Historical Fantasy

Historical fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that takes place in a world with Earth's regular history, but adds magic, spirits, witchcraft, or any other supernatural element.
== Covert vs Overt Historical Fantasy ==
Covert fantasy settings have spirits and mages working behind the scenes but avoiding detection, like a Harry Potter, Vampire or SCP situation. In overt fantasy settings, history has generally lined up with Earth's, but the new addition of spirits has radically altered where the world is going. 
For example, the Merlin-1 timeline lines up with Edwardian/1900s era, but will continue to drift towards its own timeline as dragons influence more of modern society. Major political movements are affected by dragons, and with the number of scientists, inventors and authors interested in the dragon's existence, a whole different setting will doubtlessly emerge from their presence.
For covert historical fantasy, the setting needs to continually justify its secret-keeping. Sometimes the magic is contained to a particular region (like trolls only appearing in Scandinavia) or is small enough to easily hide. Sometimes the setting is handwaved through the magic itself, i.e. "wizards cast a Mass Amnesia spell and a Rebuild Buildings spell, don't even worry about it."
== Mentioned in GURPS Books ==
* Direct Historical Fantasy
**Greece
**Japan
** Prehistory
**Mythic Europe
**Cops-82
*Mentioned
** Middle Earth
**Conan
** Magic Goes Away
**Camelot
** Exalted
==References==
*GURPS Fantasy pg 10
Category:Fantasy Reality