Polytheism in RPGs?

[rs2excelsior]

So something that I've been wondering for a while now... most fantasy RPG settings (or fantasy settings in general, for that matter, but it seems to be more prevalent in RPGs) are basically a pseudo-Medieval Europe when it comes to technology and culture (although certain technologies--like firearms--are generally downplayed, and cultures are much more likely to just be "hats"). However, one of the biggest facets of Medieval Europe--a single, monolithic church and monotheistic religion--gets thrown out in favor of a polytheistic pantheon of gods, often with a Classical Greek/Roman feel.

I'm not necessarily saying there's anything wrong with that--I did it when I created my campaign world, although I did include one single church of said pantheon--but I would like to know if anyone has any idea about why that's the case.

And a related question, are there any major RPG settings with a monotheistic religion (or no single prevalent religion)?

Spoiler: Disclaimer

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I do know that the Catholic Church was not universal in Medieval Europe--there was the Eastern (Greek/Russian) Orthodox branches and eventually Protestantism--but that's not the point. Even the major non-Christian religions were monotheistic--polytheism was very rare in Medieval Europe.

Also, I only bring up the religion of Medieval Europe as a comparison to how things are portrayed in most RPGs. I'm not intending to make this a discussion of real-world religion, so please don't take the discussion in that direction.

[LibraryOgre]

Ars Magica, notably, embraces a lot of the medieval mindset... including monotheism of several flavors.

Arguably, I think you could say that Star Wars does the same.

[Elderand]

Green ronin published a book to make the d20 engine more medieval and by extension monotheistic than classic dnd.
It's called Mythic Vistas: Medieval'splayer manual. It's actually not bad.
They also put out testament: Roleplaying in the biblical era, but that's more premedieval times and I don't have that book so I can't comment on quality.

[Maglubiyet]

I think the GURPS Banestorm fantasy world, Yrth, uses Christianity and Islam.

In Nomine, set in modern times, does too if that counts. (It should count because because Biblical angels and demons are real and priests have real powers).

[Gnoman]

So something that I've been wondering for a while now... most fantasy RPG settings (or fantasy settings in general, for that matter, but it seems to be more prevalent in RPGs) are basically a pseudo-Medieval Europe when it comes to technology and culture (although certain technologies--like firearms--are generally downplayed, and cultures are much more likely to just be "hats"). However, one of the biggest facets of Medieval Europe--a single, monolithic church and monotheistic religion--gets thrown out in favor of a polytheistic pantheon of gods, often with a Classical Greek/Roman feel.

I'm not necessarily saying there's anything wrong with that--I did it when I created my campaign world, although I did include one single church of said pantheon--but I would like to know if anyone has any idea about why that's the case.

There is, in fact, a very simple reason. Most fantasy RPGs, and a big chunk of modern fantasy, drew a lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, either directly or indirectly. When Gygax was drawing up the early setting, he made things polytheistic because that made it easier to draw a distinction between the acknowledgedly fictional gods of the tabletop setting, and the Christian god; as Gygax was fairly devout and wanted to avoid blasphemy.

[Elderand]

There is, in fact, a very simple reason. Most fantasy RPGs, and a big chunk of modern fantasy, drew a lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, either directly or indirectly. When Gygax was drawing up the early setting, he made things polytheistic because that made it easier to draw a distinction between the acknowledgedly fictional gods of the tabletop setting, and the Christian god; as Gygax was fairly devout and wanted to avoid blasphemy.

Polytheism has a number of advantages in RPG: You can have bad guys god, gods that aren't all powerful (what with each overseeing a specific aspect of creation) more reasons for gods to not actually interfere a great deal (they could but then they would be distracted which would allow their opposite number some freedom to act too and ain't nobody who wants that)

And you can keep player agency higher too. If the monotheistic god appears and gives you an order there is very little way to justify disobeying. Unless you are suicidal or evil (as in, in opposition to god and not moraly evil, monotheistic gods can be bad guys). You can more easily say "screw you, you're not the god of me" when there is a pantheon whitout risking life and soul.

