Alternative history fantasy dares you to question reality
Alternative history fantasy asks one big question: What if things happened differently, and magic was part of it? Or maybe there are even more questions?
The alternative history fantasy subgenre rewrites real-world history with a twist. Maybe the Roman Empire never fell because its legions used elemental magic. Maybe World War II ended differently because one side raised the dead. Maybe a kingdom rose instead of a republic, all because a seer whispered into the right ear at the wrong time.
These stories bend history, and they take what we know and twist a few wires until sparks fly. You still get familiar names, places, and eras, but now they’re crawling with magic, monsters, secret societies, or gods that walk like men.
The best ones don’t just change dates, events, or anything mundane. They change the rules of the world. Magic shapes history, powers armies, changes religions, corrupts governments, and builds — and breaks — entire civilizations.
Tone-wise, alternative history fantasy is flexible
It can be epic or intimate, light or grim, and anything in between. But it almost always leans on real politics, social movements, or cultural tensions and reimagines them through a fantastical lens. And it’s not afraid to poke at power.
If you’ve read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Poppy War, or even watched The Man in the High Castle (if it had sorcery), you’ve seen how powerful this genre can be. These stories feel close, so close that they hit home, because they remind you how thin the line is between the world we know and the one that could have been.
The subgenre brims in the Renegades Epic
In the Renegades Epic, alternative history pulses through nearly everything in a manner of speaking, since every series in the “Original Six” boasts real-life inspiration. But the Terrian Chronicles is alternative history fantasy at its finest.
Think of it as our own world where elemental magic exists alongside creatures found in small-town and urban fantasy. Tarja Titan doesn’t do it justice, but from Liza Fury: Catch 22 and beyond, you’re getting Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Fae, and Hunters all trying to “coexist” with Elementals. Collectively, they’re called Mages, but separate from the Mages found in its cousin, Catenarian Chronicles.
Still, they all live in secret, as does the Elemental elite pulling the strings. In a world like the one I’ve set Terrian Chronicles in, every global crisis out there is a conspiracy. That said, if you love toeing the Party Line that government schools teach you, Terrian Chronicles will offend you. But if you’re a little more open-minded, you might ask yourself whether this is alternative history fantasy, or if I’m just saying it is.
