How Fantasy Authors Hide Real History in Their Worlds

You never read in a vacuum. Every fantasy novel you pick up is in conversation with the world that produced it. Sometimes the writer grabs something historical and retells it. Sometimes you can see the seams. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is a fantastic retelling of the Wars of the Roses. Le Guin explored gender debates of the 1960s. Tolkien wrote about short men and a great evil force, but the Dead Marshes are the Somme. So how does an author steal a war without you noticing it?

I love history. It inspires me. I read biographies because I can live periods of history through the subject’s perspective. I generally don’t read original source material because that takes too much time to compile. After reading a few books on a period of history, you have an idea of what happened. If you read good history, you start to see why it happened and what were the different principles that were in tension.

During the Reformation and the European Wars of Religion, one principle was that the subjects would conform to the confessed faith of their ruler (Cuius regio, eius religio). Both sides independently developed Resistance Theory to justify a minority’s overthrow of the ruler by appealing to a higher power (e.g. God). We see that in our history with Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and the American Revolution.

Divine right absolutism was the ruler’s counter to the minority’s resistance. Less about “I want to control everyone,” and more “I don’t want my country to collapse from instability.” Both Catholic and Protestant positions on this in England changed within a period of five years. These weren’t abstract debates. People died for these principles. People also switched which principle they died for, depending on who was on the throne.

It would be too easy to reskin historical figures, battles and events. It’s not “Martin Luther” but “Veldrik Lother.” Martin’s Lannisters are Lancasters with two letters changed. That’s a reskin, even if the underlying world brought its own rules and constraints. But I think only superficial transposition robs the source material of its essence. And it insults the reader.

Principle-based encoding extracts the rule that makes something work, not the thing itself. You don’t memorize openings. You learn the principles that produce them: control the center, develop before you attack and let your opponent make the first mistake. Or with golf, you adopt a principle of aiming short of hazards to avoid accidentally landing in them. Principle-based encoding can teach complex subjects like medicine.

And it works perfectly for worldbuilding.

Pick the period of history that fits the story you want to tell. If you don’t know it well, a dozen books will show you the principles in tension underneath. The American founding put “all men are created equal” against chattel slavery. The Reformation put a ruler’s faith against a subject’s conscience. Once you can see the tensions, you can build a world that produces them. Then the reader watches the same forces play out in a place that never existed.

Principle-based encoding takes time, energy, and intentionality for the author to give the reader a rich reading experience. Reskinning takes less of all three, and produces something readers love. Martin’s books work. Novik’s dragons work. The reader who picks one up gets a story built on a frame they already half-recognize, and the recognition is part of the pleasure. Encoding offers a different kind of reading. It lets the reader feel the forces that shaped the world we live in.

We limit our study of history to one or two facets; typically political and military. We reach simple conclusions about the past and dismiss those who lived through it. My research for my upcoming Company of Heretics series incorporates five distinct facets that balance one another and matures through the series. No single one carrying the weight.

You won’t see the Reformation when you read Company of Heretics. You’ll see a fractured magisterium. Princes whose convictions, kingdoms, and ambitions pull in different directions, knowing every choice costs them dearly. An ensemble of people trying to survive a world that has run out of heroes. And a man named Veldrato Fredariano trying to remain true to himself while the world around him would see him ground to powder.

Book one of Company of Heretics arrives later this year. The Wars of Religion are not in it. The shape underneath them is. If this post landed, forward it to one person who reads fantasy and notices how it’s built. That is how small things spread.