You can make a monotheistic setting work for sure, I just think it's easier with a whole pantheon.

[Karl Aegis]

I'm curious as to what pseudo-medieval setting you're talking about. The settings I'm most familiar with are the Iron Age Dungeons and Dragons and the late Feudal Era Tenra Bansho Zero.

[Berenger]

RPGs are about adventure. Adventure requires conflict. Multiple quarreling gods of limited power provide more potential hooks for conflict than one almighty god that could, by definition, solve every world-threatening problem by himself if need be. They also provide more variety for player characters, namely clerics, paladins etc. of different creeds.

As for a "single, monolithic church and monotheistic religion being one of the biggest facets of Medieval Europe" - for all my studies, I'd be hard-pressed to produce some place or period during the european middle ages where religious strife and dissent were largely absent. "The Church" was anything but an homogenous institution whose members shared an universal outlook regarding godly and worldly matters.

It's just that most potential players are not aware of such subtleties. Several clear-cut specialized gods & clergies are much easier to grok than a bewildering mess of fictional popes, antipopes, competing religious orders, heretics, attempted and completet reforms, political expediencies, heated theological debates and inherent ambivalence of an overarching, supposedly "monolithic", church.

[rs2excelsior]

There is, in fact, a very simple reason. Most fantasy RPGs, and a big chunk of modern fantasy, drew a lot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, either directly or indirectly. When Gygax was drawing up the early setting, he made things polytheistic because that made it easier to draw a distinction between the acknowledgedly fictional gods of the tabletop setting, and the Christian god; as Gygax was fairly devout and wanted to avoid blasphemy.

Polytheism has a number of advantages in RPG: You can have bad guys god, gods that aren't all powerful (what with each overseeing a specific aspect of creation) more reasons for gods to not actually interfere a great deal (they could but then they would be distracted which would allow their opposite number some freedom to act too and ain't nobody who wants that)

And you can keep player agency higher too. If the monotheistic god appears and gives you an order there is very little way to justify disobeying. Unless you are suicidal or evil (as in, in opposition to god and not moraly evil, monotheistic gods can be bad guys). You can more easily say "screw you, you're not the god of me" when there is a pantheon whitout risking life and soul.

You can make a monotheistic setting work for sure, I just think it's easier with a whole pantheon.

RPGs are about adventure. Adventure requires conflict. Multiple quarreling gods of limited power provide more potential hooks for conflict than one almighty god that could, by definition, solve every world-threatening problem by himself if need be. They also provide more variety for player characters, namely clerics, paladins etc. of different creeds.

All of that makes sense. It's interesting to hear that Gygax was religious himself. And I can definitely see how an entire pantheon of gods, none of whom are all-powerful, can make for interesting conflict. After all, mythology of the classical era is rife with gods and their squabbles spilling over into the lives of mortal heroes--much like in a game of D&D.

That said, though, it seems like the gods in most fantasy settings exert less direct influence than those of the Greek myths. You'd rarely see a D&D god show up physically on a battlefield, for example, or very specifically trying to hinder the progress of a particular person, like you do in Classical mythology--at least not in the games I've played.

As for a "single, monolithic church and monotheistic religion being one of the biggest facets of Medieval Europe" - for all my studies, I'd be hard-pressed to produce some place or period during the european middle ages where religious strife and dissent were largely absent. "The Church" was anything but an homogenous institution whose members shared an universal outlook regarding godly and worldly matters.

It's just that most potential players are not aware of such subtleties. Several clear-cut specialized gods & clergies are much easier to grok than a bewildering mess of fictional popes, antipopes, competing religious orders, heretics, attempted and completet reforms, political expediencies, heated theological debates and inherent ambivalence of an overarching, supposedly "monolithic", church.

