Why most fantasies are set in Medieval times?

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Most of the fanstasy content (books, movies, games etc.) are set in medieval times. Why not in different eras of the humanity? What is so special about medieval era?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because in the 50’s and 60’s, high fantasy novels like *The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia* and *Earthsea* were incredibly popular, and many of their tropes and settings were so ingrained in the popular imagination (and codified in games by Dungeons and Dragons and similar tabletop games, the spiritual forerunners of essentially every fantasy or RPG game) that the genre was pretty solidified. Goblins and dragons and wizards tended to be associated squarely with castles and knights and such.

That being said, there is plenty of fantasy not set in that typical “high fantasy” sword-and-sorcery setting. Harry Potter is arguably the most popular fantasy series ever, and it’s set squarely in 1990’s Britain. Star Wars is science fantasy – a science fiction setting with fantasy tropes. An old wizard recruits a young farm boy and a lovable thief to rescue a princess from a fortress controlled by a black knight – replace wizard with “Jedi” and throw in some familiar names, but the tropes are there!

There’s modern fantasy and western fantasy, ancient fantasy, space fantasy, mythological fantasy, the list goes on and on. But the sort of heart of the genre, high fantasy (and its close relatives), really does owe its existence to those forerunners, and tends to sample heavily from their settings and tropes.

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