Shakespeare and Me

My story A Deed Without a Name is published today in Penumbra’s Shakespeare-themed issue.  I’m not going to reveal which play the story refers to (although the title might give it away) but I thought I’d talk about some of the experiences I’ve had with Shakespeare over the years.

I can’t claim to know Shakespeare’s works inside out.  There are thirty-eight plays acknowledged as being wholly or partly by Shakespeare (thirty-seven in most editions of the Complete Works, plus Two Noble Kinsmen) together with the sonnets and the narrative poems, but of those I’ve never seen or read ten.  Note to self: must do better.

A trace of intellectual snobbery makes me give myself bonus points for those I’ve seen on stage, but actually there’s nothing wrong with watching film or TV versions.  I’ve always believed that Shakespeare would be delighted with both media and would be eager to write for them.

Still, there’s something unique about being present for a great stage production of Shakespeare.  The earliest plays I recall seeing were at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre in London.  My parents, who had both been actors, took us to see both Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream there when I was quite young, although I only have very general memories of these visits.

A more awesome experience, when I was perhaps about ten or eleven, was being taken to see a production of Much Ado About Nothing, with Maggie Smith and Robert Stevens.  Without any disrespect to the Regents Park casts, this was an entirely different level, and certainly as good, in a different medium, as Branagh’s excellent film version.

Of course, we “did” Shakespeare at school.  Generations of kids have hated Shakespeare for the dull way he’s taught but, although our classes were in the traditional manner, I already knew how wonderful the plays could be and enjoyed reading them.  We studied Hamlet for A-level, and I went to two memorable productions within a year, both at the Cambridge Theatre in London.

The two Hamlets I saw were Alan Bates and Ian McKellan (the latter fresh from his breakthrough roles at Shakespeare’s Richard II and Marlowe’s Edward II, both of which I’d seen on TV).  Of the two, I preferred the Bates production, which was lively and fun, bringing out the surprising amount of genuine comedy in the play.  The McKellan version, by contrast, was a serious, doom-filled tragedy, but both were excellent in their own ways.

The production I treasure most, perhaps, is the RSC’s version of Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola and Donald Sinden as Malvolio.  It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Judi Dench was brilliant, but anyone who only ever saw Sinden’s highly mannered and over-the-top performances in TV sitcoms might not realise what a wonderful stage actor he was.  His final exit, promising “I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you” is possibly the most memorable moment I’ve ever seen on stage.

I’m the non-theatrical member of my family, but I still managed a couple of small parts in productions at university.  In Macbeth, I played a minor lord called Menteith, who mainly stood around and had occasional lines.  In Julius Caesar, however, I played Cinna the Poet, who can be best described as a cameo role.  He’s the innocent bystander who gets torn to pieces by the angry mob because he happens to have the same name as one of the assassins.  I screamed a lot in that part.

I’ve been to a number of fine productions since the ones mentioned – though I’ve also missed plenty I’d love to have seen, especially in recent years – as well as many on TV and film.  I remember a spine-tingling TV version of Macbeth with Eric Porter (Banquo’s appearance at the feast was as gut-wrenching as anything I’ve ever seen in a horror film), and Laurence Olivier putting in classic performances in both King Lear and The Merchant of Venice.

Then there are the films.  There have been some great film versions of Shakespeare, as well as some that are less great, including a terrible Hollywood version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the 30s.  The ones that stand out for me are Olivier’s Henry V and Richard III, the Burton/Taylor version of The Taming of the Shrew, and Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V and Hamlet (the only film version of the play I’ve enjoyed unreservedly) but worth a gold star for bravery are Anthony Hopkins’ film of Shakespeare’s gore-fest Titus Andronicus and Derek Jarman’s bizarre reading of The Tempest.

I hope there’ll be plenty more – perhaps versions by actors just starting out that will put the productions I’ve seen into the shade.  In any case, it’s impossible to see too many Hamlets, Twelfth Nights or Romeo and Juliets.  And there are always those ten plays I still don’t know.

A Deed Without a Name Now Available in Penumbra

The February issue of Penumbra is now available, with my short story A Deed Without a Name as its featured story. 

