I’ve been thinking a lot lately about fantasy as costume drama. Probably the most influential cultural properties on me and my shaping pop culture mind when I was a kid, along with Doctor Who, were the BBC costume dramas about fancy people in fancy houses, many years ago. It’s a love I’ve kept and nurtured through the years, and has aided me nobly in my reading of classic literature – or at least, classic literature with frocks in.
The original Upstairs Downstairs, which I must have started watching when I was five or six, embedded itself so deeply in my brain that it’s hard for me to watch those episodes now because I still have such vivid memories of them (and of course they were a bit more exciting and epic inside my head). One of the last uses to which I put my university library before finishing my doctorate was to borrow the entire 1960′s black and white version of the Forsyte Saga and watch it end to end.
So yes, costume drama. It is my genre, as they say. And yet I’ve never been remotely tempted to write straight historical. Instead, I let my adoration for crinolines and drawing room banter infuse into (what else IS there?) the writing of fantasy.
With the Creature Court trilogy, I can track my interest in shape changing, slightly monstrous and pretty young men to my teen reading of Jennifer Roberson’s Cheysuli series. I can track my love of sultry dark fantasy with saucy bits and pretty clothes to my discovery of Anne Bishop and later, Jacqueline Carey. My actual experiences in and studies of the city of Rome had a lot to do with it too, mixed in with all manner of other favourite things.
But the beginnings of Poet’s music hall career came from Pauline Collins as Sarah in Upstairs Downstairs, Isangell’s pushy mother comes indirectly from the Book of Elizabeth Bennet, and Velody’s entire life before the magic and monsters rain down on her is hugely inspired by my teen obsession with the House of Eliot.
This series, created by Jean Marsh who had also been responsible for creating the original Upstairs Downstairs, was about two young women who start a dressmaking business in the 1920′s. Taking it one bespoke order at a time, they eventually end up with something of a fashion empire. I adored this show because it was – well, what’s not to love? Roaring Twenties fashions, banterific romance, and most of all a bunch of women working together to make art and turn it into a business. I was completely hooked.
So as soon as I knew that my heroine Velody was a dressmaker, the 1920′s aspects simply fell into my book. It wasn’t until I was well underway with writing it that I realised how subversive and against-type it is to create a fantasy world where dresses are worn above the knee, and it came with many challenges. Not least of which is the fact that while I love to sew and work with fabric, I am appalling at measuring and thus have never made a dress in my life. (Thank goodness for my beta reader and her mad dressmaking skills or I might have put some appalling gaffes in there)
A recent blog post at Tor.com which compares Downton Abbey with Battlestar Galactica, produces the marvellous and oddly convincing theory that Battlestar Galactica is also a costume drama. I love the bit about how the characters change clothes in both shows to signify character development! It made me think a lot about the fantasy that I write. I’ve always championed Fantasy with Frocks (and its lesser known compatriot Science Fiction With Frocks) but never actually sat down to think about how spec fix writers can learn all sorts of marvellous dramatic tools from the art of the costume drama.
Suddenly I’m so much more delighted that my current work In progress, a steampunk gothic with magical robots and vengeful fairies, takes place in a Country Estate with Servants and Mistresses and occasional pockets of Scandal in Crinolines.
And I’m getting the urge to rewatch Downton Abbey RIGHT NOW…
This post was written by Tansy Rayner Roberts for her
Flappers with Swords Blog Tour.
Tansy’s award-winning Creature Court trilogy:
Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers
with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court
politics, have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms. If you prefer your books solid and papery, they
can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.
You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy
feminist science fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia, Tansy’s short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). You can find her on the internet at her blog, or on Twitter as @tansyrr.
