NationStates Jolt Archive

I sometimes can easily surrender realism, though like to be somewhat realistic in demographics. I am creating a fantasy setting for the heck of it, not a D&Der but like free form RP. Some of us even could apply this in NS.

How far was the average distance between medieval cities, and what would be a realistic distance (in miles then leagues) to have between the cities and towns in my created kingdom? How many cities would a kingdom that is about 200 miles across by 400 miles long have?

I am thinking towns will have 400-2000 people, cities in the world will have 3000 to 10,000. I see vastly differing statistics on how many people medieval towns, and cities had. Medieval England (say the Tudor era) for example was a small kingdom with not much distance between cities, and towns though had similar populations as I listed I believe?

Another question is how many villages were typically in a Barony or average fief? Is it just made up for RP purposes that Barons had several Knights who held land under them, and possibly had their own manor houses or were Barons too lowly for that.

Gilded carriages as in France were rather advanced I understand, or how far back do they go? Would these types of carriages be appropriate for a wealthier kingdom in a dark ages setting?

Historical fiction is damn hard, or that's just how hard I found it when I gave it a try. You have to make it interesting and if you can't have magic, creatures and everything else a fantasy setting gives you to work with, you need something else. That something else could be an intricate dramatic plot, politics etc, or it could have a crisis or war as background to a character interaction story, which in itself can get pretty dull.

Historical fiction is damn hard, or that's just how hard I found it when I gave it a try. You have to make it interesting and if you can't have magic, creatures and everything else a fantasy setting gives you to work with, you need something else. That something else could be an intricate dramatic plot, politics etc, or it could have a crisis or war as background to a character interaction story, which in itself can get pretty dull.

I don't know if you read Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, but you may find it interesting to write the story of Wat Tyler and the Peasant Revolution in a similar vein - told from a first person perspective in a very human way.

It may be easier than pure fantasy and it might specifically be interesting to you.

Was asking about fantasy fiction, but historical fiction centering around Versailles is interesting to me. I mean the Three Musketeers is historical fiction somewhat, at least some events and characters. I found those novels interesting.

for medieval don't measure it in distance.
measure it in days traveled. People by and large were unsure of the exact distance. you can read a lot of historical accounts of travel in " the first crusade" by Edwards Peters. Also gives you an idea oh how to have some interesting real poltik, since you wont be using the fantasy genre pulls of magic and the like.

for medieval don't measure it in distance.
measure it in days traveled. People by and large were unsure of the exact distance. you can read a lot of historical accounts of travel in " the first crusade" by Edwards Peters. Also gives you an idea oh how to have some interesting real poltik, since you wont be using the fantasy genre pulls of magic and the like.

It does have magic...

Have you played D&D? If so, I would reference many things like that (from the Dungeon Master's Guide. That has a lot of demographical issues).

On of the biggest questions is: How prevalent, and powerful is magic? This will shape whether Wizards (or whatever you happen to call them) would set up mageocracies, or be completey outcast.

Other questions are: What fantasy races (indeed, if any) do you plan to include? How 'human' are they? Can they use magic? Is magic only innate, or only learned, or both?

As far as population, and distances are concerned, the above questions are all factors. If magic is potent, and common, why can't towns be far apart, with at least a minor mages guild in each town, teleporting travel can make the longest distances moot. Additionally, with a heavy prevalence of magic, would come longer lifespans, fewer people would die of common illnesses, or even diseases/war. Famines, and drought would be almost powerless, and the population would skyrocket, and even be potentially supported in part by magic.

Another question is, what part of the Middle Ages do you wish to represent here? You mentioned both the Tudor era (Late), as well as the *shudder* "dark" ages (early), and Versailles, which transcends the Middle Ages. The earlier you have it, the closer the towns, and the lower the population. Almost nothing should be more than a days travel from something else. As the time period moves on, there is an increasing prominence of cities, and so major cities should be far apart, but with smaller towns along the way, after all, merhcants have to stop somewhere.

My suggestion: go for the ~1100's AD, still heavy reliance on fortifications (castles, and towers), plus all the swords everyone has known and loved, without much of the overdone style of the renaissance.

Knights, who formed much of the bottom of the political scale were landed nobility, and the barons who directly employed them would also have manors looking over early-medieval towns, and the serfs that worked the land. Remember that in a realistic setting the 'king' of a kingdom was often not much more than any standard regional ruler, except that he was kinda 'first among equals' they pledged loyalty to him, for the God-ordained right to rule their own people. The king also typically was the direct ruler over his own province (much like the Pope is the "Bishop of Rome"), and so did have some direct rule.

It does have magic...

