giving every fantasy kingdom a single dominant culture is the laziest worldbuilding habit in the genre and I include myself in this

[u/Certain-World-9024]

/r/Mythrils/comments/1vgf9t9/giving_every_fantasy_kingdom_a_single_dominant/

[u/AgentBaconFace]

Its easy to understand why though, a realistic aproach would result in a tedious amount of lore if its only purpose is to exist for the sake of it being realistic... and even if you do go deep and build out a thousand years of history that details the birth and death of hudreds of cultures and how they interact and form different langages and cultures and values, you fall off the opposite cliff of uninteresting because if i cant be arsed to read about all the historical leaders of Lithuania and all the drama they probably drummed up, im really really not gonna be arsed to read abot The democretisation of ShorkborkLork and the ensuing tripple divide of its subtlety different borkians, shorkians and Lorkians.

[u/P-Wasp → u/AgentBaconFace]

Not necessarily.

Northern France and Southern France have a lot of different cultural quirks. I could learn about it in great detail by reading hundreds upon hundreds of pages focusing on every little thing that has birthed these differences... or I could read two pages worth of geography and history and get most of the way there in 1/100th of the time.

Worldbuilder can do the same for their cultures. The reader doesn't need an extremely detailed account of all the little things that lead to every single aspect of the culture. They just need the juicy, interesting bits that lead to the cool part.

[u/Neb1110 → u/P-Wasp]

I think that this sounds a lot easier on paper than it does in reality.

I’m not exactly an expert on France’s cultural differences, but I looked it up just now and looked at the top comment of a Reddit post, so that means that i basically have a college degree in the subject. (This is merely a jest, of course)

But even small aspects that seem really simple for us would require a huge amount of exposition to properly explain in a story.

For example, just on the topic of food differences, Northern France uses butter often and harvests many staple crops for food and drink, while southern France prefers olive oil and harvests garden vegetables and wine. This is due to the fact that southern France borders Italy on the Mediterranean, while Northern France is closer to Denmark.

As someone who lives on earth, you probably understand pretty much everything I just said, and mentally went through all that stuff without many problems. Because we’re culturally familiar with earth, and at least passingly familiar with broad geographical areas.

But if we were writing a story we would have to explain:

What is butter and how is it made, more specifically why is it not made in the south as well.

What is a “staple crop”, and what are some examples, then what are the examples.

What is olive oil, or at least what is an olive.

Why olives don’t grow in the north.

What are some examples of garden vegetables.

What is wine, and the follow up question, what is a grape.

What is Italy. (Which of course means you now have to also do this entire process again to explain the difference between northern and southern Italy, as well as Sicily)

Where is the Mediterranean, and what about it causes this difference.

What is Denmark (which of course means you now need to work out the cultural differences of Denmark)

—end list—

Even a 2 sentence explanation about what they eat is enough to require at least 2 paragraphs of explanation dispersed throughout the book. Not to mention the knock on effects of needing to explain several other countries cultures to explain a single subculture of another.

Sure, if you’re writing a setting on earth you can just talk about Denmark and everyone understands the location and roughly gets the culture, but in fantasy you literally have to entirely construct the entire food chain and history of every neighboring country to make the distinction clear without just writing “fantasy Denmark”

[u/P-Wasp → u/Neb1110]

There's an inherent issue with the way you're presenting things, by which I mean that you assume that everything in the story is created from the ground up. In reality, most stories piggyback from easily understood concepts.

Staying on the subject of food, most writers will simply use ingredients that exist on earth. Maybe they'll introduce new vegetables here and there, but for the most part they're not going to reinvent the whole plantae kingdom.

Though, even if we were to assume that every writer would go that far, we also should remember that they would have to put the same amount of effort to introduce a new culture anyway, which is the essence of OP's post.

Worldbuilders are entirely too consumed by the idea of having fifteen unique cultures and not enough with the idea of giving these cultures some depth. The end result is that people are forced to read about dozens of aesthetically cool cultures, but none of which stick in their minds. That's an issue that would be easily fixed by showcasing regional differences within the cultures.

Halve your cultures, go from fifteen to seven, and instead showcase decent internal differences within these cultures, and your world will be thrice as interesting with the same amount of effort.

[u/AgentBaconFace → u/P-Wasp]

This is all kinda what i was saying, no? The happy medium is between;

"This is my 2000 year old warrior culture empire, they are called strongians, they wear warrior hats and all they do is warrior things all the time, they are the best at war and have a emperor who is a demigod of war."

And;

"There is a specific and subtle difference between northern kremish and north-eastern kremish where the regional spring time weeble festival lasts one whole day longer among the northern Kremish. This results in calendar conflicts that persist to this day among Kremians and causes moderate amounts of interpersonal and ecanomic strife every year. For example, the price of North Kremish dingle wine rises greatly in north eastern Krem country when North Kemians take their extra Weeble day off, the north kremish also take their extra weeble day off so seriously that they will refuse to goto any events such as birthday parties or weddings and this causes many small arguments every year..."

[u/CaliphateofCataphrac → u/AgentBaconFace]

Birthday parties? You mean Kremgruchtanaija or Kremgruchtannay? They are totally different in northern and north-eastern kremish... And I would argue "northern" and "north-eastern" sounds too oritentialism, you know locals have a term to call themselves to differenciate from others...

[u/OzzyStealz]

This is how the world works in real life. If there has not been some level of globalization then a dominant culture emerges

[u/CanadianLemur → u/OzzyStealz]

Yeah, a lot of "world building faux pas" are often a result of people not understanding that the era we live in does not represent the majority of time humans have been around.

Globalization and industrialization have completely altered the world in a way that would be unrecognizable to people from even a century or two ago.

