Irritating clichés about Pre-1900 AH

Deleted member 67076

Yeah, guilty as charged. It's entirely a decision of story over science in alt-hist. Part of me really wants to start messing with Europe at the time of the Vinland contact, but another, bigger part of me wants to mess with OTL's 16th-century history (as Space Oddity put it once, "when everything was up in the air").

That said, if your dealing with climactic butterflies from an agricultural POD, those would be so far reaching as to make the world entirely unrecognizable everywhere, but with no easy way to determine the chain of cause and effect for the butterflies. So, that's why we "civilization building" writers all politely ignore those butterflies.
I suppose its understandable, but it is rather grating to see everything exactly the same way, states and all. I wouldn't do it, but then again, I don't really enjoy the 16th century :p

Vandalia Africana:
Every time the Vandals migrate, they'll always end up in Africa, never mind the rather specific circumstances that led them to settle there IOTL
 
My pre-1800ish nitpick cliches:

Prescient doctors. Doctors could only diagnose what they could see and hear. They couldn't diagnose most cancers. They couldn't diagnose occult head trauma. They couldn't diagnose internal bleeding unless blood was pouring out an orifice - and in that case death would usually be too fast for the doctor to arrive. They didn't always touch their patients. They didn't know that angina was a symptom of heart disease. They often confused diseases with similar symptoms. In England, they were not allowed to deliver babies.

Everyone Marries Young. It's true that in the past wealthy, royal, and aristocratic families married off their children (and especially their daughters) young. That's because marriage was used to form alliances and redistribute property, so it's reasonable to have children from these families married young. But the common people - 99.5% of the population - did not usually marry young because they couldn't afford to. Both men and women worked for years before marriage; they had to if they wanted to put a roof over their heads.

Children Die? Perish the Thought! Too many infants survive, too many children survive, too many mothers survive. Catherine of Aragon's experience was not that out of the average. Neither was Anne Boleyn's. We don't need to find explanations - given poor prenatal and perinatal care, the lack of hygiene, unclean water, alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and no understanding of proper nutrition, it's unusual for even a royal couple to have half their children survive. Yes, there were couples that kept 15 out of 16, but there were also couples who kept 0 out of 16 - but not in fiction.
 
Persia becomes an Middle-eastern Japan - Post-Napoleon Persia was not any state to become a modernized state like Japan since it didn't have a homogenous population and was 'trapped' between Great Britain and Russia. Neither countries would have wanted a powerhouse in the M-E.
 
Persia becomes an Middle-eastern Japan - Post-Napoleon Persia was not any state to become a modernized state like Japan since it didn't have a homogenous population and was 'trapped' between Great Britain and Russia. Neither countries would have wanted a powerhouse in the M-E.

:eek: Is that a cliche?
 
Persia becomes an Middle-eastern Japan - Post-Napoleon Persia was not any state to become a modernized state like Japan since it didn't have a homogenous population and was 'trapped' between Great Britain and Russia. Neither countries would have wanted a powerhouse in the M-E.

My Persia definitely didn't do that.
 
I think this is one of those threads that can be necro'd like this.

I'd hope so. This one is worth bringing back over starting a new one. :)

One cliche that bugs me is that N.A. is always dominated by english speaking peoples (or to a lesser extent french speaking peoples). :)

Another irritating cliche - Norse =/= Viking. Viking is a raiding party/job description. Norse is a culture/ethnic group!
 
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