The Appeal of Medieval Fantasy

For me personally...

1) Swords and the like are awesome.
2) Magic is pretty cool too.
3) I'm a history buff, so reading stories set in vaguely similar times is interesting, especially if they don't ignore the less pleasant details.

If you haven't read it, you might find Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-Stories" interesting. It's not explicitly about historical fantasy but it is about the history of fairy-tales, fantasy, and why those stories stick around. And they have stuck around. They're not a recent phenomenon.

Horses. Swords and other sharp weapons. Up close and personal fighting. Macho males with no need to make excuses for being what they are. Horses. Lack of cell phones. Gritty heroes who get their hands dirty sometimes. Gutsy, red-blooded women who like braw men. Horses.

Its an interesting question. I just finished Draft 4 of my debut novel and it is set in a medieval fantasy world. I have two other story lines partially developed - one is set in Victorian era England, and another is a SciFi, mid 21st century setting. But I chose to write the medieval fantasy theme because I had more "day-dreamed" scenes developed in my head and its what I grew up reading - Alexander, Lewis, Tolkien, Eddings, Donaldson, Kurtz, Weis/Hickman. That and I played D&D when I was a kid. So all that reading and play-roling influenced much of it. Heck we would strip off the loops of fiberglass fishing rods, take the bottom half of it as a sword and grab a garbage can lid and beat the crap out of each other until someone got their hand battered too hard or their leg whipped. That and we would joust on bicycles with brooms wearing football helmets. Its how we played as kids.

The appeal of medieval fantasy is of a simpler world, with wise caring rulers, or evil ones the noble heroes can depose and replace with a wise caring one. A world which we can imagine is close to beautiful nature and beautiful people and beautiful castles and cities.

A realistic portrayal of medieval times would be unutterably depressing, so "gritty" fantasy only adds tiny doses of gritty realism.

One novel I read recently adds a bit more grit but stills has enough beauty and magic to be readable. It is Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver.

What might be called "medieval SF" are the stories in Eric Flint's 1632 series. Much of the appeal of them is that they portray medieval times realistically but, as part of the stories, show how the grit could be overcome.

And, shamelessly, I will mention my alt-history Mary McCarthy trilogy which takes place in the 1854-1878 time span in Ireland. And 1880s New York city.

Part of the appeal for me is that it's familiar, and that makes it easy. I've been trying to read more Asian/African/Middle Eastern inspired fantasy lately, and while I enjoy them, it does take me some extra time to get hold of the world and what's going on.
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Horses & swords (as mentioned above) and there's those excellent flowing robes. And no complicated technology. I also think it has a kind of familiarity, and lack of a lot of precise information, and that gives our minds a lot of room to play around it, as readers as well as writers.

I think a lot of what drives interest in fantasy set in a particular period is aesthetic. Horses are cool. Swords and crossbows are cool. Chainmail is cool, and so is plate armor. Dragons are cool. So are castles, fireplaces, narrow cobbled streets, four poster beds with canopies, half-timbered houses, and especially taverns with smoke-blackened beams and whole pigs roasting over roaring fires where weary can slurp down mugs of frosty ale. Some of these elements are more in line with fairy tale versions of the middle ages. Purists may scoff at these tropes, which aren't really things that necessarily existed in the middle ages at all, or if they did, not all at the same time.

This is why many people prefer fairy tale-style medieval fantasy to fiction set in the "real" middle ages (which of course took place over a long time anyway, and were not identical throughout most of Europe). Readers also tend to prefer stories where they can relate to the characters in some way, and readers want to root for characters who have some manner of control over their destinies, which is probably while tales of war, intrigue, quests, and rebellions against tyrants are more popular than stories about serfs living and dying as serfs, or stories about people trying to survive while the Black Death sweeps through their area.

It's common for people to criticize or dis the concept of period fantasy set in a sort of romanticized or not truly accurate (or amalgamated) version of a particular period, but when the story is meant to be sort of romantic and escapist, maybe writing to a particular fairy tale aesthetic is all right.

I do have one pet peeve about medieval fairy tale fantasy, though. Medieval swords were really not so heavy an ordinary person could barely lift them. Seriously. Look it up. Some ceremonial weapons were larger and heavier, but the arming swords used by knights were relatively light--not that much heavier than a modern fencing epee--and very well balanced. Even the hand and a half swords and two-handed swords were not as heavy as people suppose.

