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It took me six years to get round to reading The Ickabog at last. My excuse: it’s a story aimed at children aged 7 to 9. What’s more, I must admit I wasn’t particularly keen, at the time, on The Tales of Beedle the Bard, published after the Harry Potter series.
But whilst listening to the audiobook this summer, during a particularly dark and painful period in my life, I was pleasantly surprised and even completely enchanted by this fable with its political parallels, adapted for children and set in a fairy-tale world—with no fairies, but very human monsters. It’s worth mentioning that this story bears no resemblance whatsoever to the world of Harry Potter. Indeed, there’s no magic involved apart from J.K. Rowling’s lively, inventive prose and her sharp humour. A real favourite and a delight as delicious as Mrs Beamish’s pastries.
Originally conceived as a bedtime story that the author would read to her two youngest children every evening, the manuscript was consigned to oblivion before being rediscovered and dusted off a dozen years later, in the spring of 2020, during the first lockdown. J.K. Rowling first decided to publish it for free on her website, chapter by chapter. Later, the royalties of the book sales were donated to charity.
It should be noted that in the United Kingdom, Hachette employees attempted (fortunately without success) to boycott the publication due to certain statements by the author that were deemed transphobic.
From Fable to Political Allegory
Once upon a time, there was a tiny country called Cornucopia . . . The king at the time of which I write was called King Fred the Fearless. He’d announced the ‘Fearless’ bit himself, on the morning of his coronation, partly because it sounded nice with ‘Fred’, but also because he’d once managed to catch and kill a wasp all by himself, if you didn’t count five footmen and the boot boy.
The story is reminiscent of Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, which tells of a cowardly and vain monarch who is duped by his advisers. In Andersen’s tale, the illusion is based on gullibility and the fear of ridicule; in Rowling’s, it becomes an instrument of domination with very real consequences for the entire population.
Here, then, the scam is not about clothes but about a popular legend: a monster said to inhabit the marshes, with everyone seemingly having their own version of the story. Then the Ickabog becomes a threat that certain people have a vested interest in making it seem credible and, ultimately, a pretext for the two manipulative advisers to impose their tyranny and bleed a prosperous nation dry with increasingly exorbitant taxes, whilst the king, blinded by his own vanity, fails to realise what is going on under his rule.
Lies upon lies upon lies.
The initial lie is no longer enough: further lies must be concocted to protect it, and those who challenge it in turn become enemies who must be silenced or made to disappear. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is not necessarily coincidental.
It was the joyful faces that upset him most.
A regime that thrives on fear needs a population that is anxious, docile and convinced that it is in danger. Laughter and joy then become almost subversive.
From Bogeyman to Human Monster
“Mind you don’t leave the garden while I’m working,” parents all over the kingdom would tell their children, “or the Ickabog will catch you and eat you all up!” And throughout the land, boys and girls played at fighting the Ickabog, tried to frighten each other with the tale of the Ickabog, and even, if the story became too convincing, had nightmares about the Ickabog.
Fear is the perfect tool for tyrants: once it has taken hold, people pass it on to one another, sometimes without meaning any harm (the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes). Those in power therefore no longer need to impose their narrative constantly: society starts repeating it of its own accord.
Daisy wished that she too believed in a monster in the marsh, rather than in the human wickedness she’d seen staring out of Lord Spittleworth’s eyes.
And the most frightening danger is not always the one we are told to fear. It is sometimes easier to believe in an external monster than to acknowledge human cruelty, especially when it is concealed behind institutions and official rhetoric. Even today, some people prefer to see incompetence where malice is, in fact, glaringly obvious.
When the Energy of Despair Opens Our Eyes
Sometimes—I don’t know how–people who live many miles apart seem to realise the time has come to act. Perhaps ideas can spread like pollen on the breeze.
Hope does not come from the miraculous disappearance of evil, but from the moment when people stop blindly believing what they are told. Without giving away the plot—since this is a fairy tale (without any fairies), in which nothing is glossed over (murder, violence, abuse), courage and truth ultimately triumph over evil when those who have allowed themselves to be blinded by power or caught up in its workings finally open their eyes.
Through humour, fantasy and caricatures, J.K. Rowling shows in The Ickabog that fairy tales are not necessarily naive or disconnected from reality. Their imaginary worlds can sometimes expose mechanisms that are otherwise difficult to recognise in everyday life.
© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.
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