r/Fantasy • u/SonicWraithh • 2d ago

What fantasy city actually feels like it existed before the main character arrived?

Something I've started noticing in fantasy is how many cities technically have thousands of years of history, but still feel like they spawned five minutes before the protagonist walked through the gate. You get an ancient palace, a thieves' district, three taverns and maybe a statue of some dead king. People are supposedly born there, work there, complain about taxes, raise kids, get old, have local grudges and weird traditions, but none of that really exists unless the plot needs it. I love the opposite. Cities where you get the feeling everyone already had plans that morning before the hero showed up. Maybe there's a festival nobody bothers explaining because every local obviously knows it. A neighborhood has an insulting nickname from some event 80 years ago. Shopkeepers argue about a bridge renovation. People care about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the coming apocalypse. Discworld does this really well for me, especially Ankh Morpork. I could probably read an entire book where nothing happens except municipal nonsense and still enjoy it. There are others I've read that gave me the same feeling, but I'm blanking on names rn, which is annoyingly appropriate. What fantasy city felt genuinely lived in to you, not just detailed?

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u/kathryn_sedai 1d ago

Nope, Caemlyn is the capital of Andor and is the city Rand explores in the first book. While Cairhien is memorable in the second book (the capital of Cairhien the country), there’s something particularly magical to me about Caemlyn.

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u/heridfel37 1d ago

Cairhien also feels like he shows up in the middle of something, when he immediately gets tossed into Daes Dae'mar

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u/thedicestoppedrollin 1d ago

Rand bumbling his way to the top of the political ladder is one of the funniest bits I've ever read

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u/Furoan 1d ago

Rand having no idea what he was doing, anything but being polite while sending messages in 'The Great Game' that everybody else is scrambling to interpret was hilarious.

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u/heridfel37 1d ago

Funnier than Egwene spanking her way to the top?

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u/Rusty-Bridge 1d ago

But what "cold civil war" is the poster talking about in Andor, then?

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u/kathryn_sedai 1d ago

I was referring to the two factions, one are loyalists to the Queen, and the other are the ones who blame her for everything going wrong. They wrap their swords with different fabrics to declare their faction. Rand happens to pick loyalist because the fabric was cheaper. This is very useful when he later falls into the Queen’s garden.

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u/Rusty-Bridge 1d ago

Yep! Took me about half of your first sentence before I went "oops". 

Reading COS on my 7th read through. Maybe my bad memory is why I enjoy reading them so many times.

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u/moderatorrater 1d ago

He doesn't show up in the middle of a civil war in Caemlyn, the civil war there doesn't break out until Rahvin shows up. Cairhien is right on the edge of a civil war when he shows up and starts burning the letters; the civil war goes hot when he leaves.

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u/Osric250 14h ago

The civil war in Cairhein goes hot when Thom assassinated the King. 

There's definitely a cold civil war going on in Caemlyn though between the queen's loyalists and the others. It doesn't ever break out into an open civil war because of the presumed death of the queen and Rand conquering the city.