BESTSELLERS IN THE REALMS (Patreon)

When the wider world first saw the Forgotten Realms, the Year of the Prince, 1357 DR, was just drawing to a close.

Let us go back to then, and visit the streets of Suzail, capitol of the fair kingdom of Cormyr, as cold wet winter gripped them and folk huddled indoors to—among other things—read.

Read WHAT, exactly?

Well, at that time Suzail had an avid reading public among residents of all walks of life, not just wealthy nobility and “wannabe nobles” among the wealthiest rising merchants. It also had a healthy chapbook and broadsheet publishing scene, not to mention bustling playhouses (the nobility, by the way, then as now tended to “hire in” players to perform in their residences, rather than attending public performances).

Perennial leading bestsellers were, in descending order:

Firstly: Bodice Rippers, especially thinly-disguised “tell all” adaptations of gossipy “I slept with Lord X or Lady Y or both” revelations.

Secondly: Memoirs of adventuresome lives, either full of derring-do or swindling skullduggery, or travels through vividly-described “exotic locales afar,” or both.

Thirdly: Family Sagas, which is to say rags-to-riches fiction about plucky rural heroes or heroines who by their wits and boldness ascend into the ranks of the wealthy and/or nobility, overcoming dastardly villains to do so.

Fourthly: Family Histories of Cormyrean nobility, gentry, rising merchant families, or long-in-service-to-the-Crown folk. Purportedly non-fiction that’s true, rather than the fictional sagas. Sales of such works directly reflected how entertainingly written they were, and how salacious or revealing their contents.

And fifthly: How To works, mainly useful chapbooks on making your own wine or clothes, or bestiaries of monsters and varmints or pests and how to deal with them.

Easy enough to list, but let’s look at some actual bestsellers of each category.

First, the Bodice Rippers:

Amalthea’s Bright Ventures. Steamy sex scenes and a heroine who likes partners of both genders, is plucky and dense but improbably land-on-her-feet lucky; readers can see troubles and pitfalls she’s blundering into before she does, but she’s merry and naïve and endearing. A slim, attractive tome by Lalandra Thoelur.

The Revel At The Naughty Unicorn. A book-length lurid description of the unfolding debaucheries at a revel held by mischievous young nobles (at a rented, and Cormyr’s nobility wanted everyone to know, ENTIRELY fictitious Suzailan club) in order to catch their elders in compromising situations; it succeeds all too well and involves the club being wrecked and set afire by mischance amid all the lusty doings) by Bors Baskalyn (almost certainly a pen-name, likely of a courtier employed at the Royal Court).

Calathae’s Crossed Blades. The adventures of a crossdressing young country lass of improbably great beauty and sword-skills, who sleeps, duels, and adventures her way through a series of wildly-fictitious noble mansions in search of her True Partner whom she can trust, as opposed to the many partners she finds pleasure with. In the end, Calathae becomes the consort of Lady Shadowbrow, a widowed lady of high rank, and they live happily ever after—though not before some hot scenes no reader in Suzail wanted to miss, involving sex while tied to the back of a galloping horse). Written by “A Country Lass.” This tome caused a minor scandal by asserting that at least two highborn women in Suzail were really female drow using magic to appear human—a belief that has persisted, MOST likely without any truth behind it, in the form of recurring local rumours ever since, that have spawned folk beliefs of hidden she-drow in cities all over the Realms.

And now the Memoirs:

My Misadventures In Marsember. A thinly-disguised recitation of real-life scandals, swindles, and smuggling in the shadier corners of Marsember, but fictionalized as happening to the purported author, a fictitious adventurer by the name of Randovel Rakesword, which ends with Rakesword enchanted by an evil sorceress into becoming her shapeshifting octopus slave and lover, and lurking with her underwater in Marsember, dragging incautious individuals carrying wealth down to watery dooms.

“Randovel Rakesword” is given as the author, but it was likely penned by a bored, “in the know” senior Watch officer or War Wizard.

With Sword And Throwing Knives Across Wildest Faerûn. A partly truthful, but embroidered with colorful tales and gossip that in truth came from the adventures of others, account of a successful dungeon-delving and dragonslaying retired adventurer of Suzail, concealing her true identity behind the pseudonym Desmra Daggermask. Full of catty comments about local habits, fashions, and prominent rulers and nobles that led to it being banned in various places—that is, copies were seized and burned when found, which only made it more highly prized, expensive, and obtainable under counters rather than displayed on them.

Desmra Daggermask was a real person, but had dropped out of sight (or been slain) before this book appeared. Persistent rumors in Suzail say she wed or became the mistress of a prominent Cormyrean noble, taking a new name and telling no one at all who she’d previously been. And bought copies of her own book to furnish her parlors with, along with all the other “scandalized” nobles.

Torthur’s Guide To Farthest Toril. A guidebook of dubious accuracy to places all over the world that are distant from Cormyr, which has sprinklings of useful lore about inns, taverns, local attractions, and currency details for some ports. Written by Aundemand Torthur, who vanished forever a few years later, quite likely meeting his demise as the popular rumor insisted: he was eaten by a wilderland monster whilst incautiously answering a call of nature along a caravan road.

