Then authors shouldn't base their worlds on medieval life
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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My pet peeve is when a fantasy setting is based firmly on European medieval society, but operates in an early modern capitalist economy, instead of feudalism. This is most fantasy
It is easier to imagine [an entirely different world with magic and dragons and shit], than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Right? Where are the serfs!?
Writing theory 
and all the anachronistic plate armor too! as a setting, "medieval times" is fantasy even without the magic
Capitalism's development was not such an 'all at once' phenomenon and the capstone of its supremacy still took many years after many dictatorships of the bourgeoisie were formed. England for instance, especially around its metropoles had well established manufacturing industries that were overcoming guild limitations and a thriving merchant class that were becoming embedded as the early capitalists, in like the 1600s well before steam power and the industrial revolution.
China for example is in the process of developing socialism, and a medieval fantasy world could be at the nascent developmental stages of Capitalism.
Sure, but those developments are very focused on manufacturing. Like off the top of my head, Skyrim represents it's farmers as either independent farmers who own their own land, or wage workers employed by those farmers. They travel to towns and bring their produce to the local markets, and seemingly own all of their produce. So what do the Jarls own? They're supposed to be lords, but they are really just generic governors. Similarly, it seems that anyone in Skyrim can cut down trees if they want to, they don't need logging rights to cut and sell wood.
The Witcher 3 has a much more fleshed out economy from what I've played (only about 15 hours). The farmers, from what I can tell, are mostly wage workers, but the world is very clearly an early modern setting minus gunpowder, rather than a middle ages setting.
Agriculture is a very good benchmark for examining how an economy is represented. When a medieval fantasy setting has serfs rather than proles on a farm, it's evidence that at the very least, the writer understands that different economic systems exist.
Middle Earth seems to work in its own way, which I'm happy about. The hobbits seem to be a fairly communal society, with noble families being mostly a formality. But crucially, hobbits seem to have their own understanding of productivity and economics, and thats fun and imaginative for a fantasy setting. The worst is when writers just crowbar capitalism into a feudal-inspired society because they can't imagine anything else.
if they thought about it at all, they probably decided the jarls collect rent in cash, like land lords did in the 1800s (or today, for that matter) from their tenant farmers.
a cash based economy in medieval times? lol
for you and others that enjoyed your post, have a look at the game 'pentiment'. it's a little indie rpg set in austria in a small town straddling the late medieval and early renaissance and tells a story of social change.
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Peasants have to annually pay their feudal lord one (1) gold coin that they were somehow able to procure despite living miles away from the nearest city in the middle of a village nobody from that nearest city knows exist.
This still could be feudal in its decline which saw the emergence of market economies, but generally I agree. I've soften on that opinion as I learned more about the social and economic development of merchant lead reorganization.
I was talking about GoT with a friend and told them that the constant sexual assault put me off watching it and they were like "Yeah, but that's what it was like back then."
This reminds me of the Outlander series. The author has virtually every one of her characters get r@p£d, most multiple times. I think she just isn't creative enough to come up with other storylines. But the fans justify it by saying, "that's what it was like back then." But I don't think that everyone was constantly being r@p£d, multiple times throughout their lives wherever they went.
My biggest pet peeve is when something actually does take place in medieval times or Roman times or [insert past time period] but they are in the ruins of said times. Like in Ancient Greece all those buildings were new and brightly colored with paint, why are they in the white marble ruins of the society lol.
And they all have English accents
And why does every goddamn fantasy story have to take place in these pseudo-medieval times anyway? Because Tolkein had a hard-on for feudalism? Why not have a fantasy world set in like, an ancient bronze age/chacolithic sort of society? Where "civilisation" is only a few centuries old and magic itself is a kind of new thing as well? Or one where the technology has developed based on the fantasy elements? Don't need crop rotation when you can have druids replenish the soil, or proper coking furnaces when you have fire mages who can make extreme heat with a spell. Damn. Now I'm getting into the "magic as labour" thing again.
