Analyzing Fiction's Most Bipolar Race: Minotaurs Peace-Loving Hippies or Monstrous Demons?

Or just dinner with a side of attitude?

To say that Minotaurs’ have enjoyed some measure of popularity is apparent to anyone who has read the likes of Dragonlance & the World of Warcraft novels (or played World of Warcraft). It happens that these two stories have had vastly different takes on this amazing fictional race.

Though not a one for one with one another, it is deeply fascinating how different they are, with both races having a great deal of lore developed over the course of many years. To describe them as amazing isn’t enough to do them justice.

What’s so interesting is that where Elves and Orcs have been utterly deconstructed, and Dwarves largely ignored (with the occasional side-order of deconstruction), Minotaurs remain utterly unblemished. There’s something about this race that seems to cause writers to bring their ‘A-Games’ to the story (with one exception which is Amos Daragon, a French-fantasy series that like all French fantasy novels sucks) (seriously go for French Bande-Dessinees instead, less insulting to your IQs dear readers or just go for Chute d’Innocence).

The roots of the race obviously stem from the Greek myth of Minos’ wife who got a little too frisky with the bull her husband was supposed to sacrifice to Poseidon and barbeque, only for a horned demonic-looking man-eating baby to pop out after a few months. The heifer would go on to be placed by his stepfather near the heart of a maze where he was to be fed princesses and princes from mainland Greece.

The monster was in time slain by Theseus, along with his stepfather, while Ariadne would be stranded on an island until Dyonisus showed up to party with her.

All this is pretty common knowledge to most. What’s so interesting about Minotaurs is that they wouldn’t see the day as a Mythic-genred race until the time of the 80s which means the race was unused in fiction for nigh on 2000 years. Quite the rest period.

At first glance the reason for this is quite apparent, and there’s every reason to ignore them and go with something else in terms of races. And yet, when the DnD games came out (thanks to Gary Gygax and his various companies over the years), Minotaurs were given a new lease on life.

The first few volumes were to simply use them as a standard villain race. Barbarians who hunt and kill people almost mindlessly. This wasn’t terribly interesting, but there wasn’t much need for Minotaurs to be interesting as there was a great need for them to be barbarous murderous monsters.

Now there’s two reasons for this; the first is that this interpretation is the closest to that of the monster from the legend of Theseus.

The second reason and this is one that some mythologists have advanced over the years, one that I quite like is that characters and figures fulfill a certain role that the culture and civilization necessitates. In this case, the the culture had a need at the time of the first few DnD modules for Minotaurs to be brutes and monsters.

But as DnD morphed and changed from 1st Edition gradually into what it later became in the 90s with the release of 3.5, so too did the lore and ideas that surrounded around Minotaurs.

Now part of that is that in the early 80s, the new setting of Dragonlance was released, in which Minotaurs were given a greater degree of complexity. This complexity though was a kind that proved a kind of middle-ground at first between the two extremities Minotaurs were destined to go.

Minotaurs were initially made an evil race that chose to side with Takhisis in a number of her many wars. Notably in the War of the Lance they are stated to have taken her side, however the only named Minotaur was an honourable pirate who was faithful, and loyal to his Captain. In this way the ground-floor was prepared for the day when they would assume a milder role.

They were to afterwards get a MUCH better and fuller interpretation in a positive sense in the form of Kaz the Minotaur who appears first as a kind of bumbling if honourable and fearsome sidekick in the Legend of Huma. He was later given a spin-off novel and was turned into a major character in the lore as he later went on to become the King of the Minotaur islands off in the east.

While the Minotaurs were semi-watered down over the years in Dragonlance, turning into a race which could go either way, which was somewhat interesting they were later primed as the primary evil race in the Age of Mortals, under the direction of Sargonnas in the Minotaur trilogy (I believe it was called).

After this they were established as having conquered Sylvanesti and to have enslaved a number of Elves, and mistreated them terribly. They were for a time in contest with the Ogres only to ally with them again, so that the two were poised to become the biggest force of evil in the east.

Events were headed towards a massive conflict, but of course there were rights issues and Weis & Hickman ran out of good ideas when they later released their modules in the 2010s, many of which were mediocre at best. Their latest book trilogy simply worked to try to retcon and refocus Dragonlance & Krynn into 5e and its successor versions of DnD (whatever they are).

The attempt to ‘wokeify’ or whatever Krynn was ultimately to be shrugged at by fans, as the trouble was that since Dragonlance had effectively died in the early 2000s not with a bang but with a whimper, it had stopped mattering culturally. It had been replaced effectively by Warcraft, notably by Warcraft III which had delivered on far more of the promises that the War of Souls had made.

Dragonlance could not keep up really with Warcraft, with a revived interest in the Hyborian Age/Conan the Cimmerian, in Lord of the Rings and the newly released Silmarillion stories and many other Mythic tales, such as new Zelda stories, Dragon Age, Pathfinder and many other IPs and universes. This was a shame, as there’s much potential in the classic Dragonlance universe, the trouble was always that after the War of the Lance the writers never knew what to do with the IP (when it was an easy fix that most fans knew how to resolve).

Minotaurs though were basically lost in the transition. It happened though that if Dragonlance was busy dropping the proverbial ball or otherwise failing to follow up on the excellent set up with Ogres & Minotaurs, DnD had expanded on the lore regarding the gods, the culture, the weapons, the history and so on in their various guides and manuals with regards to the Minotaurs.

Then came Warcraft III which had served to transform Minotaurs from their previous blood-crazed savage warrior roots into the peace-loving, tree hugging druid-race that they are in WoW.

What’s so interesting though in some of the depictions of Minotaurs in that universe is that it involves warriors that battle not for some twisted version of honour, but rather nature-spirits and territory.

In a way, Minotaurs were made into the ‘Native expy race’ which is an interesting twist in and of itself. Sure, actual Natives were howling barbarians that scalped each other and murdered and tortured and raped indiscriminately, but taking the ‘Noble Savage’ who fights for the ‘World Tree’, and are nervous in some cases about violence is interesting.

It offers a different take. In a way it hearkens back to the herbivore nature of cows, and rather than adding yet ANOTHER race that is obsessed with battle and honour, we get one that wishes for and longs for peace. We get a people skilled in theology, poetry, in the art of diplomacy, compromise and also farming.

This is a very different take.

The trouble is that it’s not caught on as well as it ought to have. The reason I say that is that there’s potential still in a race that will not kill, will not fight and yet still wish to resist invaders encroaching into their lands.

As a writer we can challenge ourselves, try to settle into place a different take on Minotaurs.

There’s room for the crazed barbarians invading the continent, howling and shrieking and sacrificing hearts upon the altar Aztec style as those in Dragonlance some times all but do. Room for the brutes who are mindless or nigh on mindless killing machines like in the 3.5 Monster’s Manual and elsewhere.

There’s also room for the hippy-with-a-twist race who are peaceful and want to act a bit like Jesuits for some god or for the trees. There’s a great many different takes one can use in their fiction.

The goal should be to challenge oneself when writing this race, as there’s a lot of potential here and room for interesting characters no matter what you do.