Like, when the wizard with a dour frown and smoldering eyes blasts a field of opponents into charred ash, or where the overdressed bisexual dude pulls a bird out of his hanky?

Or both, I guess...

Not really mutually exclusive...

It does have magic...

it is still a good source book to help write a historical setting.
Also helps since when you look at things through the eyes of the people then it gives you room to fudge numbers, estimates on distance travel are hard(well depending on which magic you use/allow).

i found these sites for info on figuring out medieval demographics and population spread helpful.

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

http://www.daisy.freeserve.co.uk/city.htm



i hope you find them useful as well.

I don't know if you read Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, but you may find it interesting to write the story of Wat Tyler and the Peasant Revolution in a similar vein - told from a first person perspective in a very human way.

It may be easier than pure fantasy and it might specifically be interesting to you.
Sounds good. I actually wanted to do the story of a revolutionary in the historical Civil War in Corcya (http://homepage.usask.ca/~jrp638/DeptTransls/ThucPorter.html) during the Peloponnesian War, I wanted to deal with aspects of civil war, class antagonism, politics etc, I have written a bit regarding how I would go about it.

I sometimes can easily surrender realism, though like to be somewhat realistic in demographics. I am creating a fantasy setting for the heck of it, not a D&Der but like free form RP. Some of us even could apply this in NS.

How far was the average distance between medieval cities, and what would be a realistic distance (in miles then leagues) to have between the cities and towns in my created kingdom? How many cities would a kingdom that is about 200 miles across by 400 miles long have?

I am thinking towns will have 400-2000 people, cities in the world will have 3000 to 10,000. I see vastly differing statistics on how many people medieval towns, and cities had. Medieval England (say the Tudor era) for example was a small kingdom with not much distance between cities, and towns though had similar populations as I listed I believe?

Another question is how many villages were typically in a Barony or average fief? Is it just made up for RP purposes that Barons had several Knights who held land under them, and possibly had their own manor houses or were Barons too lowly for that.

Gilded carriages as in France were rather advanced I understand, or how far back do they go? Would these types of carriages be appropriate for a wealthier kingdom in a dark ages setting?

You should remember that most cities weren't what we think of as cities now. Old poems about London refer to its "rolling green hills." People weren't packed on top of each other, it was just lots of farms really close together with a big town in the middle. For much of the Medieval period the only "real" European city was Constantinople.

Cities weren't related to each other in terms of their distance. Cities were what you got when a place was convenient to gather and trade. Towns however would be no more than 12 miles apart. The distance that people could travel in one day.

You can travel roughly 35 miles a day by horse, 20 miles on foot. In England towns tended to have grown from Roman camps which were a days march apart - so roughly 20-25 miles. A market town is needed for people to sell their produce and should be within a days travel. Cities tend to be in places that are extremely advantageous - on a river at the lowest bridge crossing a river/highest point on a river a ship could get to; a particularly good sea port; a particularly good defensive position etc..

You need to build a geography then add a technology base and only then think about demographics and settlement patterns.

i would suggest that you look at transport in particular. For most of human history transport by water was far easier than any other kind. I think it would be fair to say that only in exceptional cases would it be possible to mass transport bulk goods like grain except by water right up until the steam railway which rather turned economic and strategic geography on its head.

IIRC most towns performed a central place function and were only able to sustain themselves on the income from that. Cities were also unhealthy and were net consumers of population, relying on an influx from the surrounding region.

In fact until the advent of industrialisation and the railway It is probably easier to think of local and regional economies rather than national oes.
England is something of a special case asit is very much a country of coastlines and navigable rivers, which is what the first canals were a development of, and had London which exerted a profound influence on economic development, far greater than say Paris.

It is no coincidences that major cities, Constantinople was mentioned earlier, like London were on the coast/estuaries as this allowed the transport of the necessary food mass to sustain them.

In Europe, well at least in Spain, most towns and cities have existed since ca. the 14th century [when Spanish kings and nobility were looking to repopulate recaptured territory from the Arabs] and so even looking at a map today can give you a decent idea of the distance between cities and small towns. OTOH, like aforementioned above, cities were not as populated [unfortunately, I left a document on the Spanish town I originate from with its population over the centuries] - Madrid didn't really 'exist' until the 16th century [the Spanish capital was at Toledo until the advent of Phillip II]. There are good medieval maps of medieval cities, which should give you an idea of what they looked like. This said, towns in Spain normally had several things in common: a place to tie up horses so that they could drink water [several of these still exist and can be seen if you take the 'Route of Don Quijote'], a church [most built during the 14th century] and housing was normally spread apart [today, the houses are built together and I don't know if this was true during medieval Spain, as well - I only can go as far back as the early 1900s, housing wise].