Part of it is that castles, knights, swords and whatnot are just downright cool. Another part is that the medieval world is in a sweet spot for fantasy tales: complex and advanced enough for politics, tax and large armies buy also archaic enough for melee warfare, and it's also both immediately amiliar enough and distant enough to make things intersesting but not confusing.

Klope3 said:

Kings and queens. Knights in shining armor. Swords and shields, staffs and spells. Epic quests and deeds of honor. These elements have been the bread and butter of many, if not most, works of fantasy for decades now. There have been plenty of variations, of course, but the general aesthetic seems to remain consistent: a vaguely medieval, vaguely European setting, often including magic, with less pleasant historical details ignored in favor of those more appealing.

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I'd actually argue this hasn't been terribly true for a few of the most recent decades, at least not for "most" fantasy. For example, urban fantasy rose in, I think, the 90s and has little in common with what you describe. Diverse fantasy has additionally been gaining traction in recent years, and is often pointedly not European based.

That said, it's certainly true these tropes have been around forever.

Personally, I think it's just that young people often get introduced to the genre via Tolkien or similar, and if it turns out to be their cup of tea, then they kind of imprint on it. They get slorped into that world, and it springs to life in their imaginations in a way that persists long after the book is closed, and through the years, they sometimes want to go back into it -- but not necessarily to that same story.

Which is nothing new. Wanting something familiar, yet fresh, is basically the urge that genre fiction exists to serve. People want that same thrill they got from their previous favourite books, but with a new story to entertain them.

Which is a wordy way of saying, I think it's a type of nostalgia, not for a real place and time, but for an imaginary one.

Escapism. For me it was, at least. All rules were off any anything could happen. If I were transported to that world, I could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.

History was on the list too, as was the intricate world building. But come to think of it, both supported the escapism appeal.

I suppose fairy-tales have IMO a lot to answer for. The vast majority of them take place in a vaguely medieval settings (castles, brave princes, magic, beautiful princesses, dragons...) and are thus very familiar (and perhaps even comforting) from a young age up. We're steeped in them in our childhood, it stands to reason they remain very accessible in our adulthood.

Wasn't it the Victorians who romanticized the medieval era and codified a lot of what we consider fairy tale lore into the familiar, bubble-wrapped Once Upon A Time setting?

Yes, a lot does have to do with imprinting: first fairy tales, then whatever one's first experiences in the bigger fantasy pond are, the ones that struck a chord and created a sense of wonder. Tolkien was the traditional gateway, and is still held by many (too many, IMHO) as The Only Way to enter the genre. Between Tolkien and the King Arthur cycle (which has been recrafted and blurred over the years to the point where everyone expects full European-style plate armor on the Knights of the Round Table, when the "real" Arthur would've been much closer to Roman-level military gear and tech) and such, there was a lot of swords and quests and magic and divine rights of kings and such.

Though I agree with jjdebenedictis; I'm seeing much more (refreshing, frankly) diversity on the fantasy bookshelves these days, and those that do explore traditional (pseudo)medieval settings seem a little less veneered, willing to show the downsides and the problems and skewing a little closer to realism, if not strictly historically accurate (it is fantasy, after all.)

So much of what people associate with Western inspired fantasy — a genre popularized by Tolkien seems Medieval because at heart it is very much tied to the genre of Medieval romance.

Medieval romance isn't so much two people meet, fall in love and live happily every after as a genre; it refers to texts that were written in romance languages (French, Middle English, Spanish, Italian, Yiddish, Portuguese, Medieval Irish, Icelandandic . . . . ); that is not in Latin or Greek.

Arthurian literature is derivied from Medieval Arthurian texts.

Tolkien's elves and his concept of Faerie is directly tied to his deep familiarity with Medieval literature; the Elves in particular owe a lot to the Middle English romance or lay of Sir Orfeo—right down to direct references in The Hobbit.

But don't overlook non-Western fantasy, at all; some reallly wonderful stuff in the last twenty years that owes very little to Tolkien or Western lit.

mrsmig said:

No guns.

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I can see the appeal, but feel obliged to note that guns were a standard part of medieval warfare for nearly two centuries.

How I got hooked

In my case the appeal came from reading The Once and Future King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a kid. Followed in short order by Le Morte D'Arthur (in Middle English, please!) during I think High School. I also read and liked Tolkein at this time, but it had nothing to do with me catching that particular bug. Still prefer T. H. White to Tolkein, for the record.