This issue is dedicated to the theme of Shakespeare, and also features fiction by Stan Hampton Senior, William Meikler, Genevieve Taylor and Barry Rosenburg, along with non-fiction by Richard G. White, Lori Basiewicz and Celina Summers, and an interview with artist Rebecca Treadway, who designed the stunning cover of this issue.

Penumbra can be bought here for a mere $3.99 - or why not invest in a subscription for 12 issues of this fast-rising publication for $36?

Fantasy Languages for Dummies

Fantasy Languages for Dummies

Ever since Tolkien introduced us to Quenya and Sindarin, not to mention a smattering of Dwarvish, Adunaic and the Black Speech, there’s been a assumption among fantasy writers that they have to develop languages for their worlds.  I haven’t been immune to this: in my late teens, I put a lot of effort into creating the main language my characters spoke at the time, basing the grammar largely on Ancient Greek.

Tolkien was a special case, though.  He was first and foremost a linguist, and his language creation was not only of the first order, but also was the engine that drove his world-creation and storytelling.  Neither is true of most fantasy writers – certainly not of me.

Do fantasy stories really need developed imaginary languages?  For the most part, no.  Either the point-of-view character understands the language, in which case it can be rendered as English (most other-world fantasy is theoretically a “translation”) or s/he doesn’t understand it, in which case it would just sound like “bar-bar-bar”, as all “barbarian” languages did to the Greeks.  In that case, there’s no reason to quote it precisely.

There are two reasons for developing a fantasy language, at least to some extent.  One is to make the names you create for places and people linguistically consistent; the other is if your characters need to use the language precisely without understanding it – for example, using spells in another language, like the Latin spells in Harry Potter.

On the other hand, some writers might want to take language creation a little further, simply for their own pleasure, even if nothing other than names appear in the stories.  Like all extensive world-making, it runs the risk of distracting from actually writing the stories; but, on the other hand, it might offer a deeper understanding of those stories.

The best way to learn how to create a language, if you wish to do this, is to study a wide range of languages and their structure in detail.  For now, though, I just want to give a few thoughts about some of the features real-world languages have.

One thing to decide is the language’s sound.  Are most of the words monosyllabic, or do they flow on for half a line?  Do they have long clusters of consonants (like German) or do single consonants separate the vowels (like Hawaian)?  What sounds does the language use?  Some don’t use all the sounds English does, whereas others use sounds that seem outlandish to us.  How do the letters combine?  The combinations of letters speakers of one language pronounce naturally will make speakers of another language stumble, like the Greek words beginning with ps-, gn- or x- which we lazily treat as “silent letters” (“psychology” should properly have the p sounded).

The language’s grammatical structure is crucial to how it works.  In real-world languages, there are four basic structures (though one is rare), with many, notably English, combining elements of several.  In isolating languages, words don’t change their form to indicate that they’re, for instance, plural or past-tense – these elements are indicated solely by extra words or word-order.

Agglutinative languages indicate their grammar by having bits “glued on”.  In English, for instance, an opposite can always be indicated by putting un- in front of a word – even if it isn’t correct.  Any English speaker would instinctively understand what “ungood” means, even though the word doesn’t exist.  Many language have a complex system of prefixes, suffixes and even infixes (put in the middle of the word) that forms its entire grammar.

Synthetic languages show their grammar by changing the form of the word.  The change can come at the beginning or end of the word, or even in the middle, and will indicate things like singular or plural, the tense of a verb, or whether a noun is subject or object.  In English, for instance, the past tense either has an -ed at the end or the middle vowel changes, although other tenses are formed by using extra words.  In a thoroughly synthetic language, word-order isn’t important – provided the words are in the correct form, “man bites dog” can mean the same as “dog bites man”.

Polysynthetic structures, which are only found in the languages of the Inuit and related peoples, are incredibly complex.  The grammar works essentially by putting a subordinate word in the middle of the main word – a little like Eliza in My Fair Lady saying “abso-blooming-lutely”.  In a polysynthetic language, though, an entire sentence can be folded in on itself that way.

It can be useful to know which structure a language has even if you’re only wanting to create names.  If your language is synthetic, for instance, names might tend to have specific endings – the best-known example is the -us and -a endings for male and female names in Latin.  It’s not as simple of that, though – certainly not in Latin, where some names are the other way round, and there are many other endings used too.

