I've seen one author down here mentioning his desire to write a book/fanfic about the history of the wizarding world.

I think it will be an interesting exercise to try and discuss about what really happened in the history of the wizarding world. We knew about a few things that happened in the history of the magical world, such as the goblin rebellion, the statue of secrecy and the rise of Grindelwald. So what else could have happened in the history of the magical world?

How would the wizarding society function in the time of the classical era? Did the fall of the Roman Empire affected them in anyway?

I do hope this could result in a fairly interesting discussion.

 

If you assume magic and then extrapolate a history, you will not end up with the Potterverse. If you assume JKR wrote a quirky parody of UK culture that is not self consistent in any way, you can write anything.

 

It's easy to make a rough timeline and sequence of events from HP canon information (Pottermore, Chocolate Frog Cards, passages from the Books, Interviews, etc), and compare to real life legends (such as Merlin/Morgana), but if you try and create something indepth, you'll be shit out of luck - JKR didn't research things or plan things that far back, aside from general know-how, and it'll show if you try and patch things together.

Just use what's known as a general framework, and do what you want.

 

Although is it not possible that the Statute of Secrecy precedes magical government, or even that the Ministry simply far older than the books have hinted at? Granted it is somewhat implausible, but I would think that there would I have been some form of binding contract preventing the existence of magic being spread willynilly amongst the muggle population. If that can be counted on as fact, then could you not suppose that the magical society has been hidden away for so long that the events that accounted for the birth of western civillization simply didn't effect them?

I realize that this requires a great amount of faith on behalf of the reader, but in terms of fanfic you could probably get away with it, provided you had the skill to do so. I would say mark it as AU, but since you would be pulling from cannon events, I don't know if that would work.

 

I was thinking of writing about the history of the magical world as some sort of pseudo-history book, rather and being part of a narrative tale.

 

If you're going to attempt that, wait a bit - Pottermore information, you know.

Then hunt down the Chocolate Frog Cards for info', interviews from JKR post/pre-DH, etc. You'll also need a crap-ton of real-world history books, too. (Torrents would work best).

 

Well, having enough knowledge about classical history won't be a big problem for me. My knowledge about the medieval era on the other hand, is a much bigger problem.

There are however, some issues that would come up if we are trying to interweave the magical world into classical history.

Firstly, we have to give a good explanation as to why do muggle history failed to record any significant wizards/acts of magic during the classical period. We know that there were wand in the 4th century BCE, so how do we explain the lack of wands in the Greek history?

This is problematic because we know that the statue of secrecy was only implemented in 1689 CE, so it would be quite hard to explain away the lack of magical feats in Caesar's or Tacitus's writings.

I will try and generate a list of magical historical events and see what I can do about it.

 

The timeline of the HP-Lexicon is a great source for canon. Allmost all entries are documented and thus you can easily check the books or related sources, and you can judge the quality of the entry.

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/timelines/timeline.php?startyear=-2000&endyear=2010

It doesn't include Pottermore (yet?) - but then, Pottermore isn't the best source to expand canon.

 

The overwhelming majority of ancient (textual) sources is estimated to be destroyed / lost. So maybe one could just assume that the parts that would have mentioned magic are amongst these (with a little "help" by magicals along the way?).

Alternatively, the literate portion of society was still rather small in the 17th century, and the part of it that had access to pertinent texts was maybe even smaller...

Thus just magically compelling the authorities in charge of major monasteries, archives in the few big cities and the exisiting universities to destroy documents implying the existence of magic could work. Especially if wizards "sponsor" the enlightement movement from then on, rendering the surviving references to magic as superstitious remains of a "medival" (after all a negatively connotated rennaissance term) prejudice.

 

You could postulate that wizards were rare enough that their society was suitably hidden in plain sight. Canon claims that wands existed in 4th Century BCE, how ever we don't know what they looked like, it's highly likely that what the modern wizards called wands and what ancient wizards called wands were completely different in design and perhaps even usage.

