Worldbuilding 101: Ethnic Diversity
I recently wrote an article criticizing representation in many popular fantasy tv shows as an example of lazy world-building. In this article, I’m going to explore how you might want to represent ethnic diversity in the context of a fantasy setting without being lazy about it.
1/ Understanding Ethnic Diversity
I live in a modern multicultural society. Chances are that you do too. It’s easy to take this diversity for granted, but it’s important to understand that it’s the result of ongoing historical, economic, and technological processes. Multicultural societies didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Waves of migrations, political movements to (at least begin the process) abolish discrimination, and international travel, have all contributed to allowing our societies to become more diverse than any previous time in human history. Certainly, past societies were more diverse than we generally appreciate, but there were constraints on the extent that this was possible. Not least were the geographical constraints. It took a long time to travel to new places, and most people lacked the means to migrate.
While the Romans knew of China, migrations between the two cultures were incredibly rare and practically impossible. It was simply too far to travel at that time. But now that we have modern aircraft travel between Italy and China is a matter ~10 hours. If you had to walk, it would take months and you would’ve had to survive many dangers along the way. Not very practical.
The Roman Empire was, never the less, relatively diverse as a result of its size and relative ease of travel thanks to its network of roads (recall the old saying: all roads lead to Rome) and the Mediterranean sea. I can’t speak to its accuracy, but I found the ethnic diversity depicted in the tv show Britannia at least believable. The Roman Empire extended to parts of Northern Africa, so it is not a stretch of the imagination to see how a Roman legionary with a darker complexion might find themselves fighting Celts and Druids in the British Isles.
This leads me to my next point: why is skin complexion different among different ethnic groups?
Without going into too much detail, complexion is essentially a rough indication of the altitude and/or latitude at which a person’s ancestors lived over the last few thousand years. The closer to the equator or the higher altitude, generally the darker the complexion, as darker skin offers greater protection from the sun. While people who live further from the equator require less protection from the sun, but also need skin better at producing Vitamin D in the relative absence of sunlight, and so their skin becomes less pigmented.
As such, a population that is relatively isolated for a long period of time will develop skin pigmentation that is a reflection of the amount of sunlight their skin is exposed to.
This may seem obvious to a lot of people reading this, but it’s a simple fact that many people overlook when casting actors in their fantasy tv shows, where a supposedly isolated village has a lot of ethnic diversity. This is fine, but let’s put some effort into world-building to explain where that ethnic diversity came from.
2/ Incorporate Ethnic Diversity in a Fantasy Setting
Now you have a very basic (and oversimplified) understanding of ethnic diversity, without going into culture (I’ve written an article on how I develop fantasy cultures HERE). From that basic understanding, you can begin to build diverse fantasy cultures that reflect our own modern societies.
My approach has typically been to reverse engineer my societies. Creating seed cultures and histories of migrations that led to the current mixture of peoples.
The best example of this is the Belfari people, who are the most advanced explorers and traders (and sometimes pirates) of my world. They originate from a hot southern continent but became exiled after a series of earthquakes destroyed their city, Buyassa, the ancient center of their trade empire. They already had extensive trade networks and so were welcomed to settle the lands of the Uzala people, far to the north of Buyassa. From there, as their technology improved, they discovered new lands. Some of these new lands were already inhabited (Shirazi by the Hyo people) and others uninhabited (Barlomtar) where they eventually established colonies to help facilitate trade. Beyond these colonies, they encountered new intelligent species, including trolls, the Clarndor (a bipedal feline race), and (closest relatives of human beings) the Norsarg.
Many other cultures populate my world, including the Vulnish Empire (that itself incorporates many ancient nations and cultures) and the Kingdom of Erishti. New cultures have in turn emerged from the blending of cultures, including the Barlomtari people, and the Rautalese people.
What’s important here from a world builders perspective is that I took the time to explore how an ethic group spread throughout the world and came to populate environments very different to the one that their ancestors adapted to. It’s not the most “realistic” explanation when you consider the distance they migrated but it all happens over a number of centuries with deep histories along the way. At least I didn’t arbitrarily cast POC for the sake of representation, with no effort to incorporate their histories into my world-building.
Personally, I think this approach shows more integrity. We shouldn’t treat representation as simply ticking off ethnic quotas to meet a misguidedly superficial appearance of diversity that ultimately only serves to homogenize and erase people’s culture and history. Pretending that ethnic diversity can exist in a vacuum within imaged societies implies, by extension, that it also does in our own world: ignoring and erasing history. And as fraught with tragedy and hardship as those real histories may be, we must never forget them.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — George Santayana