One language-culture I included in At An Uncertain Hour has an agglutinative form, using mainly suffixes, and has noun-categories, a way of indicating what a word refers to that’s used in many African languages.  I didn’t invent a single word of this language, apart from half a dozen names, but its structure is clear from the fact that all people’s names end in the suffix -va and all place-names in -ne.

Another thing to bear in mind is that languages don’t usually exist in isolation (though there are probably real-world cases where they do, and you could certainly create a fantasy-world example).  Languages that come into contact with one another will tend to exchange words, especially when the word represents an object or a concept the speakers of one language haven’t come across before.  A lot of words entered English from Indian languages during the period of the British Raj, and many have also been derived from specific things or ideas from Native American or Australian Aboriginal languages.  No European language, for instance, had an adequate word for a boomerang.

The likelihood is that neighbouring languages will be related to one another, forming a bloc of similar languages.  This doesn’t always follow, though.  Sometimes, related languages will be spoken a long way apart, and neighbouring ones will be unrelated.  For example, Hungarian and Romanian are surrounded by Slavonic languages, such as Russian, Polish and Serbo-Croat, but neither is Slavonic.  Romanian is a Romance language, related to French, Spanish and Italian, and only distantly to Slavonic, while Hungarian is completely unrelated to either group, though distantly connected to Finnish.

It’s not always immediately obvious why languages are regarded as related, since the sounds in words can change radically.  For example, the Latin word for foot, which has the basic stem ped, is actually the same word as foot.  There’s a phonetic connection between p and f, and between d and t, while vowels change even more easily than consonants.  That can be heard easily in regional accents.

Linguists have, over a couple of centuries, worked out fairly regular rules by which the sounds of one language will change in those of another (that one was discovered by the Brothers Grimm – yes, those ones) and developed a series of families and sub-families to categorise the world’s languages. 

There’s no need, of course, for a fantasy writer to work out all these rules for their world’s languages, but it’s as well to understand in general terms how it works, even if you’re only using it for names.  The same name might appear in different forms in different countries, just as John becomes Ian in Scotland, Sean in Ireland, Jean in France and Juan in Spain.  Understanding how this operates in your own world can give it a feeling of interconnectedness.

In the real world, some languages are clearly related, while others appear not to be, but this might be the result of the evidence being buried over countless millennia.  In the example given above, it’s entirely possible that Hungarian and Finnish actually are related to the Indo-European family, which includes most European languages, but the connections are too difficult to work out.

There’s long been an argument among linguists over whether all human language derived from a single source, or whether it developed independently in different areas of the world.  This depends largely on when humans began speaking.  Until recently, it’s been believed that this happened at a time when we were already spread all over the earth, but recent evidence has begun to point towards a much earlier period when our ancestors all lived in a relatively small area of Africa.  Maybe it’s really true that English, Chinese, Swahili and the languages of the Aborigines and Native Americans all had their origin in the same primal tongue – like Tolkien’s Quenya.  In any case, when you create a fantasy world, it’s your choice.  As long as you can make it convincing.

As I said at the start, this doesn’t attempt to be a kit to make a fantasy language.  What I aim for is to give an idea of the kind of things you’ll need to learn if you want to create a convincing fantasy language.  Good luck.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was Lovecraft’s first attempt at a “novel” – as described, though at 100 pages it’s really more like a longish novella.  In contrast to his better-known work, though, this isn’t a horrific tale of the Old Ones seeking a way to take back Earth and eradicate humanity. Instead, it tells of a journey across the Land of Dreams, seeking justice from the gods.

In the earlier part of his career, one of the biggest influences on Lovecraft was Lord Dunsany, and he wrote a string of fantasy tales, alongside his horror, that told of fabulous cities, strange dreamers and voyages through enchanted oceans.  The Dream-Quest appears to have been his attempt to bind these Dunsanian tales into one mythos, and it includes characters and places from many of them – Celephais, The Other Gods, The Cats of Ulthar and The White Ship, among others – as well as straight horror stories, such as The Statement of Randolph Carter and Pickman’s Model.