Other sources from my childhood would be retellings of the Elder Edda in the "Myths and Legends" volume of The Children's Hour. As dated as that collection of children's literature is now, it is still such a fine collection that both my children read and enjoyed it decades later.

Not sure but every time I see a medieval setting I tend to roll my eyes now. Swords can still be used in a different setting. So can magic. History geeks like me can choose from different time periods. Of course, the further back to you the more primitive and superstitious people were and so these things "existed" in that setting. Plus, I think it's been drummed into people's mind with Tolkien's work.

But thankful people are being to think outside the box and diversify a little more. Victorian England has become quite popular as a setting. Even more futuristic settings. People are free to write whatever they want and I'm always more interested in the journey than the setting but I'm bored with dragons, knights, kings, elves and dwarves. I want something new and fresh so I go and find it. Some people love those things so much that's all they read and write about, and although I do feel like should go outside their comfort zone once in a while, I don't care what they write, I just wont read it right now.

I'd kill for more Early Modern-based settings in fantasy. Lace & gorgets, flintlock pistols, early inquiries into science pushing back against a still-dominant world of mystery and darkness. And you still got your kings, sword fights, maybe a dragon or two holed up somewhere.

But then, as joyless a scold I am about some of the concepts and assumptions baked into medieval fantasy, I will always love it. I guess what always frustrates me is the reflexive sense these societies are stable and orderly, when the fact seems to bear that they are perpetually in a state of transition and rarely in the fun way.

Check out Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint/Riverside books. They're sometimes called Mannerpunk or "fantasy of manners."

That's a time period I find fascinating too, and roughly the one where I like to set stories. Though I also enjoy tweaking societal elements off the trajectory taken by western culture. For instance, trying to envision how a particular type of magic could alter everything from religion to family structure. Oh, and I've wanted to create a world where a matrilineal system became the norm, rather than patrilineal, but I'm having a tough time reconciling certain aesthetic sensibilities associated with a given era and a society that isn't obsessed with controlling the sexual nature of women (and indeed where women control many of the resources and institutions).

One set of books you might like, Kjartollota, are gunpowder fantasies.

http://bestfantasybooks.com/gunpowder-fantasy.html

I've read a few of these, and they are pretty good. Note, the above listing site skews really hard towards male writers for some reason.

As Medievalist said, fantasies of manners can also have that early modern era aesthetic, with an emphasis on social maneuvering, court intrigue, and sometimes rebellion. The stakes in these stories tend to be more personal than epic.

http://bestfantasybooks.com/fantasy-of-manners.html

Some of Kate Elliott's books may fit into this as well, such as her Cold Mage series. Though that's a bit more of a Victorian equivalent time frame, perhaps, than 1600-1700s.

Science pushing back against darkness!

Kjbartolotta said:

I'd kill for more Early Modern-based settings in fantasy. Lace & gorgets, flintlock pistols, early inquiries into science pushing back against a still-dominant world of mystery and darkness. And you still got your kings, sword fights, maybe a dragon or two holed up somewhere.

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If you are unfamiliar, Doctor Mirabilis by James Blish is a fine example. It is the first volume of After Such Knowledge. I admit that this response is slightly off-topic, as it is, strictly speaking, a historical novel about Roger Bacon and thus set in the thirteenth century rather than the early modern. Two volumes of the tetrology, however, are fantastic to the point of surreal: Black Easter and The Day After Doomsday. Even if they are set in the twentieth century. The fourth novel, A Case of Conscience, is set a few hundred years in the future. Scholars differ on the proper ordering and chronology of the work as a whole.

Kjbartolotta said:

I'd kill for more Early Modern-based settings in fantasy. Lace & gorgets, flintlock pistols, early inquiries into science pushing back against a still-dominant world of mystery and darkness. And you still got your kings, sword fights, maybe a dragon or two holed up somewhere.

But then, as joyless a scold I am about some of the concepts and assumptions baked into medieval fantasy, I will always love it. I guess what always frustrates me is the reflexive sense these societies are stable and orderly, when the fact seems to bear that they are perpetually in a state of transition and rarely in the fun way.

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Patrice Sarath's The Sisters Mederos is exactly what you want. Georgette Heyer with magic!