The Feminist Problem with Red Sonja - The Second of Conan's Major Love-Interests

To say there’s trouble with Red Sonja as a character is something of an odd statement in the eyes of some. Does this necessarily mean that she’s a detriment to the lore of the Hyborian Age or contributes nothing? Not necessarily.

Red Sonja is one of the most popular of the buxom ladies who have filtered into the Cimmerian’s life, and then wandered out of it. Initially she was a mercenary who kept her army on the hook with strip-teases, lots of coin and a brutal nature, enticing Conan to join her when he was around 15 years old in the early days of the Conan comics over at Marvel she evolved into a very different sort of character. A kind of ‘feminist wed dream’ who never puts out for Conan, always seems to patronize and complains and seems to not be very likeable as a person. So that one is given to wonder if maybe the ‘ideal’ man in her life has simply passed on the opportunity to have her rather than go to the trouble of doing so.

The trouble with Red Sonja though, is also that she in the first issue of Savage Sword of Conan very obviously developed a crush or attraction for her former protege, as she becomes insanely jealous when a barmaid and him start flirting with one another. This incident is a very strange one, but it would become the norm for the strange, chain-mail bikini clad character.

Where other female leads would grow and evolve, namely Valeria and Zenobia, Red Sonja never would. The reason for this is because of her place in comic books and as a sex icon. The thing about superhero comics is that nothing ever changes, and status quo is king, while where the latter is concerned she must always be kept in the flower of her youth that she might always entice young men.

This brings up the question of whether she is so long as the Scarlet Goddess’ blessings rain down upon her immortal or otherwise eternally young.

If she’s not trapped by eternal youth, if we were to guess at her age, she must be approximately four to five years older than Conan, which would peg her at about 19 on their first encounter then afterwards when he is about 21 years old she would be around 25. This is more guesswork and these are minimalists numbers as it could be an age difference as large as twelve or fifteen years at which point there’s some uncomfortable details to discuss about her flirting with someone so much younger. If she’s temporarily immortal and is stuck at say 25 years old, it is still uncomfortable as Red Sonja would still be mentally growing older.

But onto her personality, as she has no character development to speak of over the course of a single run, and there’s the question of whether she ever will get any, it demands some hypothesis about where the story is going. In the Queen Sonja story it is humorous how she is defeated in battle a few times, and the men always decide ‘nope’ and yet with each of them Sonja was the one pining after the man. Likely this lack of desire has to do with her abrasive nature.

Why get with someone who has all the likeability of sand-paper and has little in the way of feminity? Now, the trouble is that the only time in any comics where she’s had a long term relationship have been in a what if with Wolverine and in the main timeline with Conan.

Conan though always moved on, with Red Sonja as said in the Queen Sonja story moving elsewhere. It was certainly a strange run where the staff seemed to want to write her her own epic, only to decide otherwise. It was peculiar.

What is more is that with her uncanny penchant for the status quo she left after the story. My view would thus be that if she’s so resistant to change, she will likely in time die alone, and if she is indeed aging will likely end her days either murdered, or jealous of younger women and thus become a bitter shadow of what she once was.

Given her antipathy towards men, and her sense of superiority of them and her pretending she’s somehow better than other women, I am of the view in a hypothetical situation where she meets Zenobia she’d likely end up demeaning, insulting and even seeking to physically arm the other woman. That is until Conan cast her out of the castle, and does so in a temper.

Thing is Sonja’s story had an out for a good ending, but as it is it cannot end happily. Not with her being so stubborn, resistant to change and misanthropic. She’ll only end up miserable and likely dying in a gutter given her lack of success in storing up money for any real long period.

These are some of the uncomfortable truths about her character. Where Belit was headed in a bleak direction but was saved thanks to her death, Valeria is likely to cling to Conan as long as possible before she meets her own end and Zenobia marries the great Cimmerian, Red Sonja is destined to be abandoned by him and others. Maybe in time she’ll go back to her kingdom, but she may well spend the rest of her days humoured and tolerated, maybe even loved by her former court but as she has no heir or child (and no interest in children) she’ll pass the throne to her steward’s son and that’ll be the end of it.

Red Sonja is destined to be a woman without a legacy, this is the chief reason one should regard her as a failure in-universe. One that will never produce a child, never leave behind a pupil, an heir and whom we hear nothing of later in the Hyborian Age twenty or thirty years after the early Conan period.

And that’s the whole problem she has.

Strictly speaking she should be an independent agent, someone who can wander around doing her own thing, expanding the mythos on her own. Yet she never does. She apes at being Conan without ever adding anything new beyond being T & A.

