I’ve read historical fantasy for years. It is one of my favorite mashup genres. There are to my mind two approaches you can take to writing historical fantasy. The first is that taken by RF Kuang, that has magic developed historically nothing would have changed about human society and history. The same cultures that developed into world powers would have done so in any events. The magic may change how, but not what happened. This is a rather popular approach.
The other approach, that had magic been real historical events would have worked out differently, is equally popular. The question is: is fantasy set in a changed historical past still historical fiction? My answer to this question is that this is complicated. Historical fiction is more than just events that take place in the past, but a past that is accurate to how people lived, thought, wore, and lived. It is fiction in which real people might enter as main characters, have smaller parts, or just be referred to in the narrative. If you have magic in a historical context, and let it change the events but leave the cultural elements the same, then I would argue that the fiction is indeed historical. Randal Garret’s Lord Darcy is immediately recognizable as being a Brit of the Victorian era despite the Polish Empire still thriving because of how magic changed the world. The attitudes, clothing, how people live is accurate to the 19th century even if events are different.
In my opinion, historical fiction is more about getting the culture right than getting the events right. While on one level culture is altered by certain events, on other levels, cultural change is independent of the rise and fall of who is in charge. Thus post “Roman” Constantinople was ruled very much the same by the Ottomans as it had been by the Greeks, and the Janissaries had a very similar same role as the Varangian, Scholae Palatinae, and the Praetorian before them. The Ottomans had incorporated many elements of both Persian and Roman rule and culture during their expansion. On a similar basis, post Mongol China remained Chinese, with the cultures of Mongolia and China fusing rather than the conqueror replacing the conquered.
While events such as the conquest of China by the Mongols impacted the lives of many in China, for the most part the lives of most in China saw little immediate change. If magic had prevented that conquest, most things about 13th century China would be the same. Over time there may be subtle differences, but how people live in any period of time has less to do with who rules them in the premodern era than is taught in grade school history. Historical fiction that is set in a 14th century China where the Mongols never ruled would not be much different than a China where they did unless the characters in question were members of the ruling classes.
Too much historical fiction concerns members of the elite. If we focus on the lives of the people who are not societal elites, then our historical fiction is less dependent on events than on culture.
Obviously, this is my opinion. I’d love to learn yours.
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