Just been wondering why in some fics is the world made completly like ours? With the same goverments, history and all that. Would not the magical world have shook things up a bit? a Chinese Empire, Free Tibet, existing Confederacy, Indian Principalities, and etc.

We have a small notice in HBP, where Fudge talks about the previous Minister who tried to throw him out the window, but it was Margaret Thatcher in our world (I think.)

So what does the DLP community think? Am I right, or should I just shut the hell up and do what I want in fanon.

 

Way to miss the point of contemporary fantasy.

The point is that all this shit is going on, and you just don't know about it. It adds a bit of magic to an otherwise drab and dreary world. That you think the HP world is a complete alternate universe just because JK wasn't spot on with the pollies is ridiculous.

 

Easy solution. Just look up which nations existed a thousand years ago and ding, you've got your magical world.

 

Something called the butterfly effect gave me the idea, you can't honestly expect that the existence of magic wouldnt have changed things up a bit, can you?

 

Your stupidity is funny, but you are still stupid.

Little kids like Harry Potter because when they are 11 they wait for they're letter, and they find it amazing that there is magic in OUR world, unlike Lord of the Rings and the likes [though nothing else matches].

Harry Potter is supposed to give you the illusion that there is magic all around you, so there isn't no butterfly effect [ignoring the fact that 2008/9 was skipped, so we don't know what happened]. That's the interesting side of fanfiction too, imo.

 

Double negatives ftw.

But yeah, you're pretty much spot on 'sides that, the idea of HP is that magic is just hidden. It would still be very interesting to read stories like the OP suggested, provided they're written well.

 

Perhaps, but you got to remember that people have no knowledge of that world and you will most likely need to elaborate on boring stuff, when on the other side you got plain old earth, which everybody knows and loves. It's kind of pointless making an AU that is similar to earth, but if you take it more to the direction of LOTR than it could maybe perhaps not be totally idiotic. Write fiction, not history.

 

Read Jono's Stranger Trilogy.

And shut the hell up.

 

The world is made similar but not identical. The main reason for that is the factor of difficulty. For an author, already making up the action, narrative, characters and so on, making an entire different history which would have resulted in different states is a daunting task.

What I do is use the current world format, but modify it to suit my purposes. To give an example, in my story Spain and Portugal are to be united in the Magical Realm of Hyperboria. I made that because I need a Europe consisting of larger states, and I used the name Hyperboria both due to a fondness for the ancient world, and for the fact that Spain was where Hyperboria was supposed to be.

 

Just in case all of that went over your head, I'll try to use simple sentences.

1) Harry Potter takes place in our world, as it is now.

2) The world is as it is... because magic has always existed. The modern world, as we see it, is the result of a muggle world combined with a largely secret society of wizards. Hogwarts didn't just appear in a dimension and poof, things changed. To reiterate that one last time, magic has been a part of the world, our world, since the beginning of time. We muggles just don't know about it.

Now as others have said, that's not to say the muggle and magical politics are necessarily similiar. As political and military history are two major interests of mine, my stories usually feature some degree of a New World Order. The Americas for instance, are a Confederation of Wizarding communities, made up of most of the continent, with the southwestern regions being much more autonomous due to a stronger Native American presence. I have made Germany a relatively weak nation state, nominally controlled by Austria-Hungary. India as a nation doesn't exist. That's what's fun about alternate history - if you do your research, there are millions of tangents you can go down.

BUT, and this is an important point. In Harry Potter, none of this affects the muggle governments. Not. One. Bit.

Cheers.

 

As the others have said, the muggle world is as it is today because it's supposed to be something that could be happening right now. It's like the Stargate movies/shows, the notion that it could be happening at this vary moment is what sets it apart from LotR/Star Trek

However, I believe that the magical world would not necessarily be the same.

Example,

King Lajos II of Hungary (& Croatia & Bohemia) was married to a Habsburg (who ruled Austria, Burgundy (modern Benelux) and Spain) named Maria, his sister was likewise married to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (who governed Austria in the absence of Charles V, who generally ruled from Spain).