At the opening, veteran dreamer Randolph Carter has been prevented from returning to a beautiful dream city he’s fallen in love with, and decides to seek out the home of the gods on the mountain Kadath, even though no-one knows in what part of the Dreamworld it lies.  Descending the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber, he sets out across a beautiful and perilous world in search of justice.

Carter travels to many strange lands and cities of the Dreamworld – not to mention an excursion to the Moon – and encounters terrifying enemies and almost as terrifying allies.  The fighting cats of Ulthar are all very well, but Carter has to rely on ghouls – with whom he seems on good terms – against the disgusting, toad-like moon-creatures and the forces ranged to stop him reaching Kadath.

Although the story contains descriptions of extravagant and exotic beauty, there are hints of the cosmic horror that characterises his better-known work.  We’re certainly not too far from the Cthulhu Mythos when he writes of

the awful voids outside the ordered universe where the daemon-sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their...hideous soul and messenger, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

On the other hand, a Mythos tale would hardly include the description of Celephais, with its glittering minarets...and the untarnished marble walls with their bronze statues, or the gentle hills behind the town, with their groves and gardens of asphodels and the small shrines and cottages upon them...

It’s two or three decades since I last read The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath – or much Lovecraft at all – and, while I enjoyed it, it’s not the easiest read, despite its shortness.  According to the introduction by August Derleth in the edition I have, Lovecraft was always intending to revise the story, but never got around to it.  It’s maybe due to this that its hundred pages are not only not divided into chapters, but don’t even contain a single scene-break.

There’s also almost no dialogue – never a very noticeable aspect of his work, but here virtually every conversation is merely reported.  The prose is repetitive, too, and the plot rambling in the extreme.  Nevertheless, the alternating wonders and horrors kept me reading eagerly.

The volume I read it in (At the Mountains of Madness and other novels of terror) also includes the three shorter pieces Lovecraft wrote about Carter: The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Silver Key, and Through the Gate of the Silver Key.  These are, respectively, a straight horror story, set in an ancient graveyard; a blend of contemporary fantasy and diatribe against twentieth century life; and a combination of horror and SF, with more than a passing nod at the Mythos (including a guest appearance by Yog-Sothoth).  It’s worth reading the four Carter stories together.

Despite its flaws, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is an enjoyable story, and well worth reading for a less stark Lovecraft, willing to see the beauty, as well as the horror, in the world.

Phantastes by George MacDonald

I’ve been intending for years to read George MacDonald, and I’ve recently finished his Phantastes.  Published in 1858, it’s described as “A Faerie Romance for Men and Women” and takes the form of a semi-allegorical journey through a fairyland markedly different from the standard Victorian model.

A young man called Anodos (pathless in Greek) finds himself transported into an enchanted forest, where he’s menaced by evil tree-spirits and helped by an assortment of beautiful ladies, wandering knights and kindly matrons.  Searching for a woman he’s sung into life out of marble, he finds instead a sinister shadow that follows him without needing to be cast by anything.

During a stay in a vast palace, apparently deserted except for presences just beyond vision, in the course of which he reads (or rather experiences) a number of strange tales, Anodos finds his Marble Lady again.  However, he breaks a taboo on touching her and is plunged into a sunless underworld of suffering.  From here, he must find a way to redeem himself through heroism, and to lose his shadow.

This is a short novel and, for mid-Victorian literature, not a difficult read, although it contains elements that might feel awkward to readers only used to modern books, especially its long paragraphs consisting of description or internal monologue.  Nevertheless, Anodos is an engaging first-person, veering between the ideals, enthusiasm, recklessness and foolishness of a young man, and the mixture of action and mystery comes fast enough to make the story very readable.

MacDonald’s Fairyland has all the blend of beauty and horror, splendour and danger, as anything in the Brothers Grimm, although that isn’t immediately obvious.  Anodos’s first encounter is with a tribe of cute flower fairies, though well realised, but that’s the last time anything of the kind rears its head.  Fairyland is the journey from youth to maturity, so it starts with childhood.  Indeed, many of his encounters seem to have a sexual edge to them, though expressed in symbolic or romantic terms.

