Does anyone here still use the medieval europe setting?

[Corwynn]

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong about the Medieval setting, but to be honest, it does feel tired at times. I suspect cheap, imitative fantasy works are the culprit here. That being said, a writer who is passionate about the period can breathe some fresh life into it. Personally, I would recommend Cecelia Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde trilogy. It's not especially well-written, but her passion for her source material clearly shines through and makes it much more compelling than it otherwise would be.

As for me, my oldest and truest love is the Victorian Era, and I have always been drawn to works set in or around this period. As a result, the world I am working on has a broadly Victorian Era aesthetic and tech base. I've added other things to the mix over time, but that 19th century feel is still there in the broad strokes.

Choose whatever era you feel like to base your fantasy world on. As long as you are passionate and knowledgeable about your inspirational sources, your work will be better for it.

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

I think it would be interesting to see a medieval European setting that doesn't default to England or Scandinavia.

I've thought about building a world based on the Caucasus region such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. I don't know if they are considered European or not. I consider them to be in an ethnic and cultural sense, but geographically Asian. I also wouldn't mind seeing a setting based on Finland or Byzantium.

Actually, I think a great setting would be Eastern Europe (including Hungary and Romania), the Caucasus, Turkey, Finland, and Western Russia.

 

[Eden Lost]

I enjoy both truly medieval settings and pseudo-medieval settings. While they are common, I think there is still people who do them very well. On the other hand, I think urban or modern fantasy can be just as poorly done. I have read some truly awful urban fantasy too. I think bad fantasy is not understanding your setting (poor world building) or losing sight of the setting while writing. High fantasy and urban fantasy are just as likely to commit these failures.

 

[Mythopoet]

I think it would be interesting to see a medieval European setting that doesn't default to England or Scandinavia.

I've thought about building a world based on the Caucasus region such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. I don't know if they are considered European or not. I consider them to be in an ethnic and cultural sense, but geographically Asian. I also wouldn't mind seeing a setting based on Finland or Byzantium.

Actually, I think a great setting would be Eastern Europe (including Hungary and Romania), the Caucasus, Turkey, Finland, and Western Russia.

My world incorporates all of these.

 

[pmmg]

I write typically in medieval settings, but I've no special love for them. I would just as easy pick another setting if a story seemed to be calling for it. A diverse world, of course, would have many different settings at once, whether the characters travelled to them or not. In the current one, I set the story near the frozen north, and the nobility are few and do not have a very wide reach.

The original poster asked this back in 2012, so I suspect he does not care very much about the answers. I do enjoy the site, and I enjoy very much the questions that pop up, if nothing else, it gets me thinking about stuff I might not otherwise. Seems people don't mind answering the old threads (and I think the google bots help to put them back into circulation). Just wondering how others feel about pulling back old threads? Some of the past questions do seem very cool, but I usually pass on them because of their age.

 

[skip.knox]

I've thought about building a world based on the Caucasus region such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. I don't know if they are considered European or not. I consider them to be in an ethnic and cultural sense, but geographically Asian. I also wouldn't mind seeing a setting based on Finland or Byzantium.

I have one story that goes from southern Germany into Switzerland. Another that is off the coast of Brittany, while a second one is in a Breton forest. My novel takes place in Dacia and Moesia and Thrace--lands north and south of the lower Danube. My WIP starts in the Camargue (southern France) and ends in the Pyrenees. Queued up are stories set in the Harz Mountains, one that runs from Sicily to Germany, and another in Venice (though I may relocate it to one of Venice's medieval outposts).

I, too, am quite done with stories set in England, the British Isles more generally, and places that are modeled on them. Nothing wrong with the choice; I just don't want to write there.

Well. Maybe Stamford Bridge with dragons.

 

[Corwynn]

I write typically in medieval settings, but I've no special love for them. I would just as easy pick another setting if a story seemed to be calling for it. A diverse world, of course, would have many different settings at once, whether the characters travelled to them or not. In the current one, I set the story near the frozen north, and the nobility are few and do not have a very wide reach.

The original poster asked this back in 2012, so I suspect he does not care very much about the answers. I do enjoy the site, and I enjoy very much the questions that pop up, if nothing else, it gets me thinking about stuff I might not otherwise. Seems people don't mind answering the old threads (and I think the google bots help to put them back into circulation). Just wondering how others feel about pulling back old threads? Some of the past questions do seem very cool, but I usually pass on them because of their age.

You raise a good point. Not all of a world will be at the same development level. Even now there are a few isolated tribes that never advanced past the stone age, and this was even more the case in the past. In my own world I wanted to level the playing field a bit, so that one region didn't get an overwhelming advantage over the rest like Europe did in ours. In my world, it is less of a case of haves and have-nots, but rather certain nations and cultures are better and more advanced at different things. One culture might be better with magic, another with machines, another with biology, and so on.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a gravedigger (I prefer the term "resurrectionist" myself). There are a lot of old threads that I would like to weigh in on, but posting after such a long time still feels awkward to me.

 

[skip.knox]

Haves and have nots work at a local level, too. There were parts of Europe that were very much worse off than other parts, and in some areas these were separated by less than a hundred miles. It's easy to say that Europe was advanced, but in fact medieval Europe was an extremely complex collection of cultures and sub-cultures. That's one reason why I find it an inexhaustible source of story ideas.

 

[Maunus]

I use the bronze-iron age transition, I think this just a really interesting period in Europe - and most fantasy seems to be more in a high to late medieval type setting.

 

[Son of the Roman]

I think European culture is largely ignored (don’t shoot me yet).
The reason I say is because we always end up getting a vaguely English or German flair, but we don’t often get stories based in other regions. Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean are rich with culture, yet they remain largely ignored.

That being said, I don’t typically use European settings. What I’m working on right now takes place in a world based on the Mississippian culture, but afterwords I do hope on making something based in Bronze Age Anatolia.

 

[S.T. Ockenner]

I use a made up setting based on European architecture and terminology quite often. I don't think many writers ever use actual Europe as a setting, I assume you mean made up lands that look like Europe.