# Thoughts on the medieval setting common to fantasy **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 4, 2009, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885 "2009-09-04T17:18:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/41 "2009-09-07T19:25:05Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > (Something I read somewhere when I must have been twelve or so, I don’t even remember if it was a novel or a role-playing system, but-) > > In some fictional fantasy world there was an extremely simple, common, elementary spell, which even the lowest hedge wizard or village witchwife could do and was universal among all magical creatures. The spell caused the damage done by any blunt impact to depend entirely on the mass of the projectile, rather than it’s mass times velocity. Essentially, the faster something hit you the faster it would bounce off, with the damage it inflicted being constant. So small fast projectiles like bullets (if they had existed) did no more damage than slingstones. Only edged or pointed weapons that cut you, or blunt impact weapons dependent on sheer mass like maces or warhammers could inflict any damage. I remember that one feature of that world was that it heavily favored large body size and mass, which explained the abundance of 6 1/2 and 7-foot tall warriors armed with broadswords and double-bladed battleaxes. 😛 I’d be careful not to lean against any large rocks in such a universe. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/42 "2009-09-07T19:28:07Z")
What is urban fantasy? Like The Dresden Files and Harry Potter? I love medieval fantasy, but I haven’t overdosed on it by reading several 5+ volume LotR-wannabe series or playing every RPG EVAR like I know a lot of people have. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/43 "2009-09-07T19:43:30Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > What is urban fantasy? Like The Dresden Files and Harry Potter? I don’t consider Harry Potter urban fantasy. Dresden Files, yes. Though Butcher is one of the few urban fantasists with male protagonists. Usually, they star a Buffy-like young woman of power. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/44 "2009-09-07T20:16:27Z")
Longing for or interest in medieval fantasy isn’t new. In the early 1600s, Cervantes spoofed the whole genre with Don Quixote romanticizing back to the era of knighthood etc. In the early 19th Century, again, Sir Walter Scott was immensely popular with tales of knights and castles. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/45 "2009-09-07T22:49:16Z")
> [@magnusblitz](#): > > I’ve yet to see a magic system which couldn’t be relatively easily defeated/outdone by guns. (Probably one of the reasons the Harry Potter books bother me, it’s a bit of a stretch to believe that no one in the Wizarding world would have just gotten a Glock and solved all their Voledemort problems). Not a very good example, because destroying Voldemort’s body would really only be a temporary setback for him. Since this isn’t an HP thread I won’t get into spoilers for the last two books, but even if someone had blown Voldemort to smithereens he still could have returned in a new body (as he does in the 4th book). Other wizards could be killed with guns, but if the killer was also a wizard then I don’t see any real advantage to using a gun instead of magic. Even kids still at Hogwarts would know plenty of spells that could be used to distract, disarm, or disable a gunman. A wizard taken by surprise could be killed with a gun, but no more easily than he could be killed with a curse. The same would be true in many fantasy magic systems. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/46 "2009-09-07T23:38:33Z")
> [@typoink](#): > > Which, as you point out, always amuses me because the way most fantasy writers write such settings nowadays basically amounts to writing about a modern town where the cars neigh, the houses have thatch roofs, and people speak in a creole of Modern and Early Modern English. > > People seem to want non-medieval fantasy; I’d like to see CONVINCINGLY medieval fantasy for once. 😉 I get a bit annoyed by very modern attitudes about gender roles and sexual relations in a book supposedly set in the Middle Ages. Things can also go too far the other way – the Middle Ages weren’t the Victorian Era, no matter what some Victorians would have liked to have people think – but I don’t like seeing cultural values treated as some minor obstacle. I’m fine with fantasy cultures that clearly have different values than historic cultures (if both men and women can become powerful magic users that would be an obvious reason for early social equality between the sexes), and stories where a person goes against the established values of their own culture are fine too. But if the latter is the case it should actually be difficult for the character to go their own way. It shouldn’t go like this: **PRINCESS:** Oh, it’s so boring being a princess. I think I’ll be a knight. \*\*KING: \*\*You can’t, you’re a girl! **PRINCESS:** Yes I can, I can do anything boys can do! \*\*KING: \*\*You’re right. How foolish I was. Here’s your sword. Not that dealing with sexism has to be a Big Serious Issue in an otherwise lighthearted story. I think Patricia C. Wrede handled this pretty well in her YA novel _Dealing With Dragons_. The heroine, a princess who doesn’t want to play the typical storybook princess role, runs away to live with the dragons. She is able to lead an independent life this way, but her family apparently never accepts this (I don’t think she ever sees them again) and she has to put up with well-intentioned knights and princes trying to “rescue” her all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/47 "2009-09-08T00:09:18Z")
