Sacrifice! Yay!

In my pseudo-medieval fantasy world, there's going to be a heretical cult that has male human sacrifice. The royals and their army will put an end to it by sacrificing the clergy.

I think you can definitely include human sacrifice as you describe, and it doesn't have to make the character unsympathetic or unredeemable.

I would definitely keep modern ideas of morality out of it. Show me a convincing imagined culture of which human sacrifice is a part, and a convincing main character who is a member of that culture.

Some readers will be put off by human sacrifice however it's handled, but different people get put off by different things, and it doesn't mean the book has to be unsuccessful.

You can absolutely have him conflicted, just make sure the conflict makes sense given his culture. Which it sounds like it does, given what you've said about human vs animal sacrifice in the setting. The thing I'd avoid is making him conflicted in a way that didn't fit with his culture, just for the sake of making him sympathetic to modern readers, but that doesn't look like what you're doing.

Mr Flibble said:

While this is true, if someone has been brought up in a culture there is no reason they "have" to be conflicted about it. (they may very well be conflicted about the people in it)

And inflicting modern moral sensibilities on say another world/time...yeah if it's too in my face/out there, I'll get annoyed

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Absolutely, and it would be odd if a different culture were just like ours. But if one is writing a story set in the past, it's not necessary to make every pov character buy into whatever the dominant social paradigm was hook line and sinker. It's a bit like excusing certain people (like Lovecraft) for their over-the-top racism and misogyny because "that's how everyone was back then." Actually, no. Even though the baseline level of acceptable sexism and racism was higher, people still varied around a mean, and he was definitely at the nastier end of that distribution, even for his times.

And there were people who were at the opposite end of the spectrum from him back then too.

And fact is, we're writing a book for modern audiences. I know that reading a novel in a world where everyone, even the women, are raving racist misogynists would bug me to no end. There are certain writers I just can't read for that reason. The fact that they're arguing that the world they're portraying is/was a "man's world" and in that hypothetical universe, men really are superior, and everyone, men and women alike just take that for granted, doesn't make it less squicky for me.

But that doesn't mean the only alternative is stories where characters are exactly like us either. I suspect people (even guys like Lovecraft) were more conflicted about their opinions in the past than we like to think, but that doesn't mean that the source of their conflicts and angst would be identical to what ours would be.

Roxxsmom said:

Absolutely, and it would be odd if a different culture were just like ours. But if one is writing a story set in the past, it's not necessary to make every pov character buy into whatever the dominant social paradigm was hook line and sinker.

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Also don't forget that the dominant cultural line is the line that serves the powerful which means that if you take a different line, you may get the support of anyone who is against the current power structure. That's how Cortez knocked out the Aztec Empire which easily had the raw power to have wiped him out before he began to rally the less powerful against the central elites. His disgust with human sacrifice was a major plus in his attack on the Empire in many ways because lots of people in Mesoamerica were very tired of the whole Aztec mass human sacrifice thing.

While I have considered adding references to human sacrifice to my stories, I've never thought to go into the mindset of the person doing the sacrifice because I always figured that it would be mentioned in past tense. However, I do think that there should be some internal conflict if the main character is the one performing the sacrifice.

I'm thinking that if I do end up referencing of having a human sacrifice or two in a future novel, I'll probably have the victims be virgin males because sacrificing virgin females is kind of cliche.

I haven't read all the replies, so apologies if I'm repeating anything. The problem with sacrifice is that you are making the choice for someone else, and that's a pretty big choice. I would definitely lose all respect for a character like that, but it all depends on what you are going for. If you want people to dislike your protagonist then that's also okay.
There are a few ways to keep him sympathetic though:
a) Use willing sacrifices. ie. people who volunteer, or give themselves up for a much greater cause. Perhaps they will get some reward in the next life, or their family will be taken care of as a result. Perhaps they are terminally ill and suffering. Perhaps death is an honor and self sacrifice is the highest honor.
b) can have the gods / priest possess him and perform the sacrifice through him. It's his hands and he can see what is happening, but he cannot stop it.
c) He can do it willingly in the beginning and then slowly grow as a character.
d) He can select terrible people to sacrifice, or if he doesn't have a choice, can keep a bag over their heads and swap them out with someone else (a tyrant for example) on the way to the block-
e) Someone can be forcing him to do it, and he can then kill that person at the last second and use him as the sacrifice.
f) Give him a really good reason to do it- like his family is going to be killed if he doesn't, but even then he will have to be haunted by it for a long time.

Human beings are violent creatures. Either we kill animals or kill ourselves. It depends which point of view you focus on.

SampleGuy said:

Human beings are violent creatures. Either we kill animals or kill ourselves. It depends which point of view you focus on.

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Pfft. The vast majority of people are not violent if given a chance to live peaceably and well. Most would rather have a pet than have to slaughter their own meat. Given no need, social animals are not inherently violent.

Also why is it always virgin sacrifices? Why not whores?

Does the reader believe the sacrifice is necessary?

You could always have your character decide against performing the sacrifice, and then on the next page the gods smite him and the book ends.

SampleGuy said:

Also why is it always virgin sacrifices? Why not whores?

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Sacrificing virgins was not common. It is a very powerful sacrifice to make.

kuwisdelu said:

Does the reader believe the sacrifice is necessary?

You could always have your character decide against performing the sacrifice, and then on the next page the gods smite him and the book ends.

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It would make a better book for it to take three hundred pages for him to die from the Gods having removed all support from him, no luck, deteriorating health, etc.