I'm guessing travel for anybody other than nobility, merchants or anybody else that could afford to work for themselves or not work at all was restricted, and so most travel would be done by horse or wagon.

It also depends what 'era' of the medieval age, given that after the 13th century cities began to expand radically, especially in Italy and other countries were the renaissance came particularly early [Spain is not included, given that Spain remained predominately an agricultural economy until the late 20th century] - this was due to the Bubonic plague, amongst other things, and more advantagous terms for urban workers since there was a high demand for skilled labor after the Black Death and they were in short supply. Although high-rise buildings, of course, did not exist, 'apartment blocks' did and existed since the Classical era [namely, Rome was very densely populated relative to the age]. In Spain, the city of Ávila has been restored to almost perfect conditions [well, partially], but I unfortunately don't have photographs of the city on my computer [although I have to go there to go to the General Military Archives to research on Verdeja light tank soon] - it would give a good idea of what a small medieval city was like.

I should add that there will probably be some usefull historical material on individual towns in Medieval England on the net.

Try:

Coventry, which was a major location, cathedral city, local economic centre

Droitwich, [said Drot'ich] which nobody has heard of but was among the ten wealthiest towns in medieval Britain.

In the same general area of Central England you could also look at Stratford on Avon which might have a lot about it as it is a modern tourist centre, similarly Kenilworth, which was the heart of a major medieval power base, and Warwick which was the county town; same to for the neighbouring county look at Worcester (which was, surprise, surprise, on a major river artery, the Severn).

I am actually a bit iffy on all this new 'science-fiction fantasy', I don't mind a bit of cross over on themes etc though.

I sometimes can easily surrender realism, though like to be somewhat realistic in demographics. I am creating a fantasy setting for the heck of it, not a D&Der but like free form RP. Some of us even could apply this in NS.

How far was the average distance between medieval cities, and what would be a realistic distance (in miles then leagues) to have between the cities and towns in my created kingdom? How many cities would a kingdom that is about 200 miles across by 400 miles long have?

I am thinking towns will have 400-2000 people, cities in the world will have 3000 to 10,000. I see vastly differing statistics on how many people medieval towns, and cities had. Medieval England (say the Tudor era) for example was a small kingdom with not much distance between cities, and towns though had similar populations as I listed I believe?

Another question is how many villages were typically in a Barony or average fief? Is it just made up for RP purposes that Barons had several Knights who held land under them, and possibly had their own manor houses or were Barons too lowly for that.

Gilded carriages as in France were rather advanced I understand, or how far back do they go? Would these types of carriages be appropriate for a wealthier kingdom in a dark ages setting?If it isn't taking place on earth, you're not really bound by earth history. As long as you work out the necessary reasons for things, you could even have cities larger than those we have today.

I sometimes can easily surrender realism, though like to be somewhat realistic in demographics. I am creating a fantasy setting for the heck of it, not a D&Der but like free form RP. Some of us even could apply this in NS.

Laerod has it. :)

A really useful resource for con-worlding I've used is this: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm

It all comes back to economics.

Preindustrial farming did not produce much excess food, and transportation was fairly limited, so the population was substantially rural. The vast majority of people were farmers and even houses in towns had gardens to provide vegetables for their residents. Proper cities as we think of them were few and far between - only very few spots were conducive to cities. You need somewhere with easy access to huge areas of food production (on a major river and coast - grain barges down the river and ships from other lands coming in to supply it). Cities would be competing for the same food supplies, so this greatly limits how many their can be based upon the fertility of the lands and how much is under cultivation.

Depending on the geography, transportation is a major issue. Towns existed as a central collection point for the various farms and hamlets within a days travel (which could be 8 miles, could be 20). There was no reliable means of preservation (aside from curing or salting meat), so that limited distances food could travel. Even grain would spoil eventually (not always easy to keep it dry and free of pests).

You have to ponder geography - hilly and mountainous or heavily forested (slow travel), poor rocky soil (low food yield - low population and widely dispersed population centers), open grassland with well developed roads (quick travel, good economic activity), full of navigable rivers or maybe canals (flooding common?), surrounded by heavy turbulent seas, or any number of other little details that will have a significant impact on population.

Ah! Here's a thread where my advice-giving skills could be appreciated.

Read This (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm) handy page on this very subject. There's also an online calculator (http://qzil.com/kingdom/) thing for it - well, several (http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/).

I found this article (http://www.mu.ranter.net/theory/food.html) helpful too.

As for how many villages per average fief... depends. I would guess about 1, in the manorial system, with a lord of the manor for each fief/village. Not Barons though, heh.