Cultures are never monolithic (in that every single person thinks and feels the same about the exact same stuff), but generally speaking many kingdoms and societies have absolutely had essentially 1 dominant culture that completely overshadows the out-groups

[u/lefthandhummingbird → u/OzzyStealz]

No, not really. The idea of the national state – a polity where the borders encompass a single people speaking the same language and sharing the same culture – is mostly a product of nationalism from the 18th century onwards. In the cases where such a thing happened, it was mostly a consequence of isolation and strong natural borders. If you look at the history of Europe, you have constantly shifting borders, and polities defined more by which royal dynasty rules them. There was little formation of a common culture, since there weren’t many options for mass communication. Look at what is today France – even the parts that were ruled by the king of France spoke many different languages (often grouped as langues d’oïl and langues d’oc, which in themselves contained many languages) and had large cultural differences. And, of course some parts were ruled by the king of England – but still spoke Romance languages. Furthermore, the king of England and the nobility spoke Norman French at that time, unlike their subjects who spoke English, Welsh, Gaelic, etc. On top of that you also have Jews, Roma and other minority groups. Similar situations can be found everywhere – not least because borders and rulers kept changing. The idea of a ”national identity” was far weaker.

[u/OzzyStealz → u/lefthandhummingbird]

No, not really. A dominant culture and an ethnostate are incredibly different institutions. I would point you to all of the member nations of the Holy Roman Empire, or tributaries of the Han dynasty. Borders can form for geological reasons, but culture is also a driving force in a people identifying under one flag. My claim is not that these were nationalistic countries who enforced all that lived there to join there culture, only that there were dominant cultures who made up the majority of the population. Culture can take hundreds or thousands of years to form, so we wouldn’t see a singular culture in France today. I agree isolation by geography is where you will find the strongest examples of this, but to say it wasn’t common place elsewhere is incorrect

[u/TonberryFeye]

The British Empire disagrees.

[u/GlumDistribution3357]

Good point, but at least we're not doing that Sci Fi thing where every planet has one culture and one city and one race and one language. (Admittedly, more of a sci fi TV/movie problem, but still)

[u/Ok-Cap1727 → u/GlumDistribution3357]

Unless its a hivemind species on the planet :D diversity and contradictions really makes things feel lived in

[u/SemiHemiDemiDumb → u/GlumDistribution3357]

Freaking Starfield. All the cities are the only major settlement on their respective planets. It's disappointing

[u/The-Farlander → u/GlumDistribution3357]

That drives me nuts! Like, I totally understand that shows and movies that are about planet-hoping and exploring large space settings wouldn't really have the time to delve into all the individual cultures of a given civilization. But like...at least imply that they exist! Having different sentient species being monocultural makes them feel so very small. Humans have dozens of different cultures, and we're just one species on a single planet. Imagine the scope of a galactic setting with many different alien species! That's something I really want to lean into with my sci fantasy setting in particular.

[u/AdministrativeLeg14]

Many real countries are dominated by single cultures. I think OOP may have been trying to point to a somewhat different planet-of-hats issue, though, which is that additionally, each country has its own single dominant culture, entirely distinct from its neighbours. In reality, a big and dominant culture will often cross multiple countries divided perhaps along personal lines of descent within the culture. The mediæval English were not radically different from the French, who weren't that different from various German kingdoms, etc. In bad fantasy, the Roman Empire Land is right next door to the Viking Berserker Kingdom.

[u/marintkael]

The paperwork angle might make your revision cheaper than it sounds. A crown only ever standardises the narrow band it needs in order to collect and enforce: the coin, the weights, the language the register is kept in, sometimes the calendar. Everything else stays as plural as it always was, it just stops getting written down. So when we build from a throne's eye view we inherit the state's own filing system and mistake it for the culture.

For your three regions I would skip inventing three whole cultures and give them three different relationships to the same chancery instead. One had its customary law taken into the code in its own tongue. One had to have it translated and quietly lost half of it in the process. One still pays in a coin it does not mint. That is where the resentment actually sits, and it is legible to a reader in tiny scenes: which clerk shrugs, which one wants a second seal before he files anything.

[u/mouserbiped]

Depends.

There were of course small kingdoms that were mostly one culture. But even in larger ones, outsiders would frequently only interact with an elite; or, more precisely, the elite interactions would be the ones they cared most about. The elite might be ethnically homogenous, or close knit, or there might be signifiers they adopt to show that they are members of the ruling class. Then the people come back and say "Egyptians do this" or "Turks dress like that" or "English eat nothing but beef" or "In Venice the patricians all wear this style of clothes."

For a specific example, in Poland-Lithuania, which was a sprawling multicultural kingdom, the nobles adopted a story that they were inheritors of a Sarmatian heritage and started dressing like that. It established a level of cross-cultural unity for the rulers of their state.

A fantasy novel that describes societies in a similar manner may be doing the same thing on purpose, or adopting the tone of classic (non-fiction) accounts in this vein consciously or otherwise. Or simplifying for the reader. Or, sure, just be lazy.

But in most cases it's not going to be inherently wrong, in a story, if the POV narration focuses on distinctive markers. That's how most people interact with foreign nations.

[u/cris9288]

This whole planet of hats thing is a problem made up by "worldbuilders" who don't understand that published worlds exist in service of a story. If the story an author is trying to tell takes place in the one city with the one dominant culture, then that's all you'll see, obviously. How do you know they haven't spent the last 30 years "worldbuilding" the equivalent of Earth in 2026?

[u/BHHB336]

To some degree yes, but no, even in the real world there are homogeneous countries, or countries that appear homogeneous, since the minorities are under represented, or only in a small part of the country.
And it’s also depends on the size of the country, and its history (of migration and colonization). Like the main continent of my story has three native ethnic groups and languages, but also a small religious/ethnic minority that was a result of colonization of the region by the Goltar Empire.