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Magic and History
Jul. 3rd, 2008 12:11 pm It seems to me that there are a range of possible approaches to the intersection of magic and history in fantasy. I am most intrigued by how these approaches play out in stories that are written within some version of an "Earth" that is more or less like our own.
Approach 1: Magic is real, and was always real. Major portions of most populations can practice it. The history we already know is partly explained through magical causes that we didn't know, but that the story will reveal.
Approach 2: Magic is real, and was always real. Minor portions of many populations can practice it. The history of our world has become different in limited but interesting ways because of the reality of magic.
Approach 3: Magic is real, and was always real. Only certain limited groups can practice it. The history of most major countries and peoples is the same as it would be in a world where magic is not real, but there are small countries or time periods of anomaly associated with minor magical groups.
Approach 4: Magic is real, and was always real. Heroes or other anomalous individuals can practice it. The history of our world has not been significantly changed by the introduction of magic - major events may be decided through magical means, but the magic is just a tool used by an exceptional individual.
Approach 5: Magic is real, but was not always real. Suddenly, some group or population becomes able to practice it. The history of our world is the same as the history we know up until the point when Magic becomes real, at which point history changes.
A significant part of folklore-based fantasy seems to follow approach 1: Magic is real, was always real, and magical explanations may underlie recorded events. In this kind of story magic is an underlying sort of space to non-magical narrative - characters tend to fall from a non-magical narrative into a magical narrative. They may or may not re-emerge.
One way I identify Approach 1 type stories is that they rarely talk at all about history or politics. The focus is personal, but world building details may suggest that the world they live in is basically our world.
Time traveling fiction tends to be the biggest user of approach 2 that I'm aware of. A character from a more-or-less technological present goes back into another time period. In this time period, magic works. History as observed by the time traveler nonetheless seems to match pretty closely with history as we were aware of it in the technologically focused present.
Stories focused on politics or historically set social interactions with a magic element often use approach 3. This is when we get a map of Europe, for instance, that looks a lot like a contemporary map from that time period in a world with no magic would look, but there's a random extra (always tiny) country on the map. People in this country can do magic, and wander around doing magic in other places too. Sometimes it is a made up but dispersed culture that can do the magic, and we find oppressed members of this minority wandering through all the other countries, working magic but somehow never advancing to political power unless they are villains.
I haven't read all that much of approach 4 in anything recent, but if you've got a superhuman awesome person striding through a recognizable landscape dropping magic everywhere, and this happens in your world intermittently for magical reasons, you've got approach 4. These characters are usually equivalent to saints in religious stories - i.e., if Joan of Arc can do her stuff in your world not because God is providing her with miracles, but because she's a Magic User, then that's approach 4.
Approach 5 is fun for doing limited alternate-history setups. That's what I mostly see it used for. I.e., magic suddenly started working on Thursday morning at 5:00AM in xx/xx/xxxx calendar date, and boom, from there on forward, everything was suddenly very different. Horror stories use this setup fairly often too.
Approach 1: Magic is real, and was always real. Major portions of most populations can practice it. The history we already know is partly explained through magical causes that we didn't know, but that the story will reveal.
Approach 2: Magic is real, and was always real. Minor portions of many populations can practice it. The history of our world has become different in limited but interesting ways because of the reality of magic.
Approach 3: Magic is real, and was always real. Only certain limited groups can practice it. The history of most major countries and peoples is the same as it would be in a world where magic is not real, but there are small countries or time periods of anomaly associated with minor magical groups.
Approach 4: Magic is real, and was always real. Heroes or other anomalous individuals can practice it. The history of our world has not been significantly changed by the introduction of magic - major events may be decided through magical means, but the magic is just a tool used by an exceptional individual.
Approach 5: Magic is real, but was not always real. Suddenly, some group or population becomes able to practice it. The history of our world is the same as the history we know up until the point when Magic becomes real, at which point history changes.
A significant part of folklore-based fantasy seems to follow approach 1: Magic is real, was always real, and magical explanations may underlie recorded events. In this kind of story magic is an underlying sort of space to non-magical narrative - characters tend to fall from a non-magical narrative into a magical narrative. They may or may not re-emerge.
One way I identify Approach 1 type stories is that they rarely talk at all about history or politics. The focus is personal, but world building details may suggest that the world they live in is basically our world.
Time traveling fiction tends to be the biggest user of approach 2 that I'm aware of. A character from a more-or-less technological present goes back into another time period. In this time period, magic works. History as observed by the time traveler nonetheless seems to match pretty closely with history as we were aware of it in the technologically focused present.
Stories focused on politics or historically set social interactions with a magic element often use approach 3. This is when we get a map of Europe, for instance, that looks a lot like a contemporary map from that time period in a world with no magic would look, but there's a random extra (always tiny) country on the map. People in this country can do magic, and wander around doing magic in other places too. Sometimes it is a made up but dispersed culture that can do the magic, and we find oppressed members of this minority wandering through all the other countries, working magic but somehow never advancing to political power unless they are villains.
I haven't read all that much of approach 4 in anything recent, but if you've got a superhuman awesome person striding through a recognizable landscape dropping magic everywhere, and this happens in your world intermittently for magical reasons, you've got approach 4. These characters are usually equivalent to saints in religious stories - i.e., if Joan of Arc can do her stuff in your world not because God is providing her with miracles, but because she's a Magic User, then that's approach 4.
Approach 5 is fun for doing limited alternate-history setups. That's what I mostly see it used for. I.e., magic suddenly started working on Thursday morning at 5:00AM in xx/xx/xxxx calendar date, and boom, from there on forward, everything was suddenly very different. Horror stories use this setup fairly often too.
