I cannot emphasize strongly enough

[james_davis_nicoll]

that secondary world fantasies are set in entirely invented worlds to which Earth's actual history may have little to no relevance.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

To address this and, strangely, the argument about poetry: A secondary world usually is populated with, if not exclusively, human beings. Human beings that probably speak English. If you're a human being who speaks English but you demand that your secondary world has more realistic differences of dominant species and vocabulary, then I suppose your purity of principle deserves... acknowledgement.

But a "secondary world" might be only a part of our own world that you aren't familiar with. There was that one which seemed to borrow British and European place names without rhyme, a-ha, or reason, and then it turned out that it simply was set in New Zealand.

Given a secondary world which contains human beings, whether people are and aren't respectful of each other's bodies and other property or dignity depends on the setting's legal rights, police force, bearing of arms including magic and psychic powers, and of course, the gods, who may be seen and heard in such a setting more than they are in ours.

And then it's a question of whether an author wants to analyse human inconsiderate urges or just to enjoy them.

And on the original point: if the setting appears to be for instance mostly 19th century Europe but with domesticated dragons in an important role (I think that's a thing), can it be said that this has nothing to do with actual historic Europe?