Well, no, the Catholic Church was divided--sharply, at times, with itself and with other various branches of Christianity. That wasn't really the point, though. Ask random inhabitants of Medieval Europe what their religion was, and most of them would answer Christian of some flavor--and those that didn't would probably be Jews or Muslims, also monotheists. I imagine you'd find more atheists than polytheists in Medieval Europe, but I don't know that for sure--if anyone has any kind of hard numbers, that'd be interesting to see.

[Darth Ultron]

D&D, and most fantasy games, is set in Dark Ages Europe. Not Medieval Europe. The idea of the setting is somewhere around the second to sixth century. The basic fantasy idea is that there once was a powerful empire that made lots of places and magic, but they are gone now. And all the ruins of the empire are ripe to be explored and plundered. So...Europe after the fall of Rome. Europe does not become monolithic until 1000 ad or so.

[Anxe]

D&D, and most fantasy games, is set in Dark Ages Europe. Not Medieval Europe. The idea of the setting is somewhere around the second to sixth century. The basic fantasy idea is that there once was a powerful empire that made lots of places and magic, but they are gone now. And all the ruins of the empire are ripe to be explored and plundered. So...Europe after the fall of Rome. Europe does not become monolithic until 1000 ad or so.

Most of the tech, like Full Plate, comes from the Late Middle Ages (1200+). There were earlier uses of it, but that's usually what people think of when they imagine Full Plate.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

D&D, and most fantasy games, is set in Dark Ages Europe. Not Medieval Europe. The idea of the setting is somewhere around the second to sixth century. The basic fantasy idea is that there once was a powerful empire that made lots of places and magic, but they are gone now. And all the ruins of the empire are ripe to be explored and plundered. So...Europe after the fall of Rome. Europe does not become monolithic until 1000 ad or so.

Most of the tech, like Full Plate, comes from the Late Middle Ages (1200+). There were earlier uses of it, but that's usually what people think of when they imagine Full Plate.

Actually, I think the "General" view of D&D is heavily influenced by Gygax's Greyhawk setting. Renaissance technology thrown over a Dark Ages population. Yet, despite the depictions of a Medieval setting, I think this article explains quite well and reasonably that D&D is tied far more into an Iron Age mindset, and thus Polytheistic religions would make more sense overall.

[Aedilred]

D&D, and most fantasy games, is set in Dark Ages Europe. Not Medieval Europe. The idea of the setting is somewhere around the second to sixth century. The basic fantasy idea is that there once was a powerful empire that made lots of places and magic, but they are gone now. And all the ruins of the empire are ripe to be explored and plundered. So...Europe after the fall of Rome. Europe does not become monolithic until 1000 ad or so.

I should note that the "Dark Ages" are a rather imprecise period, frequently used to describe the whole of the Middle Ages, and in conventional use entirely contained within them. I still find the term useful to describe a more specific period in the EMA (varying slightly by locality but generally covering somewhere from the fall of Rome until around the late eighth-ninth century) but it is generally deprecated in historical circles.

Most of the tech, like Full Plate, comes from the Late Middle Ages (1200+). There were earlier uses of it, but that's usually what people think of when they imagine Full Plate.

Actually, I think the "General" view of D&D is heavily influenced by Gygax's Greyhawk setting. Renaissance technology thrown over a Dark Ages population. Yet, despite the depictions of a Medieval setting, I think this article explains quite well and reasonably that D&D is tied far more into an Iron Age mindset, and thus Polytheistic religions would make more sense overall.

As people have indicated, the conventional D&D setting is essentially an anachronism stew, with features from antiquity thrown in with elements from the Renaissance, and from various points in between, quietly operating on rule of cool. In some specifics, like shields, it's almost entirely "backwards" when compared with historical development.

