Reading Time – 7 Minutes

Sci-fi and historical fiction are great, but fantasy is my favorite type of fiction by far and always has been. I’ve said before that if money wasn’t a priority in my life I would be a full-time fantasy fiction writer (and be very poor).

I write fantasy fiction for fun when I can and have written three entire fantasy novels for my own personal amusement and practice.

I’ve written in The Unchained Man about how the Alpha Male fictional characters I saw in movies and on TV back in the 1980s formulated much of what I considered masculine and how I wanted to emulate them. However, I did not discuss the Alpha Male characters I experienced reading about in fictional novels which were an even bigger influence.

If you were wondering, the reason I used TV/movies as reference points instead of novels is because more people are familiar with TV/movies. What percentage of people know who Captain Kirk is? Uh, pretty much everyone. What percentage of people know who Hank Rearden, Corwin of Amber, Ian Dunross, or Karsa Orlong are? Yeah. There you go. Sometimes you need to write to the lowest common denominator.

You can glean a much deeper understanding of fictional characters from novels than you can in TV/movies because (usually) you know what the characters are thinking, why they do what they do, and they tend to do a lot more in a novel (or series of novels) than they often can in TV/movies.

This way, when you experience the character, you think “Now THIS is who I want to be” more than “Wow, that guy is cool.”

There are many fictional Alpha Male characters from novels, primarily fantasy novels, who I’ve experienced in my life. But if I had to choose my favorite one of all time, it would be easy: Corwin of Amber.

He’s from the Chronicles of Amber written by Roger Zelazny in the 1970s. Thank goodness Hollywood has never done an adaptation of these novels (though they have tried) and I hope to hell they never do so they can’t ruin it. Sadly, there is recent news that Steven Colbert might executive produce a series based on these novels. If they do this, they will butcher it to all hell. But such is the era in which we live.

Anyway, it’s a series of ten short novels plus a handful of supplemental short stories. The first five are about Corwin who relays the story in first person, the second five are about his son Merlin. The first five are much better since Corwin barely makes an appearance in the latter five (though the latter five are also pretty good).

I don’t have time to summarize the entire story and setting of these novels, nor do I want to give away any major spoilers. I strongly recommend you read at least the first five novels if you like fantasy and Alpha Male characters. (I will not spoil anything significant about them here.)

The summary is that Corwin is an “Amberite,” one of about 20 grown children of a godlike ruler of a magic-filled dimension called Amber, the most important dimension in the multiverse. He is much stronger, smarter, and tougher than a human, as are his siblings, who all vie for power to become the next King of Amber after their father mysteriously vanishes.

He can travel to other dimensions in the multiverse, including our Earth, where he often spends some time. He starts the saga there, with amnesia (he doesn’t remember who or what he is) in a hospital. The story unfolds from his perspective from there.

Here are just some of the traits I appreciated about him when I read these books.

He’s resilient. He’s not the strongest of his siblings, but he has the most endurance. He pulls the body of a friend of his through a jungle for days. He fights on when everyone else gets tired. At one point he gets the eyes burned from his skull and he regenerates them (though it takes time). He’s relentless. He doesn’t stop.

He’s a smartass. He is constantly joking around and making light of things. When a terrifying demon creeps into his bedroom in the middle of the night to murder him, it says, “FEEL YOUR FEAR!” He smiles and replies, “Feel your own.” He has no problem punching guys in the balls or tricking enemies and thereby “dishonorably” winning battles. He doesn’t play by the rules, unlike most of the other characters in the story who are more refined and classy.

He has sex with lots of women. This was written in the 1970s, far before the left-wing/feminist/woke takeover of pop culture, so Corwin is regularly having sex with various women in numerous dimensions. There ends up being one woman he likes the best (sort of; it gets complicated), but he’s still not monogamous with her. It is implied that, in his desire for women, he is most like his father in that regard (since his dad spawned many children from many women, a fact that offends many of his more appropriate siblings).

He grows and changes. He’s not a static person who never evolves or never learns his lessons, very unlike most other masculine characters in fiction. Throughout most of the story, he attempts to become the new king by going up against some of his brothers and sisters (one hated brother in particular). However, as the story unfolds, he starts to realize that he may not want that after all and may desire something else instead.

He’s cool. He’s thousands of years old but looks like he’s in his early 30s. Dark hair, dark eyes, he wears all black, with silver gloves and a single silver rose. He has a powerful magical sword called Grayswandir that is always available to him wherever he goes in the multiverse. It’s always nearby; if he ever needs it, he just reaches into a cupboard or tree and pulls it out. He has several armies who obey him in various dimensions whenever he needs.