That brings us to the Family Sagas:

High Houses And High Hearts. The tale of how handsome and amiable but coinless and untutored Avander Crickletoad became  Avander Crownadar, successful maker of hats and coaches for the nobility, wooed and lost three noble heiresses, and at last lands Lady Dragonwood, a spirited and passionate—and entirely fictitious; no such noble family exists in Cormyr—widow, to become Lord Dragonwood.

Penned by Nanthaea Joldrall (“who should know better,” as Vangerdahast said darkly).

Blackblades Hall. The saga of the evil, debauched, and decadent Blackblades noble family, who are entirely fictitious and who get justice done to them at swordpoint by plucky heroine Shalambrae Daerove, a swordmaker’s daughter who’s expert with a blade, afire with ‘justice for all, high and low,’ and who falls for the one good scion of the Blackblades, youngest brother Marlynd, and in the end becomes Lady Blackblades to his Lord, when all the rest of the Blackblades have found richly-deserved graves.

Written by Horluth Ansammar, a mild-mannered shop assistant who was run down and killed by a fast coach in an accident widely believed in Suzail to have been no accident at all, but an angry noble who thought the Blackblades were a too-thinly-disguised version of his or her family.

The Ghost Baron. The saga of how a villainous and fictitious Baron Valandruth was finally brought low by three spirited heroines, though not before he passed into undeath yet continued to mistreat the living, thanks to enchantments laid on him by liches he’d entered into unholy alliances with.

Written by Nanthaya Haeroartrees, a pen name for someone who (in Elminster’s opinion) knows her magic, knows her undead, and can wricte “an all too realistically awkward love scene.” Even today, almost a century and a half after its publication, sales are steady and speculation continues as to which family is the real House Valandruth—and may have undead former heroines hidden behind closed doors, commanding the living members of the family in schemes against the Dragon Throne and rival noble families.

Which brings us to the Family Histories:

The Talvurs of Talvurgates. The true family history of the Talvur farming family of Dreamer’s Rock, some members of whom served long as Purple Dragons, others taking up adventuring all over Faerûn, one prospecting in the Moonsea North until maimed by ogres, another becoming a successful pirate sailing the Sea of Fallen Stars, and one daughter marrying a guildmaster in Waterdeep and becoming the lover of no less than three nobles at the same time.

Written by Eldethelle Talvur, whom Elminster says clove close to the truth, because the Talvurs were colorful enough she didn’t need to guild any roses.

By My Plume. The history of the Darendgannon courtier family, whose sigil is a single upright plume, and who have served in the Palace under sixteen Kings of Cormyr, careers that seem to have been well spent writing down fascinating minor details and gossip of Palace life and the personal characters, hobbies, dress, sayings, and private deeds of many Obarskyrs.

Written by Chaethla Darendgannon, the eighty-six-year-old retired Palace maid and last of the Darendgannons. Elminster wishes he’d known her far better, whereas Vangerdahast wishes he’d burned all the diaries she inherited before she could compile them.

And lastly, the How To tomes:

The True And Mostly Compleat Bestiarie Of Cadellis Crowlarkyn, Adventurer. A gossipy and in some places useful compendium of the personal experiences of a retired adventuring rogue of long waxed moustaches and airily flamboyant “camp” manners, pertaining to wild beasts from stinging insects up to raging wyverns, from how to cook and eat them to how to placate them to smells they dislike to how to best them in battle. This is a tome Elminster judged “mostly nonsense, but a good read.”

Cadellis Crowlarkyn retired to Athkatla, where he was briefly a “darling” of bored, wealthy noble wives—and then disappeared. Popular belief was that an angered husband had him murdered and dumped at sea, but Elminster believes he fled, outrunning his would-be slayers, and managed to get aboard a ship bound for Mintarn, where he changed his name and settled down to a quiet retirement.

How To Masterfully Fish The Rivers And Rills of Cormyr. This comprehensive and accurate angling guide, complete with maps of precisely where the best spots to take fish are, is now woefully out of date, but still useful in some locales. Penned by Rudrelko Indarjuth, a far-traveled angler whose fate is unknown.

If those are the classics (in the Common Tongue and in western Faerûn, at least), what about “now,” if you’re looking at the Realms circa 1500 DR?

Well, the popular tomes of “then” all endure, reprinted endlessly by anyone with the means and fancy, as there’s no such thing as copyright, only counterfeiting of something printed by a government.

The best-known writers are currently Volo, if merely notorious will suffice. If you want to add “respectable” to well-known, the writers “everyone” has heard of are:

Uldro Aunghast of Baldur’s Gate (popular sage and historian, author of THE HAERETH, a handbook of botany, geology, and gardening/agricultural lore, and many others)

Tamra Tasildar (writer of many romantic historical epics, including LION OF LIONS)

…and Torndren Murmorl (who pens endless chapbooks simplifying various science and history topics, like a few pages of a real-world Uncle John's bathroom reader).

Waterdeep, Silverymoon, and the Cormyrean and Sembian cities are home to many popular fiction writers, including Amaerra Tontheene, Galdror Ghanalask, Veldren Omdalar, and Sarla Imryrtan. The current fashion is for light-hearted adventure epics that have bloody fight scenes, passionate love scenes, and slapstick pratfall humor all in the same book.

For the reader who only wants one of these elements, look to chapbooks sold in the streets.

And there you have it: the classics every well-read Torilian will at least have heard of, and the trends unfolding right now.