he realises this is actually true.)
Gabe : Gabe is just ridiculous, honestly. He’s our example here of someone who got a lot of advantages to start with, but also made the most of them. In a number of directions. It’s honestly a really good thing his parents figured out how to teach him – with a lot of help – and that he’s got a rock solid sense of ethics. And that his primary commitment is to the good of the land magic, both local and within Albion as a whole.
Giles : His primary work is mathematics and crytography. While he uses some magical techniques for those, most of that side of his work is intellectual, not magical. He does use a number of small magical techniques as assistive technology by the time we see him in the books. But many of those are designed by someone else, he’s just implementing them. In broad terms, he’s somewhere around the middle in terms of magical power and potency, though with a lot of training to back it up. (And that does definitely help him as a bohort player.)
Geoffrey : Geoffrey has a lot of magical scope, but fundamentally, his magical power comes from skill, training, observation, and patience more than sheer raw power. He knows how to use the power and magic he has well, he’s sensitive to the local situation, and once he’s Lord, he certainly uses the seasonal shifts to power things around him.
Benton : Interestingly, Benton has more raw magical capacity, though it was perhaps slower to develop in him than some people. By the time he comes into Geoffrey’s service in the trenches, he’s a mature man in his 30s. While he’s quietly competent with a lot of domestic charms, he’s never really been encouraged to develop more scope. Geoffrey gives him both opportunity for scope and scaffolding for learning new techniques. By the time they’re settled at Ytene in 1922 and 1923, Benton is well able to take on, direct, and help power some complex magical workings, as well as his skills during the Great War.
Thesan and Lizzie : Together here because they’re both similar this way. Both of them have had a solidly good magical education, but both of them rely more on intelligence, observation, and choice of influence for their magical efficacy more than sheer power. Both of them do have quite a good storage capacity for vitality, in ways that let them bolster their respective husbands or children as needed.
Ferry : Ferry is probably the person with the least magical power of anyone we’ve seen so far. She’s an example of ‘well-off families whose magic has attenuated over the years’. Once she finds a line of work that suits, however, she’s able to use that delicate, low-powered magic very deftly. It’s actually a great fit for magical tapestry restoration. There, too much magic could disrupt the delicate enchantment work.
More about the context
A Fox Hunt is a sequence that’s a prequel to Grown Wise, Ursula Fortier’s romance (out on May 2nd). It’s particularly about Ursula’s relationships with the Arundel demesne estates and her Uncle Garin. The episode that got this particular question is the one dealing with Ursula being formally named as Garin’s Heir in August of 1946. (Grown Wise takes place the next year, starting in June 1947).
Next week’s blog post is about the question of names and how people use them.
