Shewstone Publishing presented SEM21197813 Beyond Battles: Overloooked History for World Builders at Gen Con Online on September 17, 2021. This year’s topics were:
The legend of King Arthur and how it conflicts with archaeological evidence of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain.
Real-world clerical necromancy, an underground of monks and priests who practiced black magic and mostly got away with it.
The “taming” of English nobility by the Tudor dynasty at the end of the fifteenth century.
Our Historical Fantasy RPG
We publish Magonomia, the RPG of Renaissance wizardry. Everyone plays a wizard wielding magic based on authentic Renaissance lore.
Video
Slides
Here are the slides of the presentation.
Notes
Here are the notes and follow-up from each section.
Legend of King Arthur
Although the legend is no longer considered factual, it makes a great adventure setting. Andrew recommends the Age of Arthur RPG.
A good science fiction novel set against an empire’s decline is A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.
Here’s a direct link to the Secrets of the Dead episode “King Arthur’s Lost Kingdom.”
Wikipedia’s article on the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain summarizes recent discoveries about the period.
Clerical Necromancy
We didn’t mention it in the presentation, but an excellent overview of (European) historical magic is Magic and superstition in Europe : a concise history from antiquity to the present by Michael F. Bailey.
A more focused book about medieval magic (containing no actual spells) is Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Keickhefer. Kieckhefer also has several other books about the history of magic that are worth a look.
An audience member asked about books with actual spells that pre-modern people believed would work. We didn’t research actual spells from the medieval period so we’ll have to direct you to your search engine or your friendly local reference librarian. We do know quite a bit about fifteenth and sixteenth century spells. Two books we used heavily while researching our game Magonomia are:
The Book of Oberon: a sourcebook of Elizabethan Magic by Daniel Harms et al.
Making Magic in Elizabethan England: two early modern vernacular books of magic edited by Frank Klaassen
Also, we touched on the investiture conflict, the 500-year struggle between the Western church and monarchs over how much influence the Crown will have over selection of priests and bishops. It’s a big topic; for a good overview of this and other important historical trends, we recommend Civilization in the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor.
The Taming of the Nobility
There wasn’t any discussion of sources during the seminar. Many history books give surprisingly light treatment to Henry VII, which is perhaps the way he would have wanted it. I’ll refer the interested reader to The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty by G.J. Meyer.
Also I found a good documentary about Henry VII on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1ZKruLTJQ2Y