my hot take on the fantasy genre is that it's not inherently bad to do a medieval europe based fantasy world or really any european inspired fantasy world, in fact i like that stuff and think it can be very cool and while yeah definitely diversify the historical cultures the genre bases fantasy worlds on, that's always good and having european culture be the default for everything ever is bad, the problem here i never see anyone talk about is that people keep somehow making medieval and early modern europe boring as fuck and not understanding anything about it
No because LITERALLY. As both a fantasy enjoyer and huge nerd for (especially German) histroy having a setting similar to the HRE would be insane.
Like, y'all. You literally had this GIANT construct of a bunch of different-but-just-similar-enough cultures and lands from a huge ass empire that would end up being the major power in the continent and STILL couldn't get along. Imagine the political intrigue you could write with an HRE-esque super empire in a fantasy world.
Emperors weren't born but instead elected by nobles, each small dukedom and kingdom and bishopric and whatever had their own degree of independence, there was constant political intrigue. tHE SLOW DECLINE OF CENTURIES. They have rivalries with each other. Everyone is just similar enough to make for valuable allies against the outside while still beind different enough to wage war against. You could do so many cultures and different ideas. Just LOOK at the map of the thing irl!
YOU SEE THAT!? THE DRAMA THAT COULD BE DONE WITH A FANTASY HRE.
