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Historical Fantasy

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A subgenre of Historical Fiction, Historical Fantasy is similar to Urban Fantasy, except the setting will be a time and place in the past rather than modern times.

Historical fantasy novels will be set in an actually historic and geographic location on our own Earth. Although fantastic elements exist in the novel, these are implied not to have made it into the history books because of The Masquerade or else were dismissed as myth and superstition by more modern historians. Books of this type are typically Low Fantasy, since disguising the epic scope of High Fantasy to muggles in a real world setting would be very implausible.

Alternately, the world may be obviously meant to be a real, historical place, but names may have been slightly changed and fantastic elements added. This is a subjective area, so please only add examples where a very clear parallel can be drawn between the real and fantasy world.

There can be some overlap with Alternate History (particularly Alien Space Bats) if the fantastic elements are shown to have actually changed history as we know it. Expect the throwing in of fantastic elements to lead to a Historical Hero or Villain Upgrade. May overlap with Weird Historical War in stories set during historical conflicts. Essentially the inverse of Demythification, which is a genre that takes the supernatural elements out of an existing myth or legend. Gaslamp Fantasy and Medieval European Fantasy are subtropes.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Anime & Manga 

    Audio Plays 
  • The Springheel Saga takes place between 1837 and 1904 (spanning the entire Victorian era) and gives a fantasy-adventure twist to the real-life Spring-Heeled Jack phenomenon.

    Comic Books 
  • 2000 AD:
    • Defoe follows a motley group of adventurers as they fight zombie hordes in the 17th century.
    • Aquila is set in a Roman Empire filled with gods and monsters and follows an immortal gladiator hunting the wicked to take their souls to hell.
  • Asterix is set in Gaul under Roman rule, the Gauls' village is the last one not to fall to the Romans because their druid is able to provide them with a magic potion that grants them super strength.
  • Brothers Dracul is set during the childhood of the historical Vlad the Impaler as his Ottoman captors train him to kill vampires.
  • Hound is set in mythical ancient Ireland.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
  • Papyrus take place in Ancient Egypt. The cast interact with historical characters from that era, but Gods and monsters also present.
  • Rebel Dead Revenge is set during The American Civil War and deals with Satan's scheme to unleash a zombie Confederate army.

    Fanfiction 
  • A Thing of Vikings places the events of How to Train Your Dragon in 1040 AD, showing what happens to history when 1) a Norse colony learns how to tame and ride dragons and 2) the son of said colony's chief, who showed his people how to train dragons in the first place, is a genius engineer who kicks off a One-Man Industrial Revolution. The description provided on the Archive Of Our Own page for the story says it all:
    Take History. Add Dragons. Stir until a Genius makes friends with them and things explode. Take the resulting stock of Hiccup and tamed dragons and set it to simmering in 1040 AD, in the Scottish Hebrides. Add more Kings, Emperors, Romans, Vikings, Conquerors, Spies, Warriors, Thieves, Knights, and Nobles, to taste. Take cover, and sit back to watch the fireworks.
  • Earth: A Rendezvous with Destiny is set in an alternate Cold War mixing the hard sci-fi technology of the 50s and 60s with the Science Fantasy and the Space Opera trappings of Star Wars, specifically that of the Old Republic era.