One reason I love the Dresden novels is that Dresden has no problem with using a .44 Magnum when appropriate to deal with problems. He’s pointed out that quite often his enemies never expect him to use something mundane like a gun, just because he’s a wizard. > [@Malthus](#): > > I’d be careful not to lean against any large rocks in such a universe. 😃 I don’t remember exactly how that was handled. (This was something I think I read in the school library thirty-five years ago). If I’m not conflating it with another story, it was one of those “person from our world is transported to an alternate realm” deals, and the person involved was a physics professor. It might have been something like the damage you took from an impact would be proportional to the momentum (mass times velocity) rather than the kinetic energy (one-half mass times velocity squared). I’d have to reread the book because I could easily have misunderstood the pseudo-scientific explanation. But the point was that trying to kill someone with a bullet that weighed ounces or less simply didn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/48 "2009-09-08T01:29:05Z")
I like urban fantasy too, because it’s set in the here and now, but it is in pretty stark contrast to sword and scorcery fantasy. _Are_ there fantasy stories set after the 1700s, but before ~1985? ([War For the Oaks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_fantasy) was published in 1987 and sparked the urban fantasy subgenre) I’d love to read a fantasy novel set in the 1940s or 50s, for example, even if written far more recently. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/49 "2009-09-08T01:32:40Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I like urban fantasy too, because it’s set in the here and now, but it is in pretty stark contrast to sword and scorcery fantasy. _Are_ there fantasy stories set after the 1700s, but before ~1985? Greg Keyes’s The Age of Unreason starts in the late 1600s. I haven’t read it so I don’t know how much time it covers. _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_ is set in an alternate 1800s. Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle books are set in the late 1800s. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/50 "2009-09-08T01:33:09Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > **PRINCESS:** Oh, it’s so boring being a princess. I think I’ll be a knight. > \*\*KING: \*\*You can’t, you’re a girl! > **PRINCESS:** Yes I can, I can do anything boys can do! > \*\*KING: \*\*You’re right. How foolish I was. Here’s your sword. That kind of happened in Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series, except that the third line of dialogue took several years, and Alanna wasn’t a princess, and she disguised herself as her twin brother, who wanted to be a wizard, and shit seriously flew when she was revealed. In fact, I can’t think of a series where it wasn’t very difficult for a woman to assume the military duties traditionally assigned to men. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/51 "2009-09-08T04:28:03Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > In one of my worlds, gunpowder is the same composition as red dragon pheremones. You know how moths will fly miles for a female’s scent? Now imagine instead, 5 or 6 randy male red dragons rock up…and find an alchemist rather than a female. Hilarity (brief & blazing) ensues everytime. There are never any survivors for miles around. The formula is now more proscribed and regulated than, say, modern nuclear weapons are. Oh, now, that would have been lots of fun to watch…if it wasn’t MY character who was the alchemist. What’s more, it’s actually somewhat logical. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/52 "2009-09-08T15:32:46Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I like urban fantasy too, because it’s set in the here and now, but it is in pretty stark contrast to sword and scorcery fantasy. _Are_ there fantasy stories set after the 1700s, but before ~1985? ([War For the Oaks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_fantasy) was published in 1987 and sparked the urban fantasy subgenre) I’d love to read a fantasy novel set in the 1940s or 50s, for example, even if written far more recently. Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede have written books set in a magical alternate-Regency. _Sorcery and Cecelia a.k.a. The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, The Grand Tour,_ and _The Mislaid Magician_ ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/53 "2009-09-08T15:58:53Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I like urban fantasy too, because it’s set in the here and now, but it is in pretty stark contrast to sword and scorcery fantasy. _Are_ there fantasy stories set after the 1700s, but before ~1985? ([War For the Oaks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_fantasy) was published in 1987 and sparked the urban fantasy subgenre) I’d love to read a fantasy novel set in the 1940s or 50s, for example, even if written far more recently. Try the novels of [Thorne Smith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne_Smith)? ---