There are a near infinite number of manga and anime that approach this topic / setting differently.
Black Clover is what you're describing almost to a T. Its premise is "magic is so commonplace and everyone can do it that it's strange that the protagonist is one of the few who can't do it".
I quit this show after a few episodes though. I like shonen well enough but the near constant screaming was just not my bag of what I was trying to watch at the time. I've heard it tones down on that and gets better in the later seasons though.
I know there's good stuff out there, but it's more fun to complain about how a very large number of low quality anime/manga just take the same generic "fantasy europe but also like a video game" sort of setting.
Clan of the cave bear is Neanderthals. Good shit.
I used to be a bit of a medieval history nerd and my friend got annoyed with how many "medieval facts" I liked to blurt out in simple conversation. So I ended up proposing a TV show called "In Medieval Times" where I would be dressed as a king eating a big ass chunk of mutton and he'd be dressed as a Jester and just angry and depressed all the time.
Lmao I love it
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"Medieval" to me has always been an aesthetic/environmental choice for media. Medieval as a term, is very Euro-centric and I think it's better to just refer to the century or year something takes place. "Medieval" times for Europe was a lot different than the experiences and society of the Arab world or China.
That and they believe people were walking around trading DnD gold for stuff like it's a fantasy RPG
Generally people have no idea how the modern economy works let alone a medieval one
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They're obviously saying Medieval Times, the franchised dinner theatre production.
Of course!
there used to be dragons in olden times though. like the Welsh flag is about this dragon that used to defend the kingdom.
his name was Mike and he got killed in a car accident in the 1970's, marking the transition to modernity.
My dad convinced his current girlfriend that there used to be dragon spiders that could fly and spit flaming venom.
Dudes Rock
The issue isn't really with the dragons and wizards and steampunk mechs, though, so much as that the whole world of the work is fictional. Like if someone were to say that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes place in or about the late 1970s, I wouldn't see much of a point in disputing it even though the Earth is decidedly not a computer built by mice to calculate the ultimate question to which the answer is 42.
Obviously not, that would be ludicrous. It was COMMISSIONED by mice.
Oh yeah, sorry, of course.
"Yeah, but that's what it was like back then."
There's so many things like this where the pop culture expectation is completely wrong but it's self-reinforcing so even movie directors who know better have to go along with it. Give me a movie about gladiators where most of the fights are like WWE matches and the stars all do advertisement spots for money, dammit!
One of the Asterix comics has a bit where Julius Ceaser is annoyed at having so many commercial breaks between the shows.
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Game of Thrones's politics was at least based around the War of Roses.
But funnily enough I was thinking this morning of how much "Medievel" stuff is just a hodgepodge. I didn't realize how inaccurate a lot of that stuff was till middle school or so.
My pet peevee with fantasy is that it seems to be built on the European medieval world. I'd love to see something taking place in an Indian or Islamic or Aztec or whatever setting.
You might dig The Lions of Al-Rassan. Set in a fictionalized Andalusia during an Islamic ascendency
Amazing book. If wistful bittersweet was condensed into ink on pages it would be this.
I've never seen someone do the reconquista from a tragic point of view before.
You could try Mo Dao Zu Shi for a Chinese flavored feudal fantasy settings. It's good and also pretty gay.
Can only recommend guy gavriel Kay so much but under heaven is pseudo warring states, sailing to sarantium is eastern Roman empire (yes Europe but eastern! and cool).
There's medieval high-fantasy and low fantasy. Medieval refers to the the tech level and then the higher fantasy you go the more fantastical it gets with magic.
"It takes place in the old days" about something that is a fantasy world that never actually existed
people yearning for the return of a mythical golden age you say
It's easier to say that it takes place in medieval times than saying "it takes place in a fantasy setting inspired by medieval Europe."
I'm going to start a new conspiracy theory that says wizards used to be real and all over the place until Christians managed to eradicate all witchcraft during the Dark Ages.
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And then on top of that it's usually more a pastiche riffing on the early modern period anyways.
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