The Book of the New Sun vs. A Song of Ice and Fire

nate jarvis · 02 Aug 2012, 01:13 · from 2012-August.txt.gz

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From: natejarv at gmail.com (nate jarvis)
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 03:13:23 +0200
Subject: (urth) The Book of the New Sun vs. A Song of Ice and Fire
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Well, but without the Church and Christianity. So it's not actually
medieval at all.
</JBJordan>

I assume you mean the society for creative anachronism? There are
religions in ASOIAF. There's one that seems to have a lot of the "high
church" (RC or CoE) pomp and ceremony of Christianity, in which
worshippers pray to one of a small pantheon for intercession (similar
to the gods from Bujold's Chalion books) and another that seems to be
modelled on Zoroastrianism and incorporates the millenarianism of
medieval Christianity--right down to the return/rebirth of a
historical/mythical savior.

If you were to specifically and explicitly use the Catholic Church in
a high fantasy cum faux history story, where the history, places, etc.
are all different... maybe that could work, but people bring their
feelings about the RC to the story, whereas abstracting what you feel
are the essentials of the medieval church (prayers for intercession or
millenarian doomsday prophecies) and then introducing a
different-but-similar institution that keeps those essentials in place
removes some of the prejudices and associations people might have
about a real world institution.

Nate.

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