However, Lajos II died in the Battle of Mohács in 1526 against the Ottoman Empire. As a result his lands and titles went to the Habsburgs since he had no children and the closest Jagiellon (his house) relatives were ruling Poland-Lithuania, and there weren't many of them left either, hence why Zygmunt II August was the last Jagiellon to rule the Commonwealth.

Now, the question is...would a bunch of wizards really give a crap if some muggle bloke died and was inherited by some german muggle bloke?

No, not really.

So unless the Hungarian wizarding world was under the command of the Crown, they likely wouldn't care at all.

Thus the makeup of the magical world could look like anything. For all we know, Germany could still be split up in different states (as it was untill the mid 19th century in the muggle world) the Ottoman Empire could still rule all the Mideast & North Africa (in addition to Turkey), and so on and so forth.

Really, the magical world could be anything you want...

...and now I've thought of another thing that bugs me, America is almost always shown as being very integrated with muggle society, why?

Is it not possible that old world wizards saw the Americas as an opportunity to take large swaths of land for themselves so that they didn't have to integrate with those filthy muggles? The only all wizarding town in Britain is Hogsmeade, but there could be many located in America.

Not to mention a bunch of angry native wizards who are all "Lets kill white muggles! woohoo!", and have hidden their villages away from the invading white man? Eh?

 

Most authors don't worry about the history. On the other hand, I'd say many more muggleborn and half bloods were sick of being treated as second class citizens in Europe would be more likely end up in the new world. Also, I suspect native wizards, at least at first gave them reasons to work with the with white muggles and in some cases gave them new ideas how to structure society. I think the American revolution was in part inspired by the Wizarding population. I'd suspect less class snobbery in the new world. I could see Indian wizards being behind the defense of certain areas, like the Black Hills.

Good old Britiish history and legend. I could see some of Celtic mythology being based in Muggle memory of Muggle/Wizarding relations. Figures like Bran the Blessed, Rhianon, Queen Meave were wizards. The first Wizarding school in Britain was Mona, and was destroyed by Roman muggles as detailed below. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northwest/sites/history/pages/romansinvade.shtml

Some figures, in latter history interacted with wizards. Rowena visited her muggle cousin, Macbeth, on a couple occasions brought her daughter and her friend Helga to a couple private meetings. Owen Glendowyr, was a wizard. The Princes in the tower, got their Hogwarts letters. Their Uncle Richard covered for them. I could go on.

All the Best,

Kerney

 

Don't.

But...wizarding England is desperately behind and ass backwards - but they're okay with it. That's pretty much what the overarching conflict in HP is about - Purebloods (tradition) who don't want to intermix with muggles/muggle-born (potential for change). I agree that a wizarding America would most likely be just as backwards, but that doesn't make the portrayal of wizarding Britain any less outdated.

 

I'm fucking American, and even I hate the hypothetical American wizarding society being superior to Britain's.

 

Eh. I wouldn't say that the wizarding world is behind the Muggle world. I'd say it's different. In fact, saying the wizarding world is behind the Muggle world rather misses JKR's whole point of using the magical world to comment on the Muggle one by drawing thinly disguised parallels.

For example, magical Britain has this prejudice of blood which the Muggle world doesn't have (except for the Nazis). But the Muggle world has prejudices that the magical world doesn't: there's no sexism in the magical world, or racism. There is classism, which seems to be linked heavily to the blood issue. In fact, I'd say that the blood prejudice is really just class prejudice - it's clearly more about heritage than about biological ancestory (a half-blood who acts like a pureblood is treated as such e.g. Snape. See HBP - Harry, Ron and Hermione commenting that most of the Death Eaters - the pureblood movement - are in fact half-bloods themselves).

With respect to the OP: Vlad said it best.

 

I personally think that China is the magical superpower, consider:
immense population of magicals and muggleborns
one of the oldest civilisations in the world
large area means massive numbers of flora and fauna
possible traditional dominance over areas like vietnam and korea, not to mention Tibet and Mongolia
with a weak Russian presence and only Japan as a rival.