Owning the Narrative: Myth Made Flesh

The early years of the 21^st century saw a new breed of history buffs. Those who wanted to learn the history behind the myths. Sometimes this led to people looking for "history puzzles" like those popularized by Dan Brown, which resulted in a sort of pseudo-historical worldview. In a way, this is generally perfect for the New Middle Ages, which have taken nation myths and tourist traps and made them authentic parts of their culture, and an unorthodox part of statecraft.

Transylvania

Until Gary Oldman, the actual connections between Bram Stoker's vampire count and the historical Vlad was generally not played up. The fall of the Iron Curtain, Francis Ford Coppola's film, and the growind trend of "real history" resulted in an interesting gestalt where Romania juggled present Vlad Dracula as a national hero while also pushing Bela Lugosi merch. In the New Middle Ages, they have a different sort of tightrope, weaponizing superstition to keep invaders at bay. The kingdom of Transylvania and Wallachia utilizes the story of Vlad the Impaler to their advantage,with bat-like imagery, fanged portraits, and naming every wine and delicacy with "blood". Dracula becomes the royal name, handed descendant to descendant, and if some actually think it's one immortal ruler, all the better. They make the rest of Europe pretty uneasy, but as the bottleneck to the Muslim world, the Orthodox and Catholic Churches both don't want to micromanage.


Macedonia

A good rule of thumb on what nation states and polities exist in this world is look at which existed in the Middle Ages, and which exist now. France, Hungary, Sweden, Poland, are all good signers on standing the test of time. But an interesting anomaly is Macedonia. The kingdom of Alexander the Great, the first true empire of the Western World existed as sovereign nation in antiquity, it exists in the modern world (as North Macedonia), but would spend 2000 years as not truly a sovereign country. It would be would be absorbed by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans. It's unlikely to impossible any of these nations would reform, so North, or even a united Macedonia would likely endure. And being land f Alexander the Great would lend it a great amount of pride: Alexander was already held in high esteem in the original Middle Ages, thousands of years of everyone developing their culture heroes would definitely intensify here. A lot of Gordon imagery would be in heraldry, and they would even call their guards and infantry the Phalanx, though in truth they operate just like most medieval pikemen.

Africa

There have been various attempts to restore reat empires like Mali and the Songhai, but some have actually taken inspiration from Wakanda. Some kings never know it was created by two Jewish men from New York Ciy, but it's generally understood that there was no real Wakanda, but it doesn't mean they can't try. Generally speaking these kingdoms are deritive of Wakanda, like Wakanda-Bu or Adewakan. Because of this, the Panther has crystallized as the royal animal of nobility, though white apes and rhinos are major icons as well. Perhaps one of the major features if the orders of Women Warriors. The Dora Milaje drew a lot of inspiration from real figures, the Dahomey Amazons, but they actually tend to draw more from the former in terms of aesthetic and ethics, as the women of the Dahomey actually largely did not consider themselves women, while these new orders, in a post-feminist word, more assuredly do. Like the folding of a blade, the myth becomes real becomes myth becomes real.