I have a good answer for that - not a lot of lead. Copper's a better choice.
Lead's used in stuff like pewter and rarely on its own.
Well, if it's intentional, nothing wrong with it.
Just mentioning that lead was widely used as metal where hardness wasn't relevant, since it's so easy to produce and work with.
I suspect a silver coin as my primary coin would be the best option, since gold would be reserved for truly valuable items.
Well, you should probably just decide how valuable gold and silver are in your world, and go from there. There's not even a reason for gold to be more valuable than silver. If there are werewolves, i'd suspect silver would definitely be more valuable.
Anyway, just decide on how valuable gold and silver are (also relative to each other) and then you can just pick what metal/metal content the most common coin should have, and create a few bigger and smaller ones.
Say, you could go with most common coin out of pure silver, since silver is relatively cheap, and it buys you something like a chicken. Then there's maybe one coin size smaller with a part of the silver content (1/10th or 1/12th or whatever) and maybe two coins that are more valuable with varying gold contents. (And not necessarily the same increase factor)
Then to add a little life, you could just make up a few additional names for coins from different countries, and just decide arbitrarily on a slightly different value and/or different metal content. As long as you just pick a start and consistently plot down from there, the start doesn't really matter.
As for servants, most aristocrats already housed and fed their servants so they could use that as an excuse to pay them less.
Well, there's really no excuse needed in feudal society. Human labour is dirt cheap, and commoners and aristocrats are not the same. That's the way it is, and pretty much everyone accepts that. Servants already have a much better life than peasants or serfs. Well, mostly. Unless they worked for the Bathorys for example.
Songs and news are also worth money - this works in Crisiant's favour since she's from our world and therefore has songs and stories no one has ever heard before. A bard would be willing to pay the most for these, to extend his repertoire, but I imagine some villages would too, right? Or give a night's bed and board in exchange for new songs?
Keep in mind that intellectual property is a completely modern concept. Bards would mostly work for whatever money the audience was willing to pay them, or some innkeeper who thought they'd attract more customers. Selling a story might work, but not on the basis that anyone would accept that the author has some kind of exclusive right. So, any bard who already heard the story wouldn't dream of paying for it. He might be courteous enough not to also use it in the same city.
Or would it be easier if I just had the prince or king have a few expensive pieces of jewellery that they sell when they pass through big cities and therefore give themselves plenty of money, while additional work is taken more for insurance than necessity? I prefer them struggling, but it would certainly work, and Crisiant (female protagonist) is definitely practical enough to suggest it...
Keep in mind that people wouldn't buy anything they couldn't resell. So, if you want to sell valuable items, that'll only work in a city that's big enough that the merchant buying them can except to find someone to resell them to. Jewellery fit for royalty would need some seriously rich merchants, aristocrats or other royalty as potential customers. Or would fetch a very low price since a goldsmith intends to melt it down and use in other pieces.
The coins were goods, like pounds of sausage or kegs of beer - except a little less useful, and a little more portable. Buying things with medieval coins could almost be like bartering one good for another.
This.
Especially interesting when featuring a bank or a money exchanger or something similar. People who made a business out of exchanging currencies were pretty much buying and selling coins of different types, not so much exchanging, since there's no such thing a set exchange course. Even coins from different times of the same (usually small) kingdom might have a different value, since changing the currency or just debasing it did not mean all the old coins went out of circulation.
Similarly as there's no set course for money changers, local merchants of a given city would most likely accept many different currencies, but wouldn't offer the same price in all. I.e. it might (or might not) be useful to exchange foreign currency into the local one before making purchases. Bigger trade houses did also profit from transaction like these, since they were able to transport currency and use it where they'd get the best value for it.
This applies mostly to currency that's not pure noble metal though. Coins made out of pure gold for example would be worth pretty much the same everywhere since their commodity value is easier accessible than that of alloyed coins. I.e. getting the gold out of a 10% gold coin to use some different way, because the nominal value of the coin is below the gold's value is quite difficult. While a pure gold coin can be used immediately by any goldsmith, preventing differences in commodity value and nominal value more effectively. Though in european history, pure gold coins were far to valuable to be used by smaller merchants or craftsmen anyway.
Though i just love the example of south america (before the spaniards came). They used cocoa beans as currency, and gold as wallpapers.
And what if your Fantasy novel doesn't have the default medieval technology? None of mine do.
Electro-chemistry is definitely in the realm of steampunk.
Besides, when everything in your world is original and different than everywhere else, what's the point of asking other people for input? You'll have to make it up on your own.
