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What ifs
How could you have an 18th century French society-- full of ducs and swordsmen and composers and painters, in silks and peruques and patches and powder-- where everyone is black?
That I have to ask 'how' merely proves that I'm a westerner. The manga approach would say 'It just *is*' and proceed to draw black French aristos duelling and sipping wine and writing tragedies in rhyming alexandrine couplets. The Japanese have no truck with the devil and hence never think to consider the details of anything-- the likelihood of a settei or its RL application, because it doesn't have one. 'There are people who can kill with words and they have totally human-appearing servants who are made of paper. Trufax. Now watch them have sex.' Western fen leave no approach unexamined, and god forbid that it be this-world historically unfeasible or scientifically inaccurate or, bref, that it couldn't happen that way.
So I mustn't think about how it might happen. (Some major plague wipes out most of Europe and half the Arab empire, explorers from Sudan or central Africa come up the Nile to the Mediterranean and cross to the fertile and depopulated lands of Greece and Italy; another wave navigates the western coast of the African continent and works its way across Gibraltar to Spain and then north to France. Successive waves of migrants follow them into the Iberian peninsula and France and onward to Germany and Eastern Europe unless-the-Mongols-are-there, settle, numerically overwhelm the surviving barbarians, and by the 18th century develop much the same society as the RL descendants of the Visigoths and Normans did. Mh. Is Christianity necessary for this at some point, or could it be assimilated into the mainstream African religions? To be French is it necessary to have been Roman at some point?) No, too complicated. It's not historical A/U, it's a Riverside other-world-entirely fait accompli sort of place.
In which the Marquis de Carabas is a *real* aristocrat, which was the point of the exercise in the first place.
(Mostly. The other was to have a society where the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was pretty much the norm, only perhaps considered a bit pale. BTW Saint-Georges fought a duel with the Chavalier d'Eon, which is something any mangaka would pounce on. Except that it was arranged and not an affair of honour.)
That I have to ask 'how' merely proves that I'm a westerner. The manga approach would say 'It just *is*' and proceed to draw black French aristos duelling and sipping wine and writing tragedies in rhyming alexandrine couplets. The Japanese have no truck with the devil and hence never think to consider the details of anything-- the likelihood of a settei or its RL application, because it doesn't have one. 'There are people who can kill with words and they have totally human-appearing servants who are made of paper. Trufax. Now watch them have sex.' Western fen leave no approach unexamined, and god forbid that it be this-world historically unfeasible or scientifically inaccurate or, bref, that it couldn't happen that way.
So I mustn't think about how it might happen. (Some major plague wipes out most of Europe and half the Arab empire, explorers from Sudan or central Africa come up the Nile to the Mediterranean and cross to the fertile and depopulated lands of Greece and Italy; another wave navigates the western coast of the African continent and works its way across Gibraltar to Spain and then north to France. Successive waves of migrants follow them into the Iberian peninsula and France and onward to Germany and Eastern Europe unless-the-Mongols-are-there, settle, numerically overwhelm the surviving barbarians, and by the 18th century develop much the same society as the RL descendants of the Visigoths and Normans did. Mh. Is Christianity necessary for this at some point, or could it be assimilated into the mainstream African religions? To be French is it necessary to have been Roman at some point?) No, too complicated. It's not historical A/U, it's a Riverside other-world-entirely fait accompli sort of place.
In which the Marquis de Carabas is a *real* aristocrat, which was the point of the exercise in the first place.
(Mostly. The other was to have a society where the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was pretty much the norm, only perhaps considered a bit pale. BTW Saint-Georges fought a duel with the Chavalier d'Eon, which is something any mangaka would pounce on. Except that it was arranged and not an affair of honour.)
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Getting over an inappropriate concern with authenticity really, really helps with authentic storytelling.
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That was later? How odd. I'd assumed the evolutionary sequence was African - Asian- European, possibly just because I recall early man found in Africa and Asia but not in Europe.
has Naomi Novik ever explained how human beings could develop their current cultures and technology with another sentient race -- bigger and stronger, with greater evolutionary advantages like fire and acid -- competing with them for resources at the top of the food chain?
No, but someone has thought to ask the question, thus proving my point. ^_^ Has anyone thought to ask why the Loveless guys have cat ears while virgin? Probably, and thereby missed the essence of the matter, which is that cat ears are kyoot. Though I would read a book about elegantly-mannered dragons keeping herds of small tasty bipedal snack-animals myself, it probably wouldn't see the light of day unless a Glorious Bipedal Liberator arose. I have a perception that certain publication industries, like certain film and TV industries, believe It's All About Us and anything else won't sell. But you know this better than I.
(Dragons are sentient but humans might have been intellectually ahead of them early enough to establish dominance. Argh no, I don't want to play the 'howdid' game!) (Really. If only because the answers we provide are based on what we know and are familiar with, and so much more is possible.)
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