#i've just finished a book which was otherwise very good but which definitely fell foul of this a few times

[thethirdromana]

I was going to add on to the post I just reblogged but I was halfway through and realised this is actually just a post of its own.

I think there are two ways of doing historical fiction or historical-flavoured fantasy, and they're both good but both serve different purposes.

There's the kind that aims to immerse you in a historical perspective that might be pretty alien to you. What's it genuinely like to be a Roman soldier or a medieval peasant? Sometimes this is historically accurate but I don't think it has to be. The Green Knight movie from a couple of years ago isn't historically accurate to anything, but I think it falls into this category because of how thoroughly it captures the weirdness of a lot of medieval literature. Fantasy literature in this category just needs a kind of internal consistency. LOTR is the obvious example.

And there's the kind that doesn't try to make you understand the thought processes and values of the people who lived in that kind of society, but instead imagines a historical or quasi-historical setting where the values and thought processes of most people are reasonably close to contemporary. The Witcher does this. Most historical detective fiction does this.

I enjoy both of these things!

I think the problem arises when you get the second kind that's pretending to be the first kind. So that most people in the story have historical values but our Very Clever Protagonist (VCP) has managed to figure things out for themselves and figured out a modern set of values all on their own. So everyone else wants to oppress women but the VCP thinks they should probably be able to vote. And also believes in democracy. And so does their love interest, probably, but no one else does.

Then it just comes across as looking down on people who are not like us without bothering to understand their reasons or the context they lived in. And you'd think the VCP would know better.