As for textual records, the idea is a bit overdone, but you could always play the Library of Alexandria card.

 

I think some wizarding details could also be found in Irish/Welsh Myth. Several cannon sources mention Queen Maeve, Bran the Blessed and others as witches and wizards (Bran has a chocolate frog card I think). I think you could make some reasonable extrapolations from there.

For example, one detail I'm including in my fic is that the oldest known Wizarding school in Britian was on Anglesey and was destroyed by the Romans during their conquest of the isle. This matches the RL history that the Romans destroyed the main Druidic College on Anglesey.

You could also use literature in a simular way. For example, perhaps title to Hogwarts was given by the King of Scotland for services rendered. So if a pre 1689 copy of Macbeth named the three witches Rowena, Helena, and Helga, were discovered, removing it from Muggle hands might be a mission for the obliviators.

 

Is there any historical figures that might be wizards/witches? We could easily create Hercules as a real wizard living during the dark age of Greece. He could be a famous Greek warlock that is famous throughout Greece, so famous that he is viewed as a demi-god. The same can be said regarding the various figures during the Trojan wars.

We can also tie certain biblical figures as wizards, but that would cause quite a big controversy among Christians.

 

Why don't you go in for some of the Greek/Roman gods and whatnot. Maybe they were wizards who set themselves up gods. I know it's not exactly a new idea, but it works for a reason.

Alternatively, maybe there aren't any tales of wizards, because they just weren't known about. It's possible that the wizards wouldn't have been organised, and would be largely self taught, and as such they wouldn't be capable of much magic. And any time someone did find out about wizards no one would believe them. The wizards would have been able to escape, using magic, and when the muggle tried to tell others about the wizards who live next door people would think they were crazy or something.

It would?

 

Jesus might have been one, using magic as a way to gain followers.

You can always argue that wizards and Muggles lived together for centuries until the Statute of Secrecy was enacted. Think of Druids, Shamans, ancient oracles (i.e. of Delphi).

Perhaps it isn't the best idea to claim famous living people have been magical (apart from the odd exception). Instead I'd name apparently famous wizards who have been working for famous Muggles. We 'know' of Merlin, but a lot of other monarchs might have employed real wizards.

 

If I was going to pick anyone out from traditional history as a wizard, excluding religious texts...

Leonardo DaVinci.

Dude just knew too much.

Also Nicolas Flamel. And Paracelsus. And biblically, if not Jesus, then definitely Moses.

EDIT: Siddhartha might have been the first person to fully master/develop Occlumency.

 

Ben Franklin.

Captured lightning in a bottle. Created the postal service (which for most of its life was the only self-funded agency in the government). Founded the mint.

He was a balding old guy with gout, but went to Paris and seduced like 1/10th of the women at court. While in Europe, convinced two Monarchies to back a Democracy- a type of government that had never existed before.

If he wasn't a wizard, he had the weirding way.

 

Christians in general would be alright with it, I think. Only the extremists would go nutters, and compared to even a century ago, they're in the minority.

However, I get the feeling that quite a few Muslim elements wouldn't be so kind, if it was implied that, say, one of their heroes was a scheming wizard.

Those 'Prophet' cartoons, anyone? That shit was crazy.

 

The issue is while Ben Franklin's wizarding skills might have convinced the muggle government to support his position, he would still have to get through the wizards of those government.

 

Brits:

Anne Boleyn: Henry did seem absolutely enchanted with her..and then it wore off, almost as if a spell were removed. It would also explain some of the success of her daughter, and perhaps why she didn't breed (secret agreement with magical figures to support her reign).

Owain Glyndŵr:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Glynd%C5%B5r Last Prince of Wales who was actually Welsh. Led a major rebellion against the English...and who then vanished.

Doctor John Dee

Others:

Sitting Bull: Shaman and Medicine man who predicted a great victory against the whites, among other things.

Michelle de Nostradamus: Made a few predictions of note.

 

This might work. We just need to figure out how to tie this in with what we have read on Pottermore. We do know that one Malfoy tried to woo her.