Doug BrotherofCats Dandridge

I read a book recently about violence. Not a social treatise on how violence affects children or families, or how violence is bad. It was a short book for writers about real violence in real life and how to portray it realistically in stories. A very interesting read and I definitely learned things. One comment from the author, who was a fantasy reader as well, was how miffed he got with the portrayals of medieval societies in most novels. How they were mirrors of today with all the tech removed and maybe some magic inserted. I already knew, as a student of history and warfare, how wrong this view was. And I had to agree with him. Many writers show a medieval world through the eyes of this period, and this is just not correct. Not to say that every portrayal of the current period is all that different. We exist on the same world with barbaric societies that have the same values as the old societies that we try to show in High Fantasy. But we writers and most of our readers live in a society totally unlike anything our ancestors struggled to survive in. So how was society fundamentally different back then? And I mean from the democratic egalitarian cultures of today?
For one thing most societies practiced one religion in one way. Anyone seen practicing in a different manner, or worshiping a different deity, was not just seen as strange, but seen as a threat. This was not a good thing. Threats were not gossiped about, not called names, not asked to leave. They were eliminated. Once and for all. They were deemed witches, or servants of evil, and killed in a manner that discouraged others from engaging in the same practices. You were either seen in church or the local worship services, or you were glared at, and people pried into your business until they found out what was going on. The only freedom of religion was to practice what the guy in charge said to practice. If the ruler changed his mind and his faith his subjects were expected to do the same. If not they were most likely killed. If they wanted to adhere to the old faith they had to do so in private. And if the ruler was deposed by another who wanted to bring back the old time religion, there was a chance that the people who just went along to be left alone would be killed in the upheaval of change. The thirty years war in Germany was a religious war, on the surface, Protestant against Catholic. Over a third of the population was killed in that one, though the ability to rape and loot was as much to blame as the religious part of the war, as mercenaries came out of the woodwork to get theirs while the getting was good.
Punishment was different than our concept. Jails were not made for punishment, but simply as holding areas until the real fun could begin. The real punishment was hard labor in the mines or on a farm, multiple lashes with a whip, torture and disfigurement, or the biggy, death by some or other imaginative and entertaining means. Ancient societies on the whole did not have the space or the resources to spare on storage of criminals. They either got some use out of them, did something to them and then let them loose to take care of themselves, or simply got rid of them. There may have been some societies that started doing prisoner storage, but they really weren’t concerned about the health and welfare of the prisoners. In England there were over twenty crimes that resulted in death by hanging, including stealing a loaf of bread, something the person might have done to simply survive.
Life was short and cheap. People died all the time of many and varied causes. Plagues, fevers, starvation, killed by wild and domestic animals. In fact, murder was not really a crime in some societies if a higher up killed someone of lower status. There was sometimes a price to be paid, in coin of the realm, as was done in Gaul. If a low birth farmer was killed this was not very much. If a low born person killed a noble or chief there was literally hell to pay. In ancient Japan a samurai could kill a peasant for any reason or none at all. Life was not considered sacred, even in places that professed to follow religious teaching that said it was. When a city or town was stormed during war a lot of people died, a lot of women were raped, and except for the soldiers involved in the intaking a good time was not had by all, or any for that matter. People still lived into the eighties, just not a lot of them. Most died at a much earlier age, and people in their thirties could look like old men and women due to the hard work and poor nutrition. In some cultures parents did not let themselves get close to children until they reached at least what we would consider school age, due to the high infant and young child mortality rate. This had a horrible effect on the children who grew up unloved and uncared for. Who perpetuated the same cycle with their children.
Last but not least there was no social safety net. Children whose parents died either were rescued by relatives or spent their often short years on the street. People too old to work often just starved to death. Ditto with the crippled. Unless they could beg enough to survive on they simply died. There were people with money, and they often could survive into old age. And sometimes the church would take care of people. But for most it was work or die. And work was a brutal business, often all hours of the day that actually had light, six days a week (or sometimes seven, depending on the religious fervor of the area). A lot of people were looking for a way out. I believe that was why so many young men tried to get on with mercenary armies, the chance to make a fortune and get away from the endless toil. Even though the average mercenary didn’t live very long. But times were hard and people were harder.
Now if you want to write high fantasy or historical fiction there are all things to keep in mind. It is not just people just like the ones living in California, only in a different time.