The Unseen Queen

Abstract

The Unseen Queen is a YA Fantasy Novel that explores race relations through two character's eyes: a white-coded queen and her black-coded serving girl/maid, in a world where Emarys' people have begun colonising parts of Xuxa's land. The crux of the novel is the curse that has been placed on Emarys by her uncle which they embark on a quest to break. This quest takes the characters out of Emarys' land and into the helm of colonisation and slavery. The novel uses the curse to represent the white gaze, which is deadly to both black and white people, having different bearings on both races. Through Emarys and her curse, the novel explores the way in which white people often refuse to see racism or racist acts, and also demonstrates that if someone is forced to confront the pain their own people are afflicting on another group through their own life circumstances, they are more likely to make their world views more flexible and undergo some level of transformation in their ideology. The Unseen Queen asks what friendship between black and white people looks like and explores the roles of black and white people in the dismantling of racism. The novel argues that black people cannot destroy or end racism, white people must give up the power it gives them in order to tear it down.