No, Game of Thrones didn’t take place in Medieval times lmao. Dragons and wizards didn’t exist in ye olde England.
It would be funny if people did this with more recent time periods and fiction. Like people genuinely thinking that victorian times had giant steampunk spider robots.
I will say it is a little concerning how often I hear people say shit unchallenged like “It takes place in the old days” about something that is a fantasy world that never actually existed. Makes me worried people can’t tell fantasy from reality.
Edit: This petty rant is because I was talking about GoT with a friend and told them that the constant sexual assault put me off watching it and they were like “Yeah, but that’s what it was like back then.”
My pet peeve is when a fantasy setting is based firmly on European medieval society, but operates in an early modern capitalist economy, instead of feudalism. This is most fantasy
Right? Where are the serfs!?
Writing theory
It is easier to imagine [an entirely different world with magic and dragons and shit], than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
This still could be feudal in its decline which saw the emergence of market economies, but generally I agree. I’ve soften on that opinion as I learned more about the social and economic development of merchant lead reorganization.
Peasants have to annually pay their feudal lord one (1) gold coin that they were somehow able to procure despite living miles away from the nearest city in the middle of a village nobody from that nearest city knows exist.
and all the anachronistic plate armor too! as a setting, “medieval times” is fantasy even without the magic