It is almost impossible to talk about religion in D&D and how it maps to real-world religion without breaking forum rules, but I will say that, given that most D&D settings are European/Middle Eastern in inspiration, the stable and fairly universally consistent polytheism they tend to display is one of the areas where they correspond more closely to antiquity, even though true polytheism persisted in some European societies until well into the Middle Ages. Because of the way the rules for divine magic operate and religions are usually presented, I find D&D is not very good at modelling monotheistic religions. It is possible to adapt the rules to such but even then they're not ideal and rely on some imagination on the part of the DM.

[Elderand]

All of that makes sense. It's interesting to hear that Gygax was religious himself. And I can definitely see how an entire pantheon of gods, none of whom are all-powerful, can make for interesting conflict. After all, mythology of the classical era is rife with gods and their squabbles spilling over into the lives of mortal heroes--much like in a game of D&D.

That said, though, it seems like the gods in most fantasy settings exert less direct influence than those of the Greek myths. You'd rarely see a D&D god show up physically on a battlefield, for example, or very specifically trying to hinder the progress of a particular person, like you do in Classical mythology--at least not in the games I've played.

That's because classical Mythology doesn't actualy have that many, or any, evil gods. The greek gods could be Jerk but they each had their places and none was seen as particularly evil. Evil Hades is a modern view of things, in actual Greek Myth, Hades was probably the most reasonable of the bunch.

In Egyptian Mythology the one clear bad guy is Apep and his conflict was resolved everyday in a one on one with just one other god. Set was for the most part not seen as evil either.

If there are conflict between two sets of divine entities, that conflicts has been solved and done with in the past such as the titanomachy.

And so the gods, being all on the same side, are free to play with mortals and intervene directly.

In DnD there are however very clear opposite sets of gods, the good ones and the evil ones, generaly in identical numbers. They are, for one reason or another, in a state of cold war. They can't intervene and **** around with mortals whitout breaking the stalemate and no one wants that.

[Sacrieur]

It would actually be a neat story to have a nation crusading to spread the "One True God" and on a warpath to destroy the heretics who worship false gods. I remember a dragonlance novel having this theme, but that was a while ago when I read it.

[Boci]

That's because classical Mythology doesn't actualy have that many, or any, evil gods.

Its also because its not very fun to play in such a game. I just read Gardens of the Moon, which has a lot of divine and ascendancy meddling in mortal affairs. It made for a wonderful story, but a GM pulling that crap would have been liable to get punched, even with the "mortals are the true power" theme that has become really popular in more deity focused stories.

It would actually be a neat story to have a nation crusading to spread the "One True God" and on a warpath to destroy the heretics who worship false gods. I remember a dragonlance novel having this theme, but that was a while ago when I read it.

It is a good story with lots of potential, but probably not something you want in a default setting, as without making those guys the bad guys, it gives a rather dark tone to everything, which early D&D didn't seem to be too interested in.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Ars Magica, notably, embraces a lot of the medieval mindset... including monotheism of several flavors.

I mean, the setting is literally medieval Europe with Aristotle physics, so the fact that it embraces the medieval mindset should come as no surprise...

[Joe the Rat]

Another piece of the "where it comes from" aspect may be the writings of Howard and Vance. The Conan material has a few "god of X people" types, and a smattering of demons who would be gods. Dying Earth (Hello magic system!) has temples to a variety of gods, all but forgotten, and certainly not worshipped by these people of the twilight of the world. Not Dark Ages (set well before and well after, in fact) but may have been an inkling as it was drawn together. Lankmahr may have also been a contributor to the concept.

"Everyone has their own god" is an old theme in RPGs. "...and acknowledges the rest in their domains" is newer. It sort of reminds me of the "patron saint" concept, only without the greater divinity... usually.

Greyhawk is an interesting one: Over time, it became not just polytheistic, but polypantheonic. This group has their gods, that group has another set of gods, those folks have theirs, plus the "demihuman deities" element. And it's not "same god different name," but actual separate divinities of separate peoples, jockeying for influence. And then we get the Overdeity.