He’s clever. He’s tough and badass but he’s not a brute. Of his many siblings, he’s usually several steps ahead of most of them (with one or two exceptions) and he’s a clever strategist. He’s intuitive and has a good feel for when people are lying to him.

He’s flawed. He’s not a Mary Sue. As great as he is, he sometimes makes mistakes, including big ones. Sometimes he loses. And man, when he loses, he loses very badly (I won’t get into spoilers, but if you’ve read the books you know what I mean). But again, whenever he’s down, he doesn’t stay down. He recovers, gets back up, and keeps moving forward, just like Rocky said.

He takes risks. This is a big one. Sometimes with characters like Conan, Batman, or Han Solo, you never feel like they’re in real danger. Even when they’re battling enemies or doing something dangerous you have this feeling that you know they’ll kick everyone’s asses and come out on top no matter what happens. There’s no sense of stakes or danger. With Corwin, the opposite is true. He lives in a dangerous world like Game of Thrones where people die and/or get really fucked up, and he knows it. Several times through the story he takes some big risks (including in the very first book), and when he does, you brace for impact and worry as if you were taking the risks yourself. It’s great stuff.

He’s outcome independent, at least as much as is possible in a non-Alpha Male 2.0 story. He doesn’t give a shit about what other people think about him. He just wants what he wants and he’s going to get it. Even many of his allies are often confused or even embarrassed at the things he does, and he doesn’t give a shit.

Do I like everything about him? No. He makes a few decisions that I would never make in the same circumstance. It’s slightly implied he has a little bit of a thing for one of his sisters and that’s pretty gross (though it does show outcome independence I guess). He also, at least at first, desires to rule over a kingdom which isn’t very Alpha 2.0 and not something I’d be interested in.

Regardless, he is my favorite Alpha Male character of all time and I highly recommend these books. (Read them before Steven Colbert permanently destroys them.)

If you want more commentary on fictional, fantasy, or Alpha Male characters in the future, let me know. I know not everyone gives a shit about fantasy or sci-fi so I try to keep my love of fantasy fiction out of my internet content (with the notable exception of the comic book Black Dragon and Pink Firefly which I have big plans for) but let me know if you like this kind of content.

To have your question featured here where I will write an entire article addressing it, click here. You will always remain anonymous.

Question of The Week

Are There Women Who Aren’t Attracted To Alphas?

A.F. writes –

By any definition, an alpha male is not someone who needs “rescuing” from a woman.  But there seems to be this concept of the woman who wants/desires men she can “save”. I know at least three girls like this. They have dated men who weren’t alpha but men they could take care of.

 My questions for you are:

1) Has this been your observation as well? Are there women that are really like this?

2) If yes, is this some exception to the “women want alphas” rule?

3) If yes, are the techniques to game these women any different?

First of all, the only reason you’re asking this question is that you want to have sex with one or more of these three women, which is a terrible frame to have. Go out into the world and find new women and I think you’ll discover that’s actually easier (and in most cases, the quality of women is higher). So just be aware of this. It’s a problem.

Moving on to your question…

One of the most difficult things men have trouble understanding about women is that to women, WANT and DESIRE are two different things.

This especially applies to stronger women, more dominant or masculine women, women over age 33, or women in provider-hunting mode.

These women DESIRE the cool, sexy, masculine, badass, ripped, square-jawed, irresponsible, inappropriate, politically incorrect, offensive Alpha Male on Instagram.

But do they WANT him? Hell no! They want nothing to do with him. In most cases that guy wouldn’t last 15 minutes with these women on a first date!

Instead, these women (not all of them, but many of them) WANT the nice, compliant, slightly chubby dad-bod beta male with a good job who dresses like a dork, kisses her ass, and says “Yes Dear” when she barks at him to take out the trash. That’s the guy she’ll marry or girlfriend-up.

Will this guy turn her on? Hell no! He’ll turn her off, at least eventually. This is why she’ll eventually dump him, divorce him, or (less likely) cheat on him with an Alpha Male like me.

This is why 70-80% of divorces and initiated by women and 75% of girlfriend/boyfriend relationships are terminated by women. They get the guy they WANT (not DESIRE), then they’re happy for a brief while, then they’re turned off, then they leave, then they find a new guy and repeat the entire process.

Most modern-day Western women spend decades doing this until they hit their mid to late 50s. It’s a lot of work and quite exhausting. But that’s what they do.

How do you game these women? The simple answer is that you don’t even try (unless she already has a beta boyfriend and she’s just going to be an FB to you; you’re her boy toy on the side). Alpha Male 2.0s won’t be happy in a serious relationship with a woman like this.