lands: where did he get them?
May. 30th, 2022 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliRipping off a story idea and hitting on an issue. It's a nominally feudal land. (Nominally because it's inconsistent.) And the knight has a castle and an estate, both distinctly grand. It's explicitly mentioned that he got them in the original story, but nothing more. Which is one of the flaws that inspired me to redo the idea.
Hmmm. Being granted the land for his prior heroism would be plausible, but he'd need a liege lord, and almost certainly a title, given the size of the estate. Unless I make it less feudal than that. There are monsters about, and a lot of monster-fighting. That would alter the dynamics of feudalism quite substantially. (If I let it.)
Perhaps it was offered as a reward for whoever dealt with certain monsters, and perhaps it was so long ago that was a surprise. Or perhaps he inherited it, only no one expected he could actually claim that lands because of monsters; OTOH, that would mean that people are not settled in that land, as a lord in his castle would be better off than peasants on the lands.
This is, of course, the great issue of how to rip off an idea. Bad stories are better than good ones, in that in junking the elements that made you think that it could stand improvement helps file off the serial numbers.
But it does mean that there are things you have to junk and replace. Or make up whole cloth because the original story didn't bother to world-build.
Hmmm. Being granted the land for his prior heroism would be plausible, but he'd need a liege lord, and almost certainly a title, given the size of the estate. Unless I make it less feudal than that. There are monsters about, and a lot of monster-fighting. That would alter the dynamics of feudalism quite substantially. (If I let it.)
Perhaps it was offered as a reward for whoever dealt with certain monsters, and perhaps it was so long ago that was a surprise. Or perhaps he inherited it, only no one expected he could actually claim that lands because of monsters; OTOH, that would mean that people are not settled in that land, as a lord in his castle would be better off than peasants on the lands.
This is, of course, the great issue of how to rip off an idea. Bad stories are better than good ones, in that in junking the elements that made you think that it could stand improvement helps file off the serial numbers.
But it does mean that there are things you have to junk and replace. Or make up whole cloth because the original story didn't bother to world-build.