Defying Your Destiny

From a young age, it was clear to my parents that I was not going to be one of those "girly-girls" dressing up in a princess outfit and hosting tea parties. I was always much more fascinated with dinosaurs and dragons than anything else. I was a quiet kid, often keeping to myself and reading. I was a being seemingly made out of paper. Book after book I consumed like a starving animal.

But, one aspect of this wide array of books that was lacking was a strong female lead. Even in the twenty-first century, children from a young age are read the classic fairytales which always pits a male protagonist destined to succeed against a dehumanized other in order to save the woman who was always incapable of rescuing herself. Our literature teaches that men go on adventures while women wait to be rescued. I loved the idea of knights and dragons, but the prince always felt too stuck-up for my taste, and the princess was a hapless mess, more akin to a prize than a person. All the books that had women in the center were tales of love and boys, both things which I was not interested in in the least. I wanted to see myself going on adventures, but I always found my female role models as afterthoughts in the larger male world. I began to give up on the idea of reading, until one fateful day that changed me forever.

I stumbled across this book series completely by accident. As I was roaming the aisle at the library, I haphazardly wandered into the fantasy section. I was greeted with the usual assortment of men on horseback in the process of murdering what I considered to be majestic dragons, until one title caught my eye: "Lily Quench and the Dragon of Ashby." I froze in my tracks and grabbed the book from the shelf. Rather than a man in armor, it featured a young woman riding on the head of a dragon. I immediately ran to my father and took the book home, where I poured over it in one day.

'Lily Quench" in a brief summary is the story of a young woman who, after her parents die, lives with her grandmother. She is descended from a long line of dragon killers, and the kingdom that she lives in is highly tyrannical and oppressive. Sent out to kill a dragon, Lily instead recognizes the humanity of Queen Dragon and the two set off to liberate the kingdom from the oppressive control of the Count. Rather than focusing on violence, the story focuses instead on friendship and the bonding of two strong female leads as they attempt to restore peace and order to the kingdom.

As a child, I fell in love with what Lily represented. I finally saw myself not as something acted upon, but as a being, given power in her own right. These books seemed to tell that it was alright that I didn't want to be a "girly girl" and that I was allowed to go on adventures and save the world just as much as any of the boys around me. I felt seen, and for the first time, I loved the fantasy genre.

Looking back on the legacy that is the "Lily Quench" series, it is incredible how powerful the book still resonates with me. As a child, I simply saw it as a cool fantasy story that actually had female characters with personalities. However, looking at it as an adult, I am amazed at all of the powerful lessons that I learned from this series. Normalizing untraditional family structures, addressing questions of child abuse, and tackling problems with the government all feature prominently in the series, but are presented in a way that children can comprehend them.

Perhaps the most powerful lesson that this series taught me (and continues to teach me) is the defiance of things that seem unchangeable. Lily not only defies the idea that women in fantasy novels are always the rescued and never the rescuer, but also defies the idea that family legacy determines who you have to be. Though her family were dragon slayers, Lily makes the conscious choice to see dragons as sentient beings, deserving of life. She sees past the stereotypes of what people imagine dragons to be and instead sees them with humanity and acknowledgement of their cultural differences. "Lily Quench" taught me that there was no boundary that could not be broken with courage, persistence, the ability to accept when you were wrong and to see the "other" not as something scary, but as something wonderful to be learned from. She also defies the idea that men and women cannot simply be friends, or that a team led by women is destined to fail. Throughout the series, Lily takes the reins on the adventure, and works with various male counterparts to build them up rather than tear them down. Her strength doesn't come from her fighting abilities, but rather from her intelligence and her humanity. Of all the fantasy characters that I have encountered over the many years I have been reading now, none have stood out so much as a hero than Lily Quench.

Though over a decade old now, this book series never fails to surprise me with its depth and powerful humanitarian messages. It is a lesson that I hope to pass on to my children, whenever the day may come that I have them. You can be the hero in your own story, regardless of your gender, but being a true hero means helping out others and being willing to see other people (and dragons) as beings worthy of respect and dignity. As I look at the world today, I think of how much better off we would be if we were all a little more like Lily Quench.