Jes Battis' modern retelling of the King Arthur myth centres queer, trans and neurodivergent heroes
Alice Wu | CBC Books | Posted: August 18, 2023 7:56 PM | Last Updated: August 18, 2023
The Regina-based author spoke with Ryan B. Patrick about their latest novel, The Winter Knight
Growing up as a queer, neurodivergent kid in B.C., Jes Battis identified most with the fringe characters in the fantastical stories they loved. Their latest novel, The Winter Knight, is an urban fairy tale and detective story that places queer, trans and neurodivergent characters at the heart of the story.
The Winter Knight reimagines the myth of the knights of the round table and sets it in modern-day Vancouver. When one of the knights is found dead, Valkyrie investigator Hildie is assigned to the case. One of her suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain. As deaths pile up, Hildie and Wayne must face magic and mayhem to solve the mystery.
Battis is the author of the Occult Special Investigator and Parallel Parks series and the novel Night Child, which was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. They are also a professor at the University of Regina, where they teach medieval literature and LGBTQ studies.
Battis spoke with The Next Chapter's Ryan B. Patrick about The Winter Knight.
All your past work explores the intersection between pop culture and myths. How did stories of the supernatural shape your childhood?
I grew up as a socially awkward queer and autistic kid in a small town in B.C. with no resources. I didn't really see anyone who looked like me. So I was drawn to some of these high fantasy stories. I was supposed to connect with the knights, I suspect, but I connected more with these shadowy wizard-like figures, particularly because they didn't seem to have to follow the rules of society. They just did what they wanted.
I connected more with these shadowy wizard-like figures, particularly because they didn't seem to have to follow the rules of society. - Jes Battis
What are the biggest challenges Wayne faces once he realizes that the knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver?
Wayne is modelled after a fairly popular knight in Arthurian mythology, Sir Gawain. Gawain is full of paradoxes because he's very young and untested, but he also has this reputation that precedes him because Arthur is his uncle. Everyone thinks that he is an amazing knight.
When I would teach stories about Gawain, my students were always interested in how kind of awkward he was. I thought that might translate into a college student with a lot of social anxiety.
He's really been kept at a distance from his family's heritage and from the magical community. As he explores more of that fantastic world, he has to become more comfortable with his mind and body and various kinds of environmental sensitivities. Like, he has meltdowns. He sometimes has a hard time articulating his desires. The challenges are both epic but also very personal.
LISTEN | Jes Battis on The Winter Knight:
Kai is a trans sorceress, as well as Wayne's best friend. What's their relationship like?
Kai and Wayne are each other's support system, but I was really intentional in not transforming Kai into a particular stereotype that we sometimes see of trans characters, where they're only there to advise the cis characters. We see this with disabled characters often as well. They're there to offer advice and be witty and wise, but they don't really have a story of their own. With Kai, I wanted her to have her own life apart from Wayne. She has a whole relationship that he doesn't know about until about two-thirds through the book.
It was important to me to reach out to sensitivity readers and talk to friends as well, just because my experience of moving through the world is not that of a trans femme person or Chinese woman. I tried to be as careful as possible in crafting Kai's point-of-view.
What makes Vancouver such a rich place to explore the power of myth, be it European or Indigenous?
Myths survive for one of two reasons: either they have to do with lessons learned about conduct or they persist through warfare and colonization. There's a reason why when I teach a class on King Arthur, all of my students have some knowledge about that, but they often don't know anything about Treaty 4 in Saskatchewan.
Myths survive for one of two reasons: either they have to do with lessons learned about conduct or they persist through warfare and colonization. - Jes Battis
In terms of setting the story in Vancouver, I thought it would be interesting to get these characters to think about themselves as European myths and what that means. I was intentional — or tried to be intentional — with not having any overlap between this European magical system and Coast Salish worldviews and ways of knowing, which are not mythologies. They have more to do with conduct and life.
The scholar Daniel Heath Justice, who teaches at University of British Columbia, has this great article where he talks about how racist high fantasy narratives are, particularly Tolkien. I tried to weave that sense of "why should these myths even still exist, and at what cost?"
Why do you think it's important to tell stories of gender expression, particularly in light of current challenges and struggles faced by queer and trans communities?
The issue is that particularly white religious conservatives don't want trans people to exist in public. Our existence suggests there might be something beyond the traditional systems that undergird modern life.
I'm not even intentionally trying to populate the novel with queer and trans and neurodiverse and disabled people. Those are just my people. - Jes Battis
With The Winter Knight, I was looking at my own friends and family and colleagues and thinking, these are the people that are in my life. I'm not even intentionally trying to populate the novel with queer and trans and neurodiverse and disabled people. Those are just my people. It was important to me that these people get to be the heroes in my book and in genre stories.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.