From SRP author Taylen Carver:
A recent piece over on LitHub called “The Outsize Influence of Wales on Fantasy, Music, and Movies” got me nodding so hard I nearly fell off my chair. If you haven’t read it yet, go do that, then come back here. Or do it after.
Because yes — Wales. The land of misty hills, mythic kings, and a language that sounds like a harp arguing with a raven. Of course it’s shaped fantasy literature. Of course Tolkien built Elvish off the bones of Welsh. That detail made me laugh, because once you know it, it’s absurdly obvious. No wonder Elvish is so lovely to listen to. It sings with the same melodic, lilting beauty I remember from my step-grandfather’s accent — he was from Pontypridd.
And yes, I have a personal stake here. Somewhere in my cobbled-together ancestry, past the English antecedants, there’s a glimmer of Celtic blood from my Iberian-Celtic great-grandparents. A smidge. A cultural orphan’s claim, maybe, but I’ll take it.
Because here’s the thing: being a white, straight Caucasian doesn’t come with much in the way of cultural texture. It’s the unmarked checkbox. Everyone else seems to belong to something. I used to envy that — the clarity, the rootedness. Discovering the Celtic threads in my heritage gave me something to hold onto. Something mythic. Something old.
And as a fantasy writer, that matters.
Wales, Meet Magorian
The influence is all over my work. Under one of my other pen names, I’ve written a whole series about King Arthur, rooted in the Welsh mythology, not the medieval Norman version.
Wales features strongly in the Magorian & Jones series, where one of the two main characters is, quite literally, Welsh. And no, that’s not a coincidence. The stories draw from Welsh and broader Celtic myth like a spring — sometimes directly, sometimes in subtle infusions. If you’ve read them, you’ve probably spotted the echoes: the otherworldly thresholds, the enchanted artifacts, the sense of lingering magic in forgotten places.
The Mabinogion, that gloriously weird tangle of medieval Welsh tales, has been one of my muses for years. King Arthur? Absolutely a Welsh invention, thank you very much. Forget the shiny Norman version — give me the raw, wild, mist-wrapped warrior-poet version from the hills of Cymru any day.
I don’t plan to stop mining that seam. The landscape, the history, the language — it all hums with story. With possibility. With a kind of ancient music you can only hear if you sit quietly long enough… preferably in a drizzle, on a hillside, with a flask of something strong.
Why It Matters
I think fantasy thrives when it’s rooted in something real — not realistic, but real. Real landscapes. Real myths. Real feelings of identity and longing and cultural memory. Wales gives me that. It offers both the mythic grandeur and the gritty texture that fantasy needs.
So yes, if you’ve ever wondered why my stories tend to feel a bit mistier than most, or why the magic doesn’t sparkle so much as murmur from deep beneath the earth… blame Wales. Blame the red dragon. Blame my stubborn belief that the best magic is the kind that feels like it might actually be hiding just out of sight, behind the next cairn.
And if you love that too — well, you’re in good company.
Want to read the original piece that sparked all this?
Find it here: The Outsize Influence of Wales on Fantasy, Music, and Movies – LitHub
Taylen Carver
SRP Fantasy Author
Browse Taylen’s books here.