Phantastes is an allegory, but not one that pushes its meaning down the reader’s throat.  The shadow that dogs Anodos, for instance, could be interpreted in many ways, ranging from arrogance to the sorrows of adulthood.  Many episodes, though clear enough in detail, are less so taken as a whole, and display a rich symbolism, rather than straightforward allegory. 

When Anodos escapes from the dismal underworld, for instance, he comes to a cottage on an island, where a beautiful, kindly old woman sings him comforting songs between allowing him through the cottage’s four doors.  Each of these doors leads him to a far-off setting, representing a sorrow of past, present and future, and a fourth destination he remembers nothing of on his return.  The episode suggests many interpretations, but its strength lies in the power of the emotions it evokes.

George MacDonald isn’t the most fashionable fantasy writer these days, but he had a profound influence on writers ranging from Lewis Carroll to Madeleine L’Engle, and C.S Lewis regarded MacDonald as his greatest influence.  Reading Phantastes might require a little readjustment of mindset for a reader used to modern styles, but it’s well worth the small amount of effort.  I strongly recommend it, and I’m looking around for other MacDonald books, especially his late romance Lilith.

Using History in Fantasy

You can’t have epic fantasy without history. 

Well, perhaps that’s too sweeping a statement, and someone’s going to produce an example of epic fantasy with no sense of history whatsoever, but it would certainly be an unusual exception.  On the whole, an epic fantasy novel (or trilogy, or dodecalogy, or whatever) arises out of the history of the world it’s set in. 

How well, for instance, would Lord of the Rings work without some knowledge of the affairs of Arnor and Gondor, the War of the Last Alliance, the Fall of Numenor, and even the War of the Great Jewels?  Would Song of Ice and Fire make sense without knowing why Daenerys is in exile, or the past relations between the Starks, the Lannisters and the other great families?  Or the Belgariad, without knowing why there’s no King of Riva?

And so on.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that all that history has to be laid out in the books; but, even when it’s not, the author needs to understand what’s going on, in order to communicate that sense of connectedness to the readers.

This means that anyone hoping to write epic fantasy – and many other types of fantasy – successfully should have at least a rudimentary understanding of how history works.  There’s really no substitute for studying real history – whether that’s in a formal academic course, or just by private reading – but I want to point out a few things to look out for.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that history is never neat, except in retrospect.  We speak, in our own history, of eras such as “classical”, “mediaeval”, “Renaissance” and so on, but these were usually defined much later. 

Even the most obvious of watersheds wouldn’t necessarily have seemed so obvious at the time.  Take, for instance, the Roman withdrawal from Britain.  What could be more simple?  The Romans were here, then they were gone.  That must have been clear even to the people experiencing it.

Well, no.  For one thing, the “Roman” way of life had been changing for a long time: people drifting away from the cities, a severe economic recession, the legions populated almost entirely by barbarians – even a new religion.  The whole nature of the empire had changed – as early as the 3^rd century, Britain had been virtually independent of Rome for some time, with its own emperor.

Very little really changed in 410 – “the Romans” didn’t leave Britain (there were very few actual Romans there anyway), and the way of life didn’t substantially change for a while.  All that actually happened was that the Emperor Honorius ordered the province to look to its own defence, so that, in effect, Britons stopped paying taxes to Rome and began paying them to local warlords instead.  Besides, it was all a temporary measure.  Once the Visigothic menace had been dealt with, the empire would reassert itself, and things would be as they always had been.

That didn’t happen, of course, but it would have taken time for awareness of that to sink in.  Meanwhile, parts of the province were being ruled by barbarians, but that was nothing new.  Barbarians were everywhere in the empire (the Roman general who faced Alaric and his Visigoths was actually a Vandal) and they were quite trendy, in any case – fresh and vigorous, in place of the rather stale Roman culture.  The locals learnt their languages and adopted their fashions.  They became English, but only gradually.

As far as Europe as a whole went, the Roman empire never really ended.  Charlemagne refounded it, and then his creation became the Holy Roman Empire.  Napoleon consciously tried to revive the great European Empire, as did Hitler and Mussolini.  Today, it takes a somewhat different form, with its centre in Brussels.

Wait a minute – did I mention an economic recession in relation to the Roman Empire?  Did they have things like that back then?  And economics certainly has nothing to do with epic fantasy, does it?

