Touchpoints for and thoughts on somewhat nonspecific alternate history?

[tamtrible]

I'm toying with a story idea, and rather than either set it in an entirely fictional world, or set it in the real world and pretend the presence of magic wouldn't alter history in a lot of different ways, I figure I'd kind of aim for "obviously this world, but different"--for example, I was thinking of having the major language and dominant country

Comments

[lied_ohne_worte]

There would certainly be huge differences, particularly because much of European history wasn't influenced just by "Christianity" as a whole, but by the conflicts between different branches of Christianity. In my view (speaking as a German Protestant with Lutheran leanings), you'd particularly need to be careful what to do with the Protestant reformation

[tamtrible]

I was going more for the idea of... if you have 2 people with magic swords going at each other, it tends to go badly for both sides, and often for bystanders as well. So majority religions tended, out of self-protection if nothing else, to develop a "don't poke the bear" attitude about minority religions, as long as members of said minority religions behaved themselves. They're still going to hell, of course, but if they're not willing to accept God's love and protection, that's their look-out (or something like that...)

The magic in this world... likely wouldn't affect bans against witchcraft, as long as the process of converting people to magical objects (in appropriate and accepted contexts) wasn't considered "witchcraft". It is likely that most or all religions have very strict *rules* about the process, but most don't ban it entirely. It would definitely complicate the issue, however.

[sushidog]

I was going more for the idea of... if you have 2 people with magic swords going at each other, it tends to go badly for both sides, and often for bystanders as well. So majority religions tended, out of self-protection if nothing else, to develop a "don't poke the bear" attitude about minority religions, as long as members of said minority religions behaved themselves. OK, two things here; one is that you seem to be assuming that religion only spreads or gains power when it has a sword in its hand, and specifically by fighting with smaller religions, which is clearly not true (after all, Christianity started out as a tiny messianic cult; it didn't grow simply by being stronger than everyone else, because it _wasn't_ stronger than everyone else!), so the logic there just doesn't work

[lied_ohne_worte]

And if people can be dissuaded from fighting by magic, why haven't they been dissuaded by all the other weapons people have historically killed each other with? In the end, it's rather immaterial if someone smashes your head in with an axe or whether you're killed by magic, and the safety of bystanders and what we consider "innocent civilians" nowadays certainly wasn't much of a concern in ages past either.

[sushidog]

Agreed; in general when two people go at it with swords, it's going to end badly for someone even if they're not magic. When it comes to religious wars, those fighting them generally believe that dying for their religion is a good and holy thing, possibly even a guaranteed ticket to the afterlife, so magical weapons probably won't dissuade them any more than normal ones.

[marycatelli]

Or several someones.

If the magic includes curative abilities, so that the smallest wound is no longer a risk of death from infection, it might be better, even.

[lied_ohne_worte]

I have a feeling from your answers to my and other comments that you'd like to focus very much on the "magic/not as much non-pagan religion leading to greater tolerance/more peace" aspect of your idea and avoid the hard historical questions (such as the one I brought up about the reformation). The thing is, without the reformation, it's very likely that my country in its current form wouldn't exist, we wouldn't speak the same language, everyone's family lines would have changed so that none of us was alive, and we probably wouldn't have had two world wars, at least not the ones we did have. None of those things were directly caused by Reformation, but the events it influenced in turn influenced others, and so on

[tamtrible]

As I noted above... I'm not quite constructing a true alternate history here, so I just need... enough history to form the underpinnings of the world as it will be at the time of my story. I posted this more looking for "flags" that would tell you "this world is kind of like our own, but not"--I'm just asking about the broader history to make sure I'm not doing anything that would make people go "Ok, there's no way you'd get a world like that from that situation". If that makes any sense.

[ari_]

Thing is, the premise of "magic exists so Christianity and Islam didn't become as ubiquitous, but the rest of history is very similar" is already a huge flag of "no way you'd get a world like that

[lied_ohne_worte]

And the whole "not being surprised that your neighbor isn't Catholic but instead is /some other religion/" issue: look up "Cuius regio, eius religio", established in 1555. Basically, the ruler decided what religion everyone in his country had to be (Catholic or Lutheran), so you didn't *have* neighbors of other faiths.

Exactly. I knew... hm, less than ten Catholics before I went to study in a Catholic region, not because my family was bigoted against them, but because the old principality I lived in had become firmly Lutheran very early. In our elementary school of three or four parallel classes per year, there was one Catholic boy. The other families weren't all actively religious, but they either were members of the Protestant church, or they'd left it at some point. There had historically been a small presence of Jews of course, but that had been ended by the Nazis. I'd be surprised if our village of about 1000 people had more than ten Catholic families, probably a lot less. And that mono-religiosity is still a consequence of "

[ari_]

Just wanted to add: the magic idea is interesting, but it's probably be much easier to just find a way to integrate it.

Take the idea of existing magic, and then take the actual history of Europe/Christianity/etc, and find a way to *add* these two. I could think of several ways for the Catholic Church to have integrated the kind of magic you describe, coming up with their own theological explanation for it, which very likely would also have restricted it's use.

That setting is much easier to make believable. You may want to read up on some old Catholic theology, such as the divinity of Christ, which was settled at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Magic and it's relationship with God and Catholicism might have become part of canon in a similar way.

If you want to retain a similar world to ours, you'd probably want magic to not be considered a big deal, and to not have a lot of philosophical ramifications.

[nineveh_uk]

Come to think of it, what the Reformation was reforming is going to be rather different in a world with magic. Turning water into wine isn't a miracle if every village sorceror can do it.

[tamtrible]

The magic is... very narrow and specific. If you happen to have a relic that turns water into wine, then 1. anyone could use it, and 2. it doesn't do anything else. If you don't, then you can't.