[Grinner]

RPGs are about adventure. Adventure requires conflict. Multiple quarreling gods of limited power provide more potential hooks for conflict than one almighty god that could, by definition, solve every world-threatening problem by himself if need be. They also provide more variety for player characters, namely clerics, paladins etc. of different creeds.

But would an omnipotent god necessarily wish to solve every world-threatening problem? He can always start anew, after all.

Might be interesting for a campaign.

[Darth Ultron]

That's because classical Mythology doesn't actualy have that many, or any, evil gods. The greek gods could be Jerk but they each had their places and none was seen as particularly evil. Evil Hades is a modern view of things, in actual Greek Myth, Hades was probably the most reasonable of the bunch.

It really depends on what ''evil'' is. By modern standards, most Greek gods would be evil. Though they were not evil to the Greeks. And you don't want to forget the spin: no one just comes out and says ''I'm evil and I worship an evil god''. The evil person following an evil god, won't think they are evil.

A lot of classical mythology gods wanted human sacrifices....that is not exactly ''good''.

And classic mythology is full of beings and monsters that are evil and just as powerful as the gods. Though in modern times we don't call them ''gods'' and separate them from the human looking deities. they did not do so in classic times.

[Elderand]

And classic mythology is full of beings and monsters that are evil and just as powerful as the gods. Though in modern times we don't call them ''gods'' and separate them from the human looking deities. they did not do so in classic times.

True but you almost enver get those monster and gods fighting in a comtemporary setting to the people whose mythology it was. The greek didn't tell the stories of Herakles or the God fighting the Titans as if it had happened recently. Those were things that had happened a long time ago even to the ancient greek.

It's all ancient legends, creation stories and just so myths. It's never happening right now. Very much unlike an RPG where this sort of things happen every other tuesday and twice of the first weekend of the month.

[Aedilred]

True but you almost enver get those monster and gods fighting in a comtemporary setting to the people whose mythology it was. The greek didn't tell the stories of Herakles or the God fighting the Titans as if it had happened recently. Those were things that had happened a long time ago even to the ancient greek.

It's all ancient legends, creation stories and just so myths. It's never happening right now. Very much unlike an RPG where this sort of things happen every other tuesday and twice of the first weekend of the month.

I dunno. It's difficult to talk about it because historic mythology is considered under the same bracket as "real-world religion" by the forum rules. But while epic god-on-god battles and visible monsters might have stopped with the end of the Age of Heroes as far as the Greeks were concerned, there were still elements of the world that were viewed through a mythological prism and - presumably - believed to be ongoing events: the relationship between Orion and Scorpius, to give just one example.

Looking at other mythologies, Apep has originally been mentioned, and the gods battled him every night. Norse mythology is replete with ongoing stuff, and Ragnarok was still in the future as far as they were concerned. That's probably about as much as I can say, though.

Of course, D&D is set in what is essentially the Age of Heroes, with a medieval cosmetic overlay because it's a mashup of every legend going including stuff like Arthur and Roland and knights and castles are kind of cool. In that sense, calling it even Iron Age might be fairly generously progressive, albeit in metallic terms, iron is obviously de rigeur.

[Khedrac]

A "Western" Glorantha campaign will be essentially Monotheistic. Glorantha isn't as a whole, but then neither was Earth at any point, and the "Western" areas are a large part of Genertela. Yes this is mainly documented in fanzines etc, but it is supported by Greg Stafford articles.

I imagine most Pendragon campaigns would be monotheistic, being set in a version of Arthurian England (though there are also Jews, Muslims, Pagans etc.).

How do you count godless settings? Iirc Dark Sun (Athas) has no deities which makes it closer to monotheistic than polytheistic.

As for why, well certainly in the early days there was a lot of bad press, so gaming companies did not and do not want to court bad press by publishing material that could be linked to real-world majority religions and thus cause offense in significant numbers of people. Most game designers originally being from the United States of America, and to a lesser extent Europe, their local culture would have Christian roots and thus the Monotheistic religions would be perceived as the most risky to echo. Hence go for the polytheistic.

