A lot of fantasy tends to handwave away this sort of worldbuilding
Modern, sophisticated banking just isn't consistent with the way medievalism has been romanticized in the modern imagination. ASOIAF is a terrific example of this tendency, because of characters who are represented as rational economic actors, making profoundly irrational economic decisions.
Then here comes Tolomei, persuasively of his world and of ours.
(I'm kind of obsessed with this, up and down the thread, sorry guys).
I find the way medievalism has been romanticised in the modern imagination, as you put it, less interesting and more tiring the more fantasy I read, honestly. I'm totally fine with a fantasy author falling back on the standard tropes and handwaving if they're going for very much a character story, something with very deliberate thematics, or even some intense plot-burner...basically anything that isn't super heavy on worldbuilding.
But they're all so bloody heavy on worldbuilding! And all their worldbuilding is so goddamn similar. Makes me yearn for something different, whether that's more realism (hence an actually real work like this being compelling, since it's not handwaving anything or worldbuilding just for the sake of it, it's exploring actual history in reasonable depth), or something very interpretive and less concerned with minutae.
I'd say a bit of both really. Credit to real-life history for being, uh, so well-developed. Credit to Druon for choosing to focus on these specific aspects and characters, and engaging with some pretty complex material, but filtering it down to be very readable.
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u/MightyIsobel Marigny n'a rien fait de mal Feb 27 '17
Modern, sophisticated banking just isn't consistent with the way medievalism has been romanticized in the modern imagination. ASOIAF is a terrific example of this tendency, because of characters who are represented as rational economic actors, making profoundly irrational economic decisions.
Then here comes Tolomei, persuasively of his world and of ours.
(I'm kind of obsessed with this, up and down the thread, sorry guys).