Yes, on both counts.  Fundamentally, economics is the production or acquisition of resources, and trading any surplus for more resources.  That’s been going on not only throughout history, but for a good deal of prehistory too.  There’s evidence of surplus production and trade in Europe even before the last great Ice Age.

Most history is driven by economics.  Going back to Roman Britain, the Romans weren’t there in the first place because they thought it was a cool idea to conquer another country; they were there because Britain was unusually rich in fertile land and minerals such as tin.

This is going to be true even of the Realm of Light and the Realm of Darkness, with their armies made up of fireball-throwing wizards and squads of dragon-raiders.  They’ll be, among other things, after control of resources or trade-routes, or simply lebensraum for their populations to expand into.  Of course, I’m not suggesting the author should treat readers to a lecture on these subjects, or even necessarily mention them.  S/he should, however, be aware of how the process is working, and maybe drop odd hints.  Without that, all we have is a bunch of aristocrats playing an elaborate and deadly game.

The fashion in the study of history nowadays is to see the effects of cultural and economic forces, rather than individuals.  This is valid to a large extent, as I’ve already suggested, but individuals can sometimes changes the course of history.  “Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” it’s said, but that’s a retrospective view of when it does happen.  If Alexander or Napoleon, for instance, had been strangled at birth, many things would have been the same, but not everything.  It’s unlikely that another person would have had quite such a decisive effect on the world.

Individuals can certainly affect the way events are perceived, both at the time and in retrospect.  This applies especially to the reasons behind wars.  Most wars are fought for reasons of economic advantage, or collective forces such as conflicting religions (and often both) but that’s not always what starts a war. 

It’s long been recognised, for instance, that the Trojan War – assuming it happened in something like the way Homer described it – was actually fought over the trade-routes between the Aegean and the Black Sea, which Troy controlled and the Achaeans wanted.  On the other hand, that doesn’t mean the story of Helen’s abduction or defection should be dismissed.  If you’re trying to fire soldiers up to spend ten years fighting a war far from home, what do you say to them?  “Fight to protect our trade-routes,” or “Fight to stop them stealing your wife, as they stole mine”?

Many scholars, both historians and literary critics, have dismissed the idea that a war could be started by “one woman’s abduction,” yet we’ve just been through a century in which a world war (the first) was “started” by one man’s assassination.  In both cases, of course, there were far more extensive underlying reasons for the war, but it takes something specific to start it.

A good example is the splendidly named War of Jenkins’ Ear.  This was a war fought between Britain and Spain, starting in 1739, in which Britain was trying to break the Spanish monopoly of trade with South America.  What they actually declared war over, however, was the capture and torture of a British seaman called Captain Jenkins by the Spanish, during which his ear was cut off.  The action involved attacks on ports such as Porto Bello and Cartegena, which were what Britain really wanted, but the great symbol of the cause, then and since, is the image of Jenkins’ severed ear.

It’s certainly possible to write epic fantasy without drafting out extensive accounts of historical cause and effect, but the more thought the author puts into the history behind the wars and quests that form the story’s foreground, the more “true” it’s going to feel.

I’ve only made a few scratches on the surface of the subject, but I hope it inspires at least one writer to read more about it.  It doesn’t really matter if you choose to study the history of Europe, or China, or America, or anywhere else you like – the important thing for a fantasy writer is to get a feel for the way history works, and create a truer world.

Naming the Nobility

Epic fantasy, in particular, often deals with royalty and nobility, and many authors use the traditional European hierachy and titles.  That isn’t necessary, of course.  You can make up your own titles, or base them on a different real-world tradition (Japanese, for instance) but some people either find it comfortable to make it familiar or want to give their story a semi-historical feel.  So they fall back on dukes, earls and the rest.

Which would be well and good, except that some of these writers (***coughEddingscough***) don’t seem to have much idea of how the system works.  So I thought it might be useful to give a brief outline of the various ranks, titles and ways of addressing the nobility.  I’m not saying, of course, that you need them in writing fantasy, but if you’re going to use them, use them right.

A few general points to start with.  The first is that all (or almost all) titles have a female equivalent, though for brevity I’ll mainly talk about the male title, since historically the vast majority of title-holders have been male.  The European custom is that the wife of a titled man will have the female equivalent as an courtesy title, but the husband of a titled woman doesn’t receive anything.  A duke’s wife is always a duchess, but the husband of a duchess in her own right won’t be a duke – unless, of course, he has his own title.

The second point is that different names are given in different countries to the same rank of nobility, and some writers make the mistake of using these as if they were different.  You can’t, for instance, have both earls and counts in the same country – though it would make perfect sense to have earls in one country and counts in another.

A third point is that the children of nobility don’t have the same, or equivalent, title as their parents, until they inherit it (this is something I’ve seen in fantasy novels).  They might, of course, be given an equivalent rank in their own right.  For instance, the future King Henry IV of England, who was son and heir of the Duke of Lancaster, was granted the title of Duke of Hereford while his father was still alive, but this wasn’t by right as being a duke’s son.

The only exception I can think of was in the Frankish kingdom, where every son of a king was automatically given the title of king at birth.  The succession worked on a last-man-standing basis.  That was an anomaly, though.

To start at the top, we have emperor/empress.  This is perhaps the least defined of them all.  It was originally a Roman military rank, and was traditionally applied to rulers who claimed continuity from either the Roman or Byzantine empires, but it’s been applied to other rulers, and has been used as a translation of titles such as Mikado.

In general, any single ruler of an empire can be styled an emperor.  He should rule a domain made up from multiple peoples, where one dominates the rest (if they’re equal, it would be a federation).  An emperor or empress is styled his/her/your Imperial Majesty and is officially e.g. Emperor John, i.e. without a surname.  Children will be princes or princesses, although the heir is sometimes styled Grand Duke.

King/queen is obvious enough: a single ruler of a fairly unified realm, usually chosen for life by right of descent, although systems of election have sometimes been used (though not democratic election).  A king will be styled his/her/your Majesty, though in a mediaeval setting, “my liege” is a better form of address, and will be e.g. King John (though many Polish kings, for some reason, are referred to by first name and surname).  The ubiquitous “my king”, “my queen” etc. is incorrect.

A king’s children will have the courtesy title of prince/princess, though any other title they’re given in their own right (e.g. duke) will normally outrank that.

Prince/princess can either be an courtesy title, as mentioned above, for the children of a king or queen, or the ruler of a self-contained region who owes personal allegiance to a king or emperor.  The best-known example of this is Prince of Wales, the title held by the eldest son of the English king since the 13^th century, and other European monarchies have an equivalent – in Spain, for instance, it’s Prince of Asturias.

Occasionally, a principality will achieve complete independence, and the prince will become, in effect, a king.  Present-day examples of this in Europe are Monaco and Liechtenstein.

In imperial Russia, prince was a rank of the nobility, rather than being connected with the royal family.

A prince/princess is styled his/her/your Highness (or Royal Highness, or Imperial Highness if the son or daughter of an emperor) and a prince’s children (though not normally a princess’s, unless she rules a principality in her own right) will have the same title.  A prince is Prince John, except for the Russian princes mentioned above, who would be Prince John Smith.

Grand Duke/Grand Duchess is a title that evolved gradually during the mediaeval period referring to semi-autonomous rulers of large provinces, too big and powerful to be styled duchies.  Many, as with the Dukes of Burgundy in the 15^th century, were self-conferred, but the title became more common in post-mediaeval times, especially in Germany and Russia.

The only grand duchy in Europe now is Luxembourg, and the autonomous grand duke is in the same position as the autonomous princes.  The correct form of address is “Royal Highness” or “Grand Ducal Highness”.

The heirs to the Austrian and Russian emperors were usually granted the title of grand duke.

Duke/Duchess (spellings vary, e.g. French duc, but the title doesn’t vary greatly) is normally the highest rank that qualifies as nobility rather than royalty, although many dukes have tended to be members of the royal family.  A duke/duchess is styled his/her/your Grace, and their children have the courtesy title lord/lady (always with the first name – Lord John or Lord John Smith, not Lord Smith) although they may be given specific titles of Marquess or Earl that are in the family’s gift.