Human sacrifice might be a tough one to sell because it suggests a level of superstition that drifts into insane mob territory, which most sane people can't really relate to. It would be like asking readers to sympathize with and root for someone who takes part in witch burnings. Witch burners probably thought they were doing the right thing and helping their society too. But to us it just looks like what it is--mass murder of innocent people.

The underlying philosophy is quite important. If the Gods and Godesses need spirit animals of various sorts for their use in the Astral Plane, or wherever they are supposed to be, then it makes sense for believers to make sacrifices of suitable animals.

I think the whole "human sacrifice portrayed as something alien but not necessarily evil"-thing is extremly well done on the TV show Vikings, in one of its best episodes towards the end of the first season. Protagonist Ragnar plans to sacrifice a captured English monk and ends up having to sacrifice a valued member of his crew instead, all characters the audience has come to care about at this point. The key is that the consent of the sacrifice is presented as vital - the monk can't be sacrificed, because he has only faked his conversion to the Norse religion and therefore doesn't meet the requirements.

The human sacrifices that I have in my ms are clearly trope-induced - they are the bad guys, and truly malicious bastards at that.

The problem of folding what may have been culturally acceptable a couple of millenia ago (circa Roman Empire and prior to this) into a novel is the audience. If there was a slow build, with enough world building to justify animal sacrifice to begin with, and then the rarity behind the idea of a human sacrifice as an extreme that even the character finds hard to deal with, including emotional impacts it may have, that may work (ie. be palatable to an agent and reading public of the genre).

I wouldn't necessarily throw a book with human sacrifice against the wall, so long as the worldbuilding and plot/character development justifies it. A flippant character who takes killing another human in stride like it was changing a pair of socks would not likely see me reading much further, if at all.

Late to the party, but I wouldn't (and don't) mind it in books at all. If the culture is set up well enough for me to see sacrifice as a part of it, and if characters are developed enough to have reactions to it (any sort of reactions, preferably different for different characters, that fit with their personalities), I'd enjoy reading it.

Also, personally, I love books in which you can root for two or more people at the same time even though they're on the opposite sides.
Think about GRRM and A Song of Ice and Fire series -- there's quite a few MCs who want each other dead, and in many cases it's not hard to root for whosever POV it is. If it's done well, and characters' personalities and reactions ring true, you shouldn't have a problem with that.

Sacrificing can also be a form of execution. The Aztec used to do that when they capture their enemies.

It's been a while since I read them, but Diane Duane wrote some fantasy books that had human sacrifice as a noble, acceptable option. I don't think it ever happened center stage in the books, but I do remember it being referred to, and in one instance, the queen of whichever country was wondering if she was going to have to go out and let someone kill her so that the famine in her land would end.

I think the thing that made it feel ok was that the person who would have been sacrificed knew it was for a worthwhile cause. She knew down to her bones that if she did this, it would work and save her people, and she was willing to do it if she had to. The POV was different from yours, in that it wasn't the person who would do the killing. But that's one option - make the culture such that the sacrifice is very definitely effective, and voluntary.

In one of my story shorts, I had an assassin guild who sacrifice people by assassinating them because they worship the god of blood and darkness. And by killing people gives them strength to support their evil deity.

No culture is completely homogenized. It simply can't happen. Every culture has those who believe in this or that, and those who don't, even if they would never admit it. A completely homogenous culture is as silly and unrealistic as a Popeye cartoon.

This means it's going to be very, very tough pulling off a protagonist who is fine with human sacrifice, especially with children. Most readers know culture is not an excuse.

Were I writing the story, I would even try to make such a character a "good" guy. I've written stories where the protagonist was an evil, murdering, psychopathic lowlife, and they worked well, but I never tried to justify the evil the character did, never tried to make it seem acceptable because of this, that, or the other.

My intent is to be perfectly honest, to say this is a story about a man who may have some great qualities, but who is not a good guy, who is not a hero. He is not going to change his ways, there will be no redemption, and he will not be punished for anything he does that you will probably consider evil. But he is a person, he has a story, and I'm telling it here.

Mr Flibble said:

My thoughts precisely

If you set it up that this is part of the culture, that everyone accepts it (even if they aren't happy when it's their sister or whoever) then I think you're Ok. In fact, for me it would be a stellar example of not imposing our mores onto another culture.

That said...

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Agreed with the above.

I think you have control of how sacrificing is portrayed. It was a common-place. Priests and Priestesses did it on and they were viewed as "good". If you write a scene and show how the MC views it as a good thing, it won't take long for people to get on board.

Later when you get to the grim stuff, I bet people will continue to read even if it's something they personally disagree with. It's not something I find in a ton of fantasy, and I know I'd read it just because of it.

Edit: I find myself completely absorbed by the thought of the sacrifices truly showing a change. Melisandre is far from my favorite character in GoT, but I'm watching her every move because what she says ends up happening, and when she sacrifices it comes true. I don't know why it's so perplexing to me, but I dig it. I also think because the sacrifices have a point, it makes it easier for us to accept the wickedness of the Lord of Light. If all these people were dying and nothing magical stemmed from it, I'm pretty sure I would've been praying to the Old Gods for her to die in the worst of ways a longgg time ago.

When it comes to characters crossing moral lines, or doing things generally regarded as reprehensible, I always like to keep in mind something I think of as the Lolita rule.

Which is, your characters can get away with doing pretty much anything, so long as they are consistently entertaining to the reader.