blog History for Fantasy Writers: How Old Was Old?

[skip.knox]

skip.knox submitted a new blog post:

History for Fantasy Writers: How Old Was Old?

People died at such a young age, you were old at forty. So many infants and children died, adults did not bond with them. Even then, the children were treated like adults; “childhood” is a modern invention.

I have heard this, and variations on this, all my life (and I really am old). It's wrong and I'll prove it, but I'll also talk about why the myth persists.

It's also something important to get right. For a great many aspects of history, we can change things around to our heart's content. We can use historical currencies or invent our own. We can introduce or remove flora and fauna, change historical events, and generally treat the past as our personal Tinker Toy set, taking it apart and putting it together in new ways.

With age, though, we're dealing with human constants. If forty really is old, that changes how we write characters. It means, for example, that childhood and adolescence represents half a person's life. It means nobody gets to be king for very long.

If you already agree that the age of man has always been three score and ten, skip to the bottom of this post to read a bit of historical philosophy. But if you are unconvinced, you can read the evidence, herewith...

Continue reading the Original Blog Post.

 

[skip.knox]

My historical demography course in grad school was a real pleasure. Got to read the 1900 census. Of course, as a medievalist, I also got to read 15th century parish registers. I nearly went down the quantitative history road, but veered off in the nick of time. ;-)

 

[skip.knox]

I'm glad you found it useful.

 

[Russ]

Nice piece. Bad history is one thing, but it gets even more pernicious when it leaks over into fantasy and fiction.

Keep up the myth busting!

 

[Sheilawisz]

Hello Skip!

You have my congratulations for an excellent article. I am often annoyed by many myths that most people believe about Medieval life, and also it's very bad that some of those ideas have become part of Fantasy worlds as well.

In general, many people think that Medieval life was horrendous in every way.

They like to think of themselves as superior, something like privileged that we live in a world that is somehow better and more advanced. Yes there were many horrible things back then, but we have plenty of horrible things happening today as well. On top of that, few people know the better and happier aspects of Medieval life.

You should bust some of these myths in following articles:

1- Medieval people were very short, to the point that we are giants today.
2- Everything was darkness and ignorance!
3- Medieval doctors were just torturers.
4- The farther that you go back in time, the worst it becomes.
5- Everybody was a serial killer in those times.
6- Knights were brutal fighters without martial arts.
7- Medieval swords weighed twenty kilograms!

Those are just a few, I am sure that you can think of many more.

This kind of thing is mentioned in certain parts of my Joan of England trilogy. Joan was a little angry when she realized that her world had been reduced to a bunch of silly myths in the minds of most people, and she provides her friends with a different point of view about life in the 14th century.

By the way, if some horrible and deadly pandemic hits the world today we would not do any better than they did.

 

[X Equestris]

7- Medieval swords weighed twenty kilograms!

Ugh, that one really grinds my gears. I actually saw it in a fantasy writing advice article once. No idea how it started, but this myth refuses to die.

Glad to see the age myth taken apart.

 

[skip.knox]

All good points, folks. I don't really want to become Medieval Mythbuster. For reasons I laid out in the article, I'm convinced that it would do little good, save at the individual level. These myths persist because they serve a social need. That's why they are stronger than historical accuracy. After 35 years in academia, one of the chief lessons I've learned is that education doesn't change much at the societal level. Facts have hard edges. They're awkward. Myth is pliant, adjusting itself to social need. And it's okay, really. Human societies survived for thousands of years without the aid of scholarly research. And for those fascinated by the quest for truth, historians will stand at the ready.

I'm more interested in the positive side of reconstructing the past, especially in how writers can make use of it. Once I allow for the strength of myth, I always stressed to my students that reality is *way* more interesting than the myth. This is because the myth works in black and white, two dimensions. It lives in oversimplification. Once you can get past that, you begin to see the human experience in all its baffling, contradictory richness. And, of course, that's precisely where fiction writers work.

So, I'll be busting myths now and then, but it's mainly going to be by the way, on the road to more interesting vistas that become visible when one sweeps away the cobweb of stereotypes.

I very much appreciate your comments, folks.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Great article. I'v been saying this for a long time. If Stone Age people lived past 10, they were perfectly likely to see 60. HA!

One of the things that made me quit reading historical romance was how everyone got married at 12. Um...it's true that happened in the Middle Ages, but those were complicated situations in which the bride and groom usually didn't even live together until they were at least 16, but also, in 1500, the average age of marriage for first-time brides was 25! And men weren't even considered "marriageable" until they'd finished an apprenticeship (at 24) or education (possibly older than that). Teens having babies wasn't any more prevalent then than it is now! OMG, why is romance so intent on spreading the same misinformation?

Thanks for tackling this thing about age. You're absolutely right it affects stories when people have a skewed view of history they're trying to replicate. Fair enough some people might want to create a society that mirrors the myths, but let's then see some new reasons for it. "Oh, that's my ancient uncle. He's forty years old, can you believe it? Yeah, the hideous beetle eggs they inserted behind his eyes at his coming-of-age ceremony haven't shown any sign of hatching beetles to burrow into his brain. That dude might make it to forty-two! I'm taking bets!"

 

[skip.knox]

beetle eggs behind the eyes? *Skip recoils in horror*
<grin>

I can't speak to the romance market. I've tried to read in that genre a couple of times, but it simply does not connect. It's an entirely different language.

I've got another article at the ready that talks about marriage, but just to speak to the point about the young age: yes, but mostly only where property was involved. And, usually, title. So, if you want to have your main character married off (t's always against her will, isn't it), that's fine, but please make her of noble family.

Edit: I know *you* don't do that, Caged Maiden! I was speaking widely. Please, not the beetle eggs! Aaaah!

 

[Chessie2]

Actually, most heroines in romance (fantasy and/or historical) are in their early 20s. Early marriage was not an uncommon thing. Borgias? Nobility? There's a reason why Romeo and Juliet were so young. So no, romance writers aren't writing ages out of historical facts for the most part.

 

[after.eternity]

cool!

 

[LWFlouisa]

I suppose saying lives could be made shorter is different from saying life was shorter?

Heads up! (Pun intended) life was shorter in the late 1700s in France. But I suspect that was do to revolutionary circumstances.

On this note, would it not be more possible our lifespands are decreasing rather than increasing?

Granted knowing some ... historical and present legal issues, I wouldn't be surprised if laws were created to imply that they'll never let them out of jury duty.

 

[skip.knox]

Thanks for the comment.

It would not be quite accurate to say life was shorter in revolutionary France. Talking about life span is complicated, made worse by imprecision in the language used when it's discussed in the popular press.

What can be measured? We can say at what age a person died. We cannot say how long that person would have lived had they not died of a heart attack, or had a bomb dropped on them, or got a fever. We can only say this is how old they were when they died.

If our records are good, we can gather enough data points to make statistically reliable generalizations about a given population. That is how demographers come up with mean age at death. Such an average must necessarily leave aside many interesting variables and considerations, but it's as good as we can do at coming up with a number.

Historical demographers have been doing this for several generations now, and they can make some broader observations. Among these are that mean at age death varies dramatically according to local demographic crises: famine, plague, war (this last is significant mainly in modern times). Over the long haul, and across societies, however, the mean age at death has remained pretty constant. To put it another way, humans live about as long as they always have.

This should be no surprise. We are mammals. The life span of whales, dogs, shrews, etc. likewise have remained pretty constant. While we are not living longer, more of us are reaching our seventies and eighties than ever before. That's a huge change, historically unprecedented.