**Author:** ![plankter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ba0ec/32.png) [@plankter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plankter)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/54 "2009-09-08T23:28:32Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > See also Poul Anderson’s essay [On Thud and Blunder](http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/), which was IIRC written in the '70s but describes the kind of cliched, poorly-research pseudo-Medieval Europe fantasy setting that remains common today. I started reading the essay, and a bit over halfway through fetched up against this: > [@](#): > > A stallion […] is not safe to have around a menstruating woman. That hit the FAIL gong, _hard_. The rest of Anderson’s text will have to wait until my inner ear stops ringing. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/55 "2009-09-09T00:11:59Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > In fact, I can’t think of a series where it wasn’t very difficult for a woman to assume the military duties traditionally assigned to men. My little Princess Knight story was an exaggeration, I’ve never seen anything that silly in a serious novel. But I have seen characters ignore Medieval gender roles and sexual taboos with little or no consequences. A female characters setting out on an adventure or quest might for instance decide to wear trousers instead of a dress. In the Middle Ages it was considered acceptable, even admirable, for a woman to disguise herself as a man in order to protect herself…but if she wore trousers out of convenience or personal preference that wasn’t just being a tomboy. It was a serious offense and in extreme cases could result in the woman being burned at the stake\*. Both men and women in Medieval/pseudo-Medieval fiction often have very modern attitudes toward sex and romance, and are by the standards of the time quite impractical about marriage. This isn’t to say I want to read fantasy novels where everyone lives up to Medieval ideals (something few real people ever managed anyway), I just think it’s silly to pretend that people in the Middle Ages had all the same social values as people 500+ years later. \*This was the legal justification for the execution of Joan of Arc, although the English obviously had other reasons for wanting to make an example of her. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/56 "2009-09-09T00:21:49Z")
The problem with holding fantasies to the standards of medievalism is that they aren’t set on Earth. Well, most of them aren’t, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/57 "2009-09-09T02:18:04Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > The problem with holding fantasies to the standards of medievalism is that they aren’t set on Earth. Well, most of them aren’t, anyway. Where do they get the horses, then? 🙂 I don’t think a fantasy novel should be held to a strict standard of historic realism, but if an author wants to use a Medievalesque setting then they shouldn’t just ignore all the difficult things about living in a pre-industrial feudal society. It’s as silly as forgetting that horses need to eat and sleep. In a fantasy it’s possible for authors to invent their own reasons why people in a pre-industrial feudal society _wouldn’t_ have Medieval values or Medieval problems, and good fantasy authors do just that. For instance, it makes perfect sense for fantasy characters to have premarital sex\* pretty casually if they can get reliable birth control from a local witch (paging Nanny Ogg!) or if their culture doesn’t stigmatize unwed mothers and illegitimate children. \*Only Firefox spellcheck prevented me from posting this as “premartial sex”. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/58 "2009-09-09T02:25:18Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Where do they get the horses, then? 🙂 They gots people, why not ponies! It seems like you’re thinking that whatever attitudes we have in this world are somehow inevitable unless specifically accounted for. To me, authors get to make up rules without apology for what history might have been. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/59 "2009-09-09T05:07:22Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > It seems like you’re thinking that whatever attitudes we have in this world are somehow inevitable unless specifically accounted for. To me, authors get to make up rules without apology for what history might have been. No, I’m saying that if they’re going to make up their own rules they have to actually make up their own rules. All of these rules don’t need to be spelled out for the reader, but it’s lazy to set a story in generic Fantasyland without ever giving any thought to how things work. Good fantasy writers think about how their fantasy world functions and what people living in such a world would be like. Their attitudes don’t need to be consistent with any real period in history, but they should be consistent with the setting. They _shouldn’t_ just be the attitudes common in the author’s own time and place if this doesn’t make sense within the setting. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885/60 "2009-09-09T08:14:07Z")
My two pennorth,escapism. The present day world is all around me,with or without Zombies. Disc World isn’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thoughts-on-the-medieval-setting-common-to-fantasy/508885.md?page=4)