This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers' Podcast.

I hope you enjoy this week's episode,

Arctypal Antagonists for the Queen Arc,

The Invader and the mature adult who has completed the youthful

arcs of Hero and Maiden, and is now challenged to grow into a position

of greater responsibility and leadership. This is the tale of someone who has so far proven herself

worthy of love and responsibility in relationship, community, and perhaps parenthood. But now life calls for a further

transformation into capably accepting a true position of power. The Queen arc can be seen to come after the well-known

hero arc both mythically in the sense that what happens after the hero Arc is often the victorious hero being given a position of leadership.

More prosaicly, it can be seen simply in the life of a modern person who has successfully grown up with the

Hero's quest signified by perhaps going to college getting married or committing to

a career and who is now tending to the needs of the up and

coming generation. If the Hero Arc was about reconciling the potential for power with the goodness of love,

the Queen Arc then is about recognizing that leadership requires not just love,

but also the ability to create order.

As such, the Queen's archetypal antagonists can be seen to be represented by the two-fold threat of invaders from beyond her happy home and the empty

throne that fails to protect her and her family.

Together, these two antagonistic forces are what catalyzed the need for her next

transformative arc. There is a dearth of leadership in the kingdom,

and she is being called to fulfill it.

So once again, we can see in these dualistic archetypal

antagonists the two faces of a story's conflict, outer and inner, plot and theme.

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