    Films — Animation 
  • Anastasia imagines that the famous Romanov heiress was really the target of a magical plot, and Rasputin was really an evil sorcerer (something which many people believed at the time). Fox took care to market the film as a 'historical fairy tale' in Russia not to be taken as fact. It worked and they loved it.
  • Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio moves the source material a few decades forward to use Fascist Italy as a major backdrop. The equivalent of the Coachman is a fascist official who wants to make the eponymous immortal puppet a Super-Soldier, while the showman has Pinocchio perform for Mussolini himself.
  • Mulan is based on the ballad of Hua Mulan, a Chinese legendary figure. It's in a Low Fantasy version of Ancient China, where the only supernatural elements are the spirits of Mulan's ancestors and her talking dragon sidekick.
  • Pachamama is set in the Inca Empire, but with shamanic magic being real.
  • Pocahontas takes place in a Virginia that has talking willow trees, with the titular heroine having distinct shamanic powers. Filmmakers stressed that they were merely adapting a legend rather than what really happened.
  • The Princess and the Frog takes place in New Orleans during The Roaring '20s, as obvious by the aesthetic and the music style. It also features magic in the form of Hollywood Voodoo, including the villain making a Deal with the Devil and performing Forced Transformation on the two protagonists.
  • Princess Mononoke is set in a version of Muromachi-era Japan where spirits and gods openly walk the earth.
  • The Secret of Kells takes place at some point during the 9th century, when Ireland was frequently raided by Vikings, and it focuses on the making of the Book of Kells, a real illuminated manuscript. It's also a highly fictionalized account of the making of said book, including fantasy elements like fairies and an ancient Irish god.
  • Wolfwalkers takes place in Ireland in the year 1650, during Oliver Cromwell's rule over the United Kingdom (though in this film, he's only known as "the Lord Protector", which is the title he went under instead of "King"). The fantasy elements all revolve around the titular Wolfwalkers, werewolf-like beings whose spirits leave their bodies and become wolves whenever they sleep.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 47 Ronin is set in Japan during the Edo period but the country is teeming with witches, demons, dragons, and other fantastical creatures.
  • The Devil's Backbone, about a ghost haunting an orphanage in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Pan's Labyrinth below is officially part of the same universe.
  • Errementari, loosely based on a Basque folktale about a blacksmith who makes a Deal with the Devil, set in the aftermath of the First Carlist War.
  • FairyTale: A True Story is a fantasy version of a real-life event where two girls took photos of fairies in their garden (they later confessed that they had faked the photos). The film shows that the fairies are indeed real, with guardian angels implied to exist too.
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them showcases JK Rowling's magical community in 1920s New York, putting the movie squarely between this and Urban Fantasy.
  • The Highlander films focus on an order of people called the Immortals, who have appeared at various points throughout history.
  • Indiana Jones: The movies take place in the 1930s and 50s where Indy has to encounter various mythical artefacts such as The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.
  • Irati: A fictional origin story of Eneko Aritza, the first King of Pamplona (later Navarre) about whom very little precise information is known, featuring the 8th century Battle of Roncevaux along with the gods and creatures of Basque Mythology.
  • The Northman, a retelling of the story of Amleth from the Gesta Danorum that is at once firmly rooted in the Viking Age and featuring magic and Norse Mythology.
  • Pan's Labyrinth: An 'adult fairy tale' about a girl who discovers she is a princess from a magical kingdom in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean was set in a loose early 18th century setting until the fourth movie set the year in 1750 and introduced historical characters such as Blackbeardnote , George II of Britain and Ferdinand VI of Spain.
  • Sleepy Hollow (1999) takes place at the dawning of the 19th century, and deals with a Wicked Witch summoning the Headless Horseman from the depths of Hell as part of a revenge plot. This is in contrast to the book, where the Horseman is only a trick organised by the locals.
  • The VVitch follows a family of New England Puritans in the 17th century who live in fear of witches in the woods... and the witches are completely real, with their portrayal lifted from writings of the time, instead of portraying the protagonists as Medieval Morons and coming up with some explanation based on ergot or mass hysteria like other works would.

