The scale of time in fantasy stories

[CarburetorThompson]

I feel a lot of authors underestimate the scale of time. A lot of times you'll read a story that has stuff dealing with ancient civilizations from tens of thousands of years ago. Or a story where a character is reincarnated 10k years later.

I feel like these authors don't understand history, and how time affects nations. The stories will have a kingdom exist for thousands of years with an unbroken line of lineage. Countries do not last that long. Even countries we think of today as being especially old are only aged a few hundred years at most in their current form.

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of the USSR one of the largest empires in history, all within less than a hundred years.

What do you think? Have you seen good excuses for stuff like this? Seen anything particularly offensive? I saw one story where a character came back 90 million years later and all the countries were still the same lmao.

Maybe you don't actually think it's a problem. It just always ruins any immersion I might have in a world.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

If you expand on what you mean by country, it is more understandable. Sure the USSR only existed for a short while, but Russia has existed for far longer. A government regime is only a small part of what it means to be a country. England has existed for over a thousand years.

But there are definitely some stories that do not treat the passage of time properly. So, you are not wrong in that respect.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I agree.

 

[RepresentingPride]

I feel a lot of authors underestimate the scale of time. A lot of times you'll read a story that has stuff dealing with ancient civilizations from tens of thousands of years ago. Or a story where a character is reincarnated 10k years later.

I feel like these authors don't understand history, and how time affects nations. The stories will have a kingdom exist for thousands of years with an unbroken line of lineage. Countries do not last that long. Even countries we think of today as being especially old are only aged a few hundred years at most in their current form.

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of the USSR one of the largest empires in history, all within less than a hundred years.

What do you think? Have you seen good excuses for stuff like this? Seen anything particularly offensive? I saw one story where a character came back 90 million years later and all the countries were still the same lmao.

Maybe you don't actually think it's a problem. It just always ruins any immersion I might have in a world.

It's Fantasy, don't compare it to the real world when something like a guardian beast or a relic can protect a kingdom against any enemies when the situation need it.

Also, the chinese empire history are more or less 4000 years. There other country that we could talk about who have a millenial or a bit more of existence like France and England, sure it's not 10k years but still.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

It's Fantasy, don't compare it to the real world when something like a guardian beast or a relic can protect a kingdom against any enemies when the situation need it.

It's not about protection.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

In 200 years, every building not made out of solid rock or self-healing concrete without rebar will crumble into dust. If it has steel as a building component, without constant maintenance, at BEST it will last 80 years, and be extremely unstable in 40. Anything with rebar has about 40-50 years before it breaks. Anything exposed to the sea will crumble twice as fast as it normally would due to salt.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

Geography isn’t a country. A country is defined by its government, which is more often than not a monarchy in these stories. A thousand or two thousand years isn’t a crazy scale for a fantasy civilization. I’m talking about tens of thousands of years of scope a lot of these stories have. Even completely removed from history it’s insane to expect a world‘s power structure to not experience any major upheaval, to expect that culture will remain unchanged. If someone wants to do something like that then they better have plausible explanation, but more often than not it is rarely explained.

 

[RepresentingPride]

It's not about protection.

Then what it's about? A civilization will continue to maintain their bulding during the period of time, the only exception are if they get attacked, and that where the protection come. How a country can disapear by itself? Except if there self conflict between them, but here again the protection can do the thing.

Time may make thing like culture or tradition disapear due to the change of mind, but the country won't disapear with that.

 

[RepresentingDesire]

If you expand on what you mean by country, it is more understandable. Sure the USSR only existed for a short while, but Russia has existed for far longer. A government regime is only a small part of what it means to be a country. England has existed for over a thousand years.

But there are definitely some stories that do not treat the passage of time properly. So, you are not wrong in that respect.

I think he means iterations of what we call nations, a example would be germany's 1-3 Reich. It was the entire time germany but just a different iterations.

 

[RepresentingPride]

Geography isn’t a country. A country is defined by its government, which is more often than not a monarchy in these stories. A thousand or two thousand years isn’t a crazy scale for a fantasy civilization. I’m talking about tens of thousands of years of scope a lot of these stories have. Even completely removed from history it’s insane to expect a world‘s power structure to not experience any major upheaval, to expect that culture will remain unchanged. If someone wants to do something like that then they better have plausible explanation, but more often than not it is rarely explained.

I don't really think about that in a fantasy setting, cause there a lot of thing that the author can throw to explain it. There only two stories I remember that explain it, one be Suprem Magus and the other Soul Land.

 

[BearlyAlive]

What you're calling a country is nothing more than a dynasty. And those die out. Were the Medici a country? The Windsors? Nope.

A country can be broken down into either culture or form of government, and the last one is somewhat more fluid than it should be (I'm looking at you France! Going from monarchy to republic to imperialism in less than a century...)

