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

[anonymous]

First, you're idealizing the Romans. They certainly did not have a laissez-faire attitude about religion unless it was the Roman religion. See Christians dying. You'd have better luck investigating China's attitude towards religion. Secondly, much of European history was motivated by conflicts between Catholics and Protestants or heads of state and church, etc., etc. You basically have to rewrite culture, both the origins and evolutions of. It's more research than your average world-building.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Good point. Not just Christians dying either - not wanting to worship the Emperor as a God once the Romans had come up with him being one wasn't something that went over well either, no matter if people paid taxes and didn't hurt anyone. This is what happened to the Temple of Jerusalem.

ETA: The Romans weren't "tolerant of other religions" as such - they were just rather willing and able to integrate other Gods into their own system. So Zeus was really Jupiter, and Bacchus Dionysos and so on, and more "exotic" Eastern gods could be integrated too as long as the rituals weren't too outrageous. That worked quite well for all involved - unless they happened upon people with some form of "Thou shalt not have other gods beside me" making them emphatic about their god definitely not being Jupited, at which point tolerance wasn't much present.

[tamtrible]

Actually, there's some evidence, as far as I know, suggesting that the Christian martyrdom thing was... at least in part something that was made up after the fact.

Good point about the heads of state/church thing, et cetera. I'm not suggesting that history ran anything close to *exactly* the same, just that... the 10-second description of European history for the last 2000 or so years would be about the same, except for a slightly reduced role of Christianity.

[sushidog]

I'm not suggesting that history ran anything close to *exactly* the same, just that... the 10-second description of European history for the last 2000 or so years would be about the same, except for a slightly reduced role of Christianity.
Yeah, I think the issue you're going to have with this is that the history of Europe for the last 2000 years or so _is_ the history of Christianity; so suggesting that you can change the latter with only minor effects on the former is kind of like saying "I want the history of America for the last 600 years to be basically the same, just without any immigration from Europe".

[tamtrible]

Except, I'm not saying "No Christianity", just "slightly less Christianity". More like "I want the history of America for the last 600 years, except the Europeans didn't expand into "native" areas quite as fast" or something.

[jayb111]

But you can't say 'I want everything to be the same except for this small difference' because that small difference affects everything else.

Why would Europeans not expand so fast into America? Was it because of technology - some reason why the railways couldn't be built? A shortage of draught animals to pull the wagons? The Civil War went on much longer? Or fewer people were migrating to America so there wasn't the impetus to move westwards? If that was the case, what was different about conditions in Europe that meant that fewer people were migrating? And how would any or all of that affect America's subsequent population growth and economic development, the outcome of the Second World War and the USA's current position as the world's superpower

[tamtrible]

Veneration of saints is... potentially a complicated issue. Or, at least, the whole practice of passing around bits of dead saints as holy/magical items. Because if the saints in question were distilled, then there'd be... one thing, that couldn't be broken apart without destroying its essential nature. If not, then there are people with an inherent ability to tell "Nope, no magic in that"...

[ari_]

Can they tell by looking, or by touching? Because if it's only by touching, relics were usually housed in very bling-ed up containers, and there would be few people who could touch them. Many existing ones can only be seen from afar, or on special holidays.

It's known that the relic trade was full of frauds, that wouldn't change.

There's also the factor that magic is still something only a minority has (and thus only a minority can sense?). In a time where the religion ruled absolutely, having some minority speak up that "uhm, that relic you're all worshiping is fake" would be ... rather dangerous for the minority. Many wouldn't speak up at all, and those that do could probably be dealt with.

The question is what would common non-magic people know about magic, except what the church told them? The church had the monopoly on education for a very very long time...

[tamtrible]

They can tell at a distance (using a special sense, with a ~1-2 meter range