    Literature 
  • Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
    • And Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter.
    • And King Henry VIII: Wolfman.
    • And Dawn of the Dreadfuls.
    • And Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.
    • And Dreadfully Ever After.
    • And Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters.
  • Modern retellings of Arthurian Legend often overlap with Historical Fiction to show the writer's version of the "true story" behind the legend. These are set in a more or less historical Europe in the Dark Ages (or The Low Middle Ages) instead of the fantasyland Europe of Chivalric Romance, usually depicted as High Middle Ages. These may trade the glittering castles and knights in shining plate armor for wooden hill-forts and horsemen in leather and chain mail. But magic and other fantastic elements may remain, thus falling under this trope. Other retellings (listed under Demythification) play it straight and omit all fantastic elements.
  • Baccano! injects alchemy (specifically, the Elixir of Life and homunculi) into the organized crime world of the 1930s.
  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy takes place in an early 2000snote  Britain, ruled by a Magocracy. It's briefly mentioned that among other deviations from real life history, the American Revolution hasn't happened yet: that is, the North American colonies are still British possessions that are only now gearing up to break free.
  • The Black Douglas: Werewolves in fifteenth century Scotland and France. Or not. (But probably.)
  • Bride of the Rat God, also by Hambly, about a cursed artifact that winds up being a prop in a Hollywood film.
  • In Campione! the modern myths of King Arthur were created and perpetuated by Guinevere. The original story is far different, with "Artos" being a god the British worshipped after he killed a Roman general who had become a Campione and became their land's protector.
  • The Cardinals Blades series by Pierre Pevel is Alexandre Dumas with dragons and dragon-kin, and also a Perspective Flip since the heroes are agents of Richelieu.
  • The Cats of Seroster by Robert Westall is set in a fairly realistic version of 16th Century France, with the tactics, weaponry and technology of the era preserved intact. It's just that there also happen to be telepathic cats and mystical knives that grant immortality to the wielder.
  • Child Of The Eagle by Esther Friesner. Venus appears to Marcus Brutus and convinces him to thwart the assassination of Julius Caesar.
  • The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a prehistoric fantasy series, set in Stone Age northern Europe (Word of God puts it at about 6000 years ago) but with demons, Nature Spirits, and shamanism.
  • Takashi Matsuoka's Cloud of Sparrows and Autumn Bridge are set in 19th century Japan, but some members of the Okumichi clan can see the future.
  • A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth Bunce focuses on a miller's problems with the shifting industry during the Industrial Revolution... and also the uncooperative Genius Loci mill, a few visits from The Fair Folk, and the titular curse.
  • Colleen McCullough's novels set in ancient Rome are all considered historical fiction, but feature a few ambiguous fantastical elements such as various prophecies coming true and omens almost always being accurate. Accurate prophecies and omens are fairly common in "realist" fiction, and frequently are not considered fantastical elements. After all, lots of people in the real world believes those things to be true. It should also be noted that the Romans themselves placed great stock in fortunetelling and divination.
  • Sylvain Hotte's Darhan series takes place in the time of Genghis Khan.
  • David Gemmell:
  • Deathless retells the Russian folk tale The Death of Koschei the Deathless against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution.
  • Devils Tower and Devil's Engine by Mark Sumner: a combination of the fantasy and western genres. The Battle of Shiloh released magic into the world. A generation later the United States and the Confederacy are confined to the east and the western half of the country is broken up into isolated communities run by sheriffs who've mastered some magical powers.
  • The Diogenes Club stories are set roughly between 1900 and 1980, mostly in the UK, and feature magic rituals, ghosts, zombies, golems, extradimensional horrors, and Dark Lords. (And possibly also aliens, although the characters aren't sure what to make of the aliens, and suspect they actually fall under extradimensional horrors.)
  • The Dragonkeeper books are set in Ancient China, in which fantastical elements of Chinese mythology and folklore are presented as very real, albeit uncommon. The prequel is set in 282 BC, the first trilogy is set in the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) and the second trilogy begins in 328 AD.
  • The Earth's Children series, which doesn't quite fit into any one genre, sometimes has fantastical elements, although technically it would be prehistorical fantasy in this case, the series being set in Europe during the last Ice Age. It's downplayed on account of a heavy dose of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane; it's never made clear if the characters in the setting really do have psychic powers or extrasensory abilities, or if it's all just coincidence, people mistaking phenomena or abilities they don't understand for magic, or the result of really good drugs (or heck, maybe a mix of both). Likewise, it's never confirmed if the spirits and deities people believe in are real or not, though as with the supposed powers people have, certain occurrences do lead the reader to wonder...