So as long as people call themselves citizens of Whatever, the nation of Whatever exists.

 

[Daitengu]

Also, the chinese empire history are more or less 4000 years. There other country that we could talk about who have a millenial or a bit more of existence like France and England, sure it's not 10k years but still.

China as a civilization has existed for that long, but the kingdoms and dynasties come and go regularly. You can straight up Google a list of 13 that can and went through history.

 

[HypnoticNovels]

We are talking about fantasy here, so you also have to take into account how there may be other reasons for super-long-lasting dynasties. Always possible for there to be something in their genes giving them the right to rule or something. That being said, the time scale of 10,000 years is a bit much even for that (assuming the lifespans of the citizens are around normal). In a fantasy world where gods exist, it would most likely only be a religious-based country that can last much longer than that.

360,000 years or something passes within the first 24 chapters of my story so I put a lot of thought into this

 

[RepresentingPride]

China as a civilization has existed for that long, but the kingdoms and dynasties come and go regularly. You can straight up Google a list of 13 that can and went through history.

Maybe it's just me, but since their culture and tradition are the same or with a bit difference/evolution, that still the same "china", the only thing that changed was the one who rules it and the borders of the country.

 

[BlackKnightX]

For what it's worth, having that much time passes actually creates a sense of epicness and mythical.

And don't forget, this kind of scenario often happens in Xianxia novels where they always set in a world full of immortals or those with an absurdly long lifespan.

That could be the reason why society doesn't fall as fast, because its root and foundation still hold strong even after all these years. Living for that long, and not to even mention how the cultivation affects their minds, things could turn out very different from our world indeed.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

China as a civilization has existed for that long, but the kingdoms and dynasties come and go regularly. You can straight up Google a list of 13 that can and went through history.

I suppose the main point of contention is civilization vs country.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Then what it's about? A civilization will continue to maintain their bulding during the period of time, the only exception are if they get attacked, and that where the protection come. How a country can disapear by itself? Except if there self conflict between them, but here again the protection can do the thing.

Time may make thing like culture or tradition disapear due to the change of mind, but the country won't disapear with that.

Corruption and political strife. These two things can change a lot. What if a king stops being a retarded version of a president from modern world, and starts acting like a real king? What if the said king is completely incompetent? An incompetent king can't lose the magic thingies that protects his country?

Another thing. Progress. It's not always about destruction. Where is the progress? Sure, gods protect a country, and king is a retarded version of a president, then what about progress? Gods again? Or is it a magical relic that prevents people from developing new things? And I'm not talking about technology. Develop new magic, or both. Culture changes, and so on. Obviously when it comes to progress it won't change in a few years, but we talk about hundreds of years here.

 

[RepresentingPride]

Corruption and political strife. These two things can change a lot. What if a king stops being a retarded version of a president from modern world, and starts acting like a real king? What if the said king is completely incompetent? An incompetent king can't lose the magic thingies that protects his country?

Another thing. Progress. It's not always about destruction. Where is the progress? Sure, gods protect a country, and king is a retarded version of a president, then what about progress? Gods again? Or is it a magical relic that prevents people from developing new things? And I'm not talking about technology. Develop new magic, or both. Culture changes, and so on. Obviously when it comes to progress it won't change in a few years, but we talk about hundreds of years here.

The thread didn't talk about progression, but how a line of lineage can last that long without someone else taking/stealing the country and that could be explained by different point.

In one story I read, the lineage was the same throughout all the history of a kingdom, a guardian beast was helping the kingdom, and that said guardian beast was also the first Queen of it, due to her blood, the descendant have a larger life span around 200years. And if that wasn't enough, the guardian beast help to choose the ruler of the kingdom between the one who have the same lineage, if one are not good enough to be king/queen, he/she get killed if he still want to take it.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

The thread didn't talk about progression, but how a line of lineage can last that long without someone else taking/stealing the country and that could be explained by different point.

I thought this thread was about "the scale of time in fantasy stories," and not about lineages only. Am I misunderstanding something?

 

[prognastat]

Another consideration is that succession is often the cause of issues for countries too and long lived races have fewer hand overs of power meaning fewer situations where a problem during succession can occur which might cause the kingdoms of longer lived races to last longer on average than those of shorter lived races.

Also yes thousands of years is longer than most tend to last, but many countries also don't collapse in less than a century. Most of the countries in Europe are many centuries old. Also saying well it's a different government is tough because when you have a democracy technically you could say you have a different government every election cycle unless the same party stays in power. In which case is it only when a different type of governing system is implemented that we consider it a change? What about situations where monarchies voluntarily switch to democracies? Is that the same kingdom/country or an entirely new one? Or is it only if they are conquored by another country that it changes?