Also when it comes of mythology, I don't know about the USA, but here in England we are probably more familiar with Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology than our own - and those are all polytheistic mythologies...

You know, this is a really hard question to discuss while trying to avoid real world religion and politics... I think I managed OK.

[mephnick]

Its also because its not very fun to play in such a game. I just read Gardens of the Moon, which has a lot of divine and ascendancy meddling in mortal affairs. It made for a wonderful story, but a GM pulling that crap would have been liable to get punched, even with the "mortals are the true power" theme that has become really popular in more deity focused stories.

How I wish I could base my setting on the Book of the Fallen, but the entire series is pretty much DM fiat.

It's so awesome though.

[Anonymouswizard]

I imagine most Pendragon campaigns would be monotheistic, being set in a version of Arthurian England (though there are also Jews, Muslims, Pagans etc.).

Arthur was originally a Celtic myth, so most PCs should be pagan, but modern Arthur has been changed to be Christian (and also have Lancelot inserted, why does a British Knight have a French name?). King Arthur may even be a historical warlord who lived around 500AD, so would likely have been a Celt himself.

Also when it comes of mythology, I don't know about the USA, but here in England we are probably more familiar with Greek and Norse, Roman and Egyptian mythology than our own - and those are all polytheistic mythologies...

Fixed that for you but yeah, this is a good description of the UK, which is a shame, as what I know of English and Irish mythology is far better than what I know of Classical or Norse Mythology, possibly because I feel a sense of descent from them, but I also find Cuchullain to be a better demigod model than Heracles, as part of his legends are how clever he is.

[Aedilred]

Arthur was originally a Celtic myth, so most PCs should be pagan, but modern Arthur has been changed to be Christian (and also have Lancelot inserted, why does a British Knight have a French name?). King Arthur may even be a historical warlord who lived around 500AD, so would likely have been a Celt himself.

Well, this is because while the original stories were Romano-British, the legends familiar now were largely developed later in (French-speaking) English/Norman literature and - by extension - France and the Occitan troubadour tradition, which is where a lot of additional characters and stories were added, including Lancelot.

Mediaevalism also contains a lot of ideological pitfalls for the modern scholar and, even moreso, casual observer, because the mindset is in some ways completely alien (and in other ways, very familiar). In particular, they had a completely different attitude towards anachronism and change over time, possibly in part because the pace of change was so slow, but probably also because historiography was so primitive (and archaeology pretty much unknown) and access to source material so limited both in terms of personnel and number of copies. Independent research was a lot harder, and so it was much easier for the record to be influenced by memetic mutation. Even now the most familiar versions of the legend tend to come from the Morte d'Arthur (note French title, although it was actually in English), which had the good fortune to be one of the first editions of the story to be printed.

This combined to create a situation where Arthurian knights came to inhabit a world which looks strikingly similar to that of High Mediaeval France, which was the world the writers knew. I suspect quite a lot of the tradition of Charlemagne's paladins found its way into there, too. And even if there were a couple of raised eyebrows about some elements of the culture, that's fairly easily handwaved on the assumption that that was a high point from which society had declined, in common with much else in their historic/legendary tradition. Of course any suggestion of paganism (at least, among the good guys) would have been lost too, although given the time period it's debatable whether a historical Arthur would have been pagan or Christian; a case could be made for either, there's no way of knowing either way, and the debate is inappropriate for this forum.

The historic Arthur would have been very little like the traditional Arthur of legend. There are reams of historiography on the subject, of course, but rather fewer fictional versions. There was that dreadful film with Clive Owen, but try to ignore that. I would recommend for those interested, and who haven't already encountered it, the Warlord Chronicles trilogy by Bernard Cornwell, which is a good and very readable effort at reframing a quasi-legendary Arthur in a more accurate setting.

[Cealocanth]

This is getting dangerously close to real world politics.