  • The Factory Witches of Lowell takes place in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1830's, featuring a passel of mill girls who unionize in the face of deplorable working conditions and unsustainable rent increases. They make use of witchcraft to see their strike to fruition.
  • The Fey and the Fallen duology overlaps with Urban Fantasy by taking place in the 1970's Ireland during the The Troubles.
  • Forgotten Gods has The Fair Folk returning to 18th century Britain.
  • Ben Kane's The Forgotten Legion trilogy, set during the last decades of the Roman Republic. One of the main characters is the Etruscan seer Tarquinius, one of the few such genuine ones in the books. His divination skills help his friends, fugitive gladiators Romulus and Brennus, survive various escapades — from Crassus' defeat in Parthia to serving as mercenaries further East (hence the title), to serving with Caesar in Egypt, leading all the way to the Ides of March. Romulus' twin sister Fabiola, sold to a brothel instead of a ludus, also occasionally has accurate visions regarding her brother.
  • Gods and Warriors, by the same author as Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, is set in archaic Greece (before the Trojan War and the fall of the Minoan civilization, and before most of the Greek gods had the names we know them by). It has similar elements of mysterious gods or spirits, and communication with animals.
  • The Golem and the Jinni features its titular characters in late-19th-century New York.
  • Guy Gavriel Kay is a specialist of the variant, with:
  • Herodotus's The Histories can come across as this due to Values Dissonance - though its intent is strictly a historical recounting of the Persian War, in the Classical Greek sense, that meant adding things like gods appearing on the battlefield.
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue revolves around a woman who became immortal in the early 1700s, with several sections of the novel detailing her life experiences in different time periods (though some sections are set in the modern day).
  • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is set in Regency England, with The Fair Folk and magicians.
  • Kat, Incorrigible features an alternate Regency, with magic.
  • Keturah and Lord Death is a romance with Death taking place in the Middle ages.
  • Eric Flint and Dave Freer's ''Krim Pyramids" books may qualify, taking place largely in Greek and Egyptian myths.
  • Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey stretches the definition towards Constructed World, but is essentially a late Middle-Ages/early Renaissance Europe where The Four Gospels were literally true, but took a very different turn: His blood shed on the earth at the crucifixion spawned a second messianic figure, Elua, who called a group of angels to leave heaven and follow him; they interbred with humans in the setting's France-equivalent Terre d'Ange. There's workings of high magic and Physical Gods, but little small-scale magic. Skaldia (Germany) and Alba (Britain) are still tribal at the start of the series, while Italy is in its Renaissance-era city-states stage.
  • Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal follows "Josh" on his travels to Afghanistan, India, and Tibet to visit The Three Wise Men.
  • Paul Kearney's Macht Trilogy. The first novel, The Ten Thousand retells Xenophon's Anabasis; the remaining novels, Corvus and Kings of Morning, loosely follow the life of Alexander the Great.
  • The Magicians And Mrs Quent: a somewhat barefaced hodgepodge of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Jane Eyre, and a couple other 19th century British greats, set in a parallel universe with a really odd sun cycle where magic provides a rationale for some of the gender roles that century is famous for. Clearly evoking the kind of Regency England fantasy Susannah Clarke achieved, but with considerably less subtlety, grace, or prose style.
  • Mercedes Lackey's urban fantasies have a series of books in the same universe set in various time periods in Europe.
  • Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer wrote the novels The Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic, which are set in Venice in the 1530's but contain demons, elemental spirits, and Functional Magic.
  • The Mermaid is set in 1842 and has a mermaid hired as an attraction by P.T. Barnum.
  • The Merman's Children is set in the middle ages and follows a group of merfolk as they search for a place where they can live without being cast out by an exorcism.
  • The Moon and the Sun has a captured mermaid brought to the court of King Louis XIV.
  • Marie Brennan's Onyx Court series recounts the secret history of London and the faeries living beneath it, from Elizabethan times through the Victorian era.
  • Portlandtown takes place in late 19th century Portland, with subtle magic and unsubtle zombies.
  • Prosper's Demon takes place during the Renaissance in a world where demons are real and exorcists are commonly hired out to get rid of them.
  • Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief series is an interesting case. It's set somewhere on the Mediterranean in a culture that's heavily Byzantine, but the countries mentioned are entirely fictional. Turner goes to great pains to make the story feel like real historical fiction. The fantasy comes from the highly active pantheon of gods directing events.
  • Queen of Zazzau is based on the life of the semi-legendary Hausa queen Amina, and combines the historical events with aspects of Epic Fantasy: Amina is empowered by a Deal with the Devil she makes with the Hausa War God, and fights enemies who weaponize West African witchcraft as Islam encroaches on her lands from the north.
  • Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons, a 13th century saga that mixes history and fantasy in its portrayal of the 9th century Viking Age.
  • The Sea of Trolls and sequels by Nancy Farmer.
  • Scholarly Magics is set in an Alternate History early twentieth century with Functional Magic.
  • Shades of Milk and Honey: Mary Robinette Kowal's sweet evocation of Jane Austen and her own art of puppetry (recast as the magic of illusions). Quietly focused on characterization and a slow-burn romance, but with the magical talents an integral, trivial yet all-pervasive force, building to a quite exciting climax. It's Regency England with Magic!.
  • The Shadow of Black Wings series by James Calbraith, a steam fantasy set in alternative version of 19th century Wales and Japan.
  • She Who Became The Sun: While the plot may focus on a real ruler from Chinese history, it completely alters the events of the Hongwu Emperor's life by making the Mandate of Heaven a genuine cosmic force, as well as implying that multiple rulers have supernatural powers. While the fantasy is very much of the low variety, it's clear that there are fantastical things subtly at work, whether real or perceived.
  • Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia and its sequels (Regency England, but with mages!).
  • The setting of The Spirit Ring by Lois McMaster Bujold is the fictional city-state of Montefoglia in Renaissance Italy (which co-exists alongside such real-world places as Rome, Milan, and Florence) and where the main difference is the presence of magic, whose use is policed by the Catholic Church. Magic is mostly restricted to enchanted items, allowing certain conveniences but keeping it from being a war-winning superweapon.
  • Neil Gaiman's Stardust is an odd example, since most of the action takes place outside of historical England. The majority of the mystical parts are contained within the land beyond the wall. The wall is just a low stone wall running across the bottom of a village, which happens to contain a gate to the world that is spoken of in fairy tales. The part of England in that world is full of living stars and lightning smugglers. The real world, however, is so mundane that any part of the fairy realm that isn't at least partly from the real world would not survive the trip, turning into lifeless matter.
  • The Strangely Beautiful Series involves the guard facing off against Hades, the ruler of the whisper world, during the Victorian era.
  • Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn.
  • Tall Tale America: a retelling of American history, but focusing less on tariffs and more on people dmedigging the Grand Canyon with their bare hands.
  • Temeraire is set during the Napoleonic wars... with dragons as air support!
  • Half of There's Magic in Bread takes place during the Holocaust and explores the very real persecution faced by Jewish communities in Eastern Europe at the time. The fantasy element comes into play when a Jewish baker grieving her murdered father accidentally creates a golem out of bread dough.
  • The Thieftaker Chronicles take place in a pre-Revolutionary War era Boston where magic exists, but it's rare, andwitch hangings and Church Militants make it a dangerous profession.
  • Those Who Hunt the Night and its sequels, by Barbara Hambly, features vampires in The Edwardian Era.
  • Ulysses: Jeanne d'Arc and the Alchemist Knights takes place in the 15th century during the Hundred Years' War, but it also has a lot of fantasy elements, including the main character Montmorency being an alchemist.
  • The books in Anne Rice's Vampire cycle that are set in the past qualify since they are depictions of history - except with vampires.
    • The same is true of the Vampire Plagues series.
  • Most of Andrzej Sapkowski's newer, post-Witcher works fall into this category. This includes the "Hussite Trilogy", a series of historical fantasy adventure novels taking place in 15th century Silesia and the Kingdom of Bohemia during the time of the Hussite Wars.
  • The Wolfsangel Cycle by M.D. Lachlan.
  • When The Angels Left The Old Country is about a Jewish angel and demon emigrating from Poland to New York in the late 19th or early 20th century.
  • A Widow in Waiting by Anne B. Walsh takes place in 18th century England and Ireland. There's a hidden village of people who have magical powers.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Carnivàle: Fantastic things happened during The Great Depression.
  • Cursed (2020): The series is set in a version of The Low Middle Ages in which magic is real and Fey, (several species of demihuman beings) are actively hunted by the Church, which views them as demons.
  • Da Vinci's Demons: A young Leonardo da Vinci defends Medici-controlled Florence and combats a Papal conspiracy with the ancient Sons of Mithras.
  • Faith: Most of the series is set in Goryeo (ancient Korea), many of the characters are