World Building - Medieval

Look, most fantasy has settled on a default setting of a quasi medieval europe-like Fantasy Land, and while it has some serious inherent flaws, like whitewashing and overused bigotry and misogyny for the sake of “Historical Accuracy”.

But my biggest problem with it is that its just Bland. Most of the places feel the same, with just different coats of paint and new names, there is rarely any interesting thoughts put into how the world works, since its just assumed to be the default. And i think its just a terrible shame because medieval Europe is such a vibrant and endlessly interesting setting.

Here I have a map of Europe in 1130 AD, just to pick a snapshot (X):

Can you see how much is going on here? A lot, which is good for us, bc it means more to steal from. But allow me to explain what you are looking at.

Going left to right, top to bottom:

In Scandinavia and Northern Britain we have the former viking nations now slowly transitioning into more settled societies, as well as being converted from pagan to Christian.
In Ireland we have the many tiny petty kingdoms feuding for control, while paying lip-service to:
England which had all too recently been overtaken by the Normans, who installed their new french Aristocracy
France is a mess so decentralized there isn’t any clear line for who is even part of the country, with the King of England paying fealty as he is also the duke of Normandy, and Brittany (the brown thumb sticking out) being its own little Celtic thing, doing the same lip-service as the Irish do to England
Next to France we have the bigger brother The Holy Roman Empire (HRE) originally the German part of the Frankish Empire, until the empire was split between the emperors three sons, quickly after which the middle brother was attacked from both sides got split up and fought over ever since. The HRE is a mess so complicated im gonna do a whole other post about it, but its pretty much about 300 countries squeezed into one giant one.
Then in the reds we have the first unified and christian state of Poland, which would quickly be divided among the sons again. The country is both in conflict with the neighboring Germans as well as:
Old Prussians and Baltics, pagan tribes who both in-fight and get frequently invaded by the next door Christians, the last remainder of the Romuva
Then in the greens, we have the river-trading Kievan Rus, who always remind me so much of Rohan, only with riverboats instead of horses. They were city states that worked the plains around then and traded with the Romans in the south and the Germans and Scandinavians in the west. They were is frequent conflict with:
The Steppe Hordes (in brown and yellow), who spread out over the vast flat grassy steppes that go from Hungary to Korea, mastering the art of horseriding and archery and being able to move around faster on land than anyone else on the globes for many centuries. Mostly they were nomadic and pastoral, living off their horses, they would also frequently raid their wealthy settled neighbors, for the plunder and tribute.
Speaking of Hungary (in orange), in the northern Balkans, surrounded at all sides by hills and mountains is the large fertile valley, which is home to to the Magyars, a former steppe horde, that invaded and conquered the valley and settled, slowly turning into the large kingdom of Hungary.
Jumping west to present day Spain, we have the Iberian Peninsula, which was for a long time ruled by the Caliphate of Cordoba, conquering all the way up into France. Slowly however, there has been a pushback, as the new militarized kingdoms of Portugal, Castille, Navarra and Aragon are working their way south over the course of many centuries.
In Italy, aside from the HRE,
We have the Merchant Republics of Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi and Venice, who fought over trade in the Mediterranean, with the Holy lands and especially rights to the lucrative trade with the Muslim Caliphates, who had access to both the Silk Road and the Spice Trade.
Then we also have the Pope, who apart from being the head of all the Entire Catholic Church, was also the king of his own realm, the Papal State.
At last in the south we have Sicily, which was a Norman and French controlled kingdom, which had been conquered in a crusade from the Emirate of Sicily.
In Greece and Anatolia (in purple), we have the remnant of the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, although they at no point stopped thinking or referring to themselves as Romans. Here a remnant of late antiquity remains, ever trying to regain its old glory. Rejecting the Pope, they hold to the old Orthodox ways of the Patriarchy and spread their influence out in competition with the Catholic West, as well as the Muslim East.
The Caucasus is a long strip of land between two seas with a bigass mountain-chain going across the middle, and making it very hard to cross. The locals very much like to keep it this way: Here in a valley up against the mountains, we have the Kingdom of Georgia, a land of wineyards and fiercely defensive warriors, holding off both the much larger Caliphates to the south and the other mountain tribes to the north.
Going back to the west we have the coast of North Africa, where we numerous smaller states either under control of Cordoba in Spain or the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Here they live on the livable strip of land between the sea and the desert, sailing north to raid the christian lands to the north.
From here there is the great trek, trading caravans crossing the Sahara south to goldmines of the Mali Empire, home of the richest man in the human history, King Mansa Musa, whose wealth would have been immeasurable by any standard we have today, whose Hajj to Mecca was so splendid and charitable that it crashed the global gold market for a decade. A largely isolated kingdom, it flourishes from the bountiful caravan trade.
Along the coast of the easternmost Mediterranean, we have the newly formed Crusader States, formed in the first crusade, where the squabbling crusade leaders competed and carved up their winnings into their own small kingdoms. Here is a mix of locals, pilgrims, holy orders and Italian merchants all trying to carve out a success.
Further in we have the Abbasid Caliphate, enjoying the prosperous times of the Late Islamic Golden age, with bountiful harvest, the spice trade and silk road, and a unrivaled creation of knowledge in the Baghdad House of Wisdom, one of the largest universities and libraries in the world. To parallel the Christian holy orders, we also have the shia Hashashin Order, who come down from their mountain fortresses to assassinate those they see as a threat.

This is just a very quick overview, and most of these would change over the course of a century. This is mostly to show how there has never been a Fantasyland-esque static world of same-ish kingdoms, that is a simplification made because there is no way to get anywhere near the complexity of the real world when we are making a work of fiction. That way leads to an encyclopedia.

So we make shadow-puppets, abstractions, we use shorthand and likenesses to well-known history to not have to explain what a king is every time. But the problem arises when it becomes a copy of a copy, an abstraction made from other abstractions. This can make the world bland and makes it difficult to then add back the interesting details. That’s why i think its way better to steal inspiration from the source, before many of the good stuff has been filtered away.

In general Things Have Always Been Messier and More Interesting Than You Think: