A New Way to (Mis)Under- stand the Power of Fantasy in Mark Lawrence’s The Broken Empire Trilogy ANDREI VICTOR COJOCARU Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iaşi andreicojocaru93@yahoo.com Focusing on the study of one of the most popular trilogy of our times, in this article we propose an analysis of the manner in which the possibilities of fantasy literature are adapted to the “re- quirements” of pop culture. The fact that fantasy literature is stud- ied methodically (at the level of academic research), but it is also a subject that belongs to mass culture, is a typical attitude of post- modernism: the dialogue between “high” and “consumer” culture and the introduction of the latter in the sphere of academic re- search. However, once the common reader becomes a force whose expectations begin to influence the course of literature, it under- goes a progressive devaluation. As for the novels from The Broken Empire series, we must emphasize from the very beginning that they are not addressed to the readers who prefer fine ironies or subtle cultural connections – instead the three chosen novels are very good examples of irreversible fusion between literature and pop culture. 39 Keywords Grimdark Fantasy; pop culture; anti- hero; innovation; pseudo-medieval imaginary. AIC nr. 28 2/2021 ©2021 AIC DOI: 10.47743/aic-2021-2-0005 In fantasy literature, writing constantly oscillates between convention and innovation. Thus, we notice theappearanceof some new paradigmsthat still retain a common ground with the sources that inspired them. Most often, fantasy prose outlines a world that fits within the bounda- ries of subjectivity, but which presents itself as objective and even “real”. So, the author constructs a veridical illusion – and the fiction “constructs a personal myth” that resembles “the image and likeness” of the author (Cernăuţi-Gorodeţchi, 2002: 113). Although a study of a literary phe- nomenon that is in full creative effervescence is quite risky, in this article we will deal with that subgenre of fantasy literature called Grimdark Fantasy 1 . Unlike the well-known conflicts between good and evil, present in “High Fantasy” – a (sub)genre explicitly called since 1971 (Stableford, 2005: 198) – the latter proposes a world in which there is no longer a well-defined boundary be- tween “good” and “evil”. Due to its importance in this literary paradigm, but also for method- ological reasons, in this article we will focus on The Broken Empire trilogy by Mark Lawrence 2 . 1 It is widely accepted that this subgenre appears around the year 1990 as a reacton to J.R.R. Tolkien’s way to understand and write fantasy literature. So, Grimdark Fantasy could be called an “ant-Tolkien” approach to fantasy writng. 2 American-Britsh writer of fantasy literature, born in 1966. His texts are very popular, being currently trans- lated into more than 20 languages.