A duke will always be the Duke of Somewhere – he might be referred to as Duke John, but that isn’t strictly correct.  Occasionally, a woman holding the title in her own right will be styled duke, rather than duchess.  Queen Elizabeth II, for instance, technically holds the title Duke of Normandy and of Lancaster, not Duchess (it’s as Duke of Normandy that she reigns over the Channel Islands).

There are two kinds of dukes – those that hold a dukedom and those that hold a duchy.  A dukedom is simply the state of being a duke, but a duchy is, like the semi-autonomous principalities, a state ruled by a duke who’s the personal vassal of a monarch.  The only two duchies in England are Lancaster and Cornwall, and, in a feudal sense, inhabitants of those are subjects of the duke, who’s a subject of the queen.  This is academic, firstly because citizenship laws outrank feudal ones, secondly because the Duke of Lancaster is always the monarch and the Duke of Cornwall the heir.  In a mediaeval-style setting, though, this distinction would be very important.

Marquess/Marchioness (French Marquis/Marquise, German Margrave/Margravine) was originally an earl/count/graf who had extra powers and rights in return for holding the marches (i.e. border-country).  Many marquesses are the eldest sons of dukes, waiting to inherit the main title, but some hold the title in their own right – the Marquess of Bath, for instance.

A marquess/marchioness is styled his lordship/her ladyship/my lord/my lady, and can be properly addressed or referred to as e.g. Lord Bath (this is also true of an earl, viscount or baron, but not a duke).

Earl/Countess (general European Count, French Comte/Comtesse, German Graf/Gräfin) is, along with baron, the most common rank of nobility, and can be either the Earl of Somewhere, Earl John or Earl Smith (though the two former are probably safer for fantasy, and certainly for a mediaeval setting).  The correct style and address are the same as for a marquess.

Earl was the Anglo-Saxon title, while count was used in the Frankish domains.  William of Normandy tried to rename the English earls as counts, but that didn’t last.  However, the wife of an earl had no specific title, other than the all-purpose Lady, so the female form stuck.  That’s why the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, is properly Lady Godgifu (or Godiva) but is referred to in the Domesday Book as the Countess Godiva.

A count could be the ruler of a “county” (not really the same as a modern county) in the same way a duke was of a duchy, but might be either the direct vassal of the king, or vassal to the local duke.

The sons of an earl have the courtesy title “the Honourable” (shortened to “the Hon.”) before their names, while daughters are “Lady” (like Lady Diana Spencer).  An earldom may also be given as a courtesy title to the son of a duke or marquess.

Viscount/Viscountess (French Vicomte/Vicomtesse) is literally a “vice-count”, and therefore one step down from an earl/count.  The rank is often given to the heir of an earl, but can be held in its own right.  The style and address is the same as above, and the title is either Viscount of Somewhere, Viscount Smith, or Viscount Smith of Somewhere.

Baron/Baroness is the lowest rank of nobility.  Under the feudal system, a baron held a large stretch of land either directly from the king or from a duke or count, and individual knights would hold their manors from the baron.  A baron isn’t “of” anywhere (although modern life-peers are usually “Baron Smith of Cleethorpes” or whatever).  They would normally be Lord John in a mediaeval context, or Lord Smith later.  The correct style is as above.

The children of a baron have the courtesy title “the Honourable”.

Knight (French Chevalier, German Ritter, many others you can easily look up) counts as gentry (i.e. a gentleman) rather than nobility.  A knight was specifically a military rank, so traditionally there was no female equivalent – if you want a female knight in your world, she’ll just have to be a knight.  I’m not aware of any historical cases, but several appeared in the mediaeval romances.  A knight’s wife would simply be styled Lady, or Dame in French, and the latter is used as the female equivalent in modern times.

A knight may be styled either Sir John or Sir John Smith.  He should never, ever, under any circumstances, be styled Sir Smith.  His wife would be Lady Mary.

Baronet is, essentially, a hereditary knight – Sir Winston Churchill was a baronet.  The title is post-mediaeval, and is in all other ways the same as knight.

This isn't by any means a complete explanation of the subject: for that, you'd need Burke's or Debrett's, which you might find in a large reference library, although they're probably online by now.  I hope, though, it's given enough idea of the nobility's overall structure to be useful in writing fantasy.