In my last two posts about History in Fantasy (Part 1 | Part 2), I gave an overall summary of historical influences in fantasy fiction and mentioned some works of historical fantasy. In this post, I will point out a small list of works inspired by history, but were translated into a secondary world.
In August of this year, I talked about the secondary world in fantasy fiction and how it is rooted in the medieval period—thanks to the father of modern epic fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien. As a medieval scholar, Tolkien created an immense world from the inspiration of history, mythology and literature, yet giving us a unique world never seen before his time. Though Tolkien’s work has a handful of solid characters, the world of Middle-earth, and its distinctive histories therein, is what enriched his story. In today’s modern fantasy, authors who were influenced by Tolkien were also inspired by their love for history, and so they continued the genre with such inspiration.
Katherine
Kurtz’s understanding of medieval Europe aided the creation of her world in the Deryni novels. Kurtz’s Eleven Kingdoms
is an alternate medieval Europe, harboring the same structure and societies of the era, yet
she realigns it with her own dynasties, religion, and histories, while adding
in magic to give her world its fantastic element. First published in the
1970’s, the beginning of the Deryni series
is said to have been the work of fantasy fiction which popularized the use of
an alternate Europe in the genre. Since there are so
many similarities to the structure of medieval Europe in the Deryni series, it is not a work of
fantasy that has fleshed out an in-depth, epic fantasy world, but it is surely
one of the originating works of fantasy which took the genre down a different
path in the use of the secondary world—with the help of history.
Like
Katherine Kurtz, Guy Gavriel Kay uses the method of taking a historical period and
alternating it within a fantastical world, yet still heavily inspired by real
historical events and societies. His novel Tigana
pulls inspiration from medieval Italy, in a world with two moons,
containing some sorcery and a story of freedom fighters against tyranny. His novel,
The Last Light of the Sun, was clearly based
on the Viking invasion on the Anglo-Saxons in the 9TH century. As
usual, Kay set the story in an alternate world and changed names of people,
nations, and groups, putting in fantasy elements (like faeries).
Kurtz and Kay are mostly referred to as
authors of historical fantasy, rather than epic/high fantasy, due to the way
they take actual history and simply change the names of things and drop in some
kind of fantasy element. However, I would say that their efforts to try to take
the reader out of the real world and place them in a setting that is more than
alternate history with fantasy elements is to be commended.
R. Scott Bakker’s epic fantasy series, The
Prince of Nothing, is inspired by the Crusades, where the two main
religions in Bakker’s world (the Inrithi and the Fanim) are in a Holy War, which is the setting of the
series. Budding fantasy authors, Brian McClellan and Django Wexler, are both
writing their own worlds of fantasy fiction set in a period akin to the
Napoleonic era. McClellan’s Powder Mage
series and Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns
series are a part of the few epic fantasy novels that take place outside the
medieval times and in the Age of Enlightenment.
RELATED POSTS:
History in Fantasy - Part 1
History in Fantasy - Part 2
The Secondary World
Inspirations of Fantasy
Epic Worldbuilding
Flintlock Fantasy