When creating settings I find that polytheistic settings are usually easier to make. Having a host of different gods which control different things and be in conflict with one another makes each god more like a character than an omnipotent being. When making your own universalizing monotheistic religion for campaign settings one finds themselves having to write a holy text of some kind with rules and stories and the like, having to create your own kind of proto-theology based on it, and then go about combing it for issues and loopholes. In a fantasy universe it's often easier to answer "Why do the divine allow evil necromantic magic in this world?" with "Because the god of corruption created it" instead of "For some reason an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being created something that did nothing but corrupt his work and destroy his followers." If your game focuses around the nature of religion, then by all means go for it, but such things are not necessary in a game about adventure and monster hunting.

My most recent experiment in fantasy religion involved a semi-monotheistic religion (albeit with a lot of demon-like things) in which the prime goddess was not omnipotent or omniscient. Basically it involved the idea that there was one goddess of good in the world, the protector of humanity and creator of heroes, but there are a lot of other evil 'old gods' that want to destroy humanity. All of these gods draw off of the same power source (faith), but at the moment the goddess holds a monopoly on it. However, the new Age of Fear is coming as the many old gods have begun to create monsters in order to cause widespread fear, which is another, albeit more vicious form of faith.

Even with this, I found it more difficult than making a pantheon though, because not all followers are created equal. If everyone is a follower of the one goddess, and the old gods are the source of evil in the world, then why do evil people get the blessings of the goddess? If there is not enough faith in the world for the goddess to stop the state of constant struggle for survival, and this is creating fear, then why is the goddess around at all and why do humans still exist? Even in completely made up religions with few to no roots in real world theology, theological questions and philosophy still seem to come up.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

There was that dreadful film with Clive Owen,

Emphasis mine. You can say that word, or you can talk about the Clive Owen film. Pick one and only one.

I always thought that was interesting how so often a Renaissance or Medieval painting would depict, say, the Fall of Troy, which took place anywhere from 1300-1000 BCE depending on which historian you ask...as a bunch of "modern" knights duking it out. I tend to headcanon typical medieval fantasy stuff that shows people dressing identically over thousands of years as just being in-universe anachronistic for this reason. It makes things amusing for me.

[Khedrac]

Fixed that for you but yeah, this is a good description of the UK, which is a shame, as what I know of English and Irish mythology is far better than what I know of Classical or Norse Mythology, possibly because I feel a sense of descent from them, but I also find Cuchullain to be a better demigod model than Heracles, as part of his legends are how clever he is.

Yes - thank-you for that correction, I don't know how I forgot Norse.
Also whilst I do know some Roman and Egyptian you are right that they should not have been in the list (Roman gets complicated by the amount it took from Greek mythology). I could give what I believe would be one reason why we don't know our own mythology, but that is real world religion and politics so not for this forum.
Anyway I hadn't really thought about how little I know about Celtic myths (I think I know more German and Russian!) so I will have to try and find some good books.

[Aedilred]

Emphasis mine. You can say that word, or you can talk about the Clive Owen film. Pick one and only one.

I can use different words if you'd prefer... but the overall sense would remain the same.

I always thought that was interesting how so often a Renaissance or Medieval painting would depict, say, the Fall of Troy, which took place anywhere from 1300-1000 BCE depending on which historian you ask...as a bunch of "modern" knights duking it out. I tend to headcanon typical medieval fantasy stuff that shows people dressing identically over thousands of years as just being in-universe anachronistic for this reason. It makes things amusing for me.

This sort of thing is often touted as a manifestation of the mediaeval attitude towards change over time, as one of the more obvious visible examples, and there may well be some truth to it.

I'm not entirely convinced that it's not at least to an extent the contemporary equivalent of Shakespeare in modern dress, though, especially when you get into Renaissance art and it's clear that artists were aware at least that people used to dress differently... even if the manner of that dress is often erroneous (togas for all!).