There’s little world-building value beyond the addition of the Scarlet-Goddess. There’s little that she accomplishes that won’t be erased later by a later tyrant or another thief or whomever.

Let us examine her rescue of princesses, they still must marry for their kingdoms, the kings’ she slays will be replaced by other bad kings. She doesn’t stick around to restore the society to its roots like Conan does on a thematic level, as the place is still in bad shape after she leaves and often times her stories involve her having to double back to that place to clean up and otherwise try to stop a tyrant from invading her friends’ kingdom only to have to do so again later.

Red Sonja is a woman who fancies herself Conan, without having the force of will, the focus, the intelligence and the virtue he has. She also lacks the vigour, chivalry and capability of the likes of Valeria and Zenobia.

Yet she could have been so much more than Valeria-lite. She could have been a true heroine in universe.

With all her stories taking place when she’s in her twenties, and her disappearing from the story when Conan is in his thirties, this tells a far more serious story than any the writers could possibly imagine. Certainly, Queen Sonja is at the end of her timeline and she seems more tempered, wiser and more capable in there, yet she runs away from responsibility at the end right as her seemin twenties are at an end.

All one can guess at is that she disappears not long thereafter, so that the true mystery is ‘Whodunnit?’ Who killed Red Sonja?

And that’s really the only thing left to do with the character; kill her. Refigerate her to develop Conan. Because at the end of the day, who cares? The writers had 40 years to develop her, and after the 80s they just stopped caring and just kept re-hashing the same nonsense.

When the thing about Fantasy is that status-quo is not important. Status-Quo may be KING and GOD in Superhero-comics, but in Fantasy it is slave and a mere passing fancy in the grand scheme of things.

Red Sonja should be made to matter, but sadly she does not in the actual continuity. She’s in all honesty just a bump in the road, a lay-over so to speak Conan had one point before he moved on to the much more beauteous and interesting Belit and Valeria. This is why I dislike her, she’s supposed to be a big deal yet repeatedly is shown not to matter, her ‘accomplishments’ are inadvertently written out or otherwise cease to matter after a few minutes and her over-all story-line doesn’t lead anywhere.

It meanders somewhere along the hills of Hyrkania. When she can be made to matter, she can be turned into a tribal chieftain, one who gives rise to a great dynasty, or be made into a magnificent Queen-Regnant who mothers one of the greatest Kings ever born, maybe someone who by the time of the Hour of the Dragon looks westwards with admiration to Conan and in time comes to admire him and ally with him at one point.

Or she can be turned into a villainous, a jealous wicked harem-member who seeks always out of jealousy to spite Zenobia until at last she is redeemed right before her final moments.

Anything but the long silence ahead of her, the indifference of the grave on a journey with more in common with that of Ash Ketchum than that of Conan, where she’s supposed to never age and never cease wandering. Except at least his journey in recent seasons led to him settling down in Vermilion City according to my brother, so that she’s out-Ash Ketchumed Ash Ketchum.

This is not to say every female character should end her days in an imperial harem like Valeria likely did, or like a Queen-Consort like Zenobia. But there should be some thought for the end of her journey, which prompts me to say that there must be an end at some point.

Red Sonja should never have been treated like a superheroine. She exists within the Hyborian Age, which is to say mythological age/world. One in which the rules of fantasy should apply, and thus there should be an ending in sight. So when writing your female characters especially your female warriors, never forget their feminity and that they require solid endings just like your male heroes do.

Conan has an ending. Aragorn has one. Raistlin has one. Huma has one. Bowen has one. Eowyn has one. Arwen has one. Luthien has one. Zenobia has one.

Also, remember to never forget the core of your heroine, Red Sonja at some point moved away from what she ought to be. This cost her her story, her likeability and her essence (sadly).

And before you say ‘he’s a hater’, I am not coming at this from the pov of someone who hates Red Sonja. I do but I don’t. I found her ridiculous and idiotic when going after the bar-wench out of jealousy. But that said, I found her loveable in some of the 80s stories and in one of the novels (from what little I read of the 3rd of her novels).

I sincerely wish for the best, for her as a character and would like her to age, to develop and overcome similar challenges that Conan did and to have her own ‘Hour of the Dragon’. The trouble is that I don’t see that happening anytime soon (not unless I get a job for Dynamite and get paid to write up a proper Red Sonja story for them).

A shame as Red Sonja had a great deal of potential as a character, yet she has become in a way the perfect example of a feminist story; sensual beginnings, only to end up miserable, alone and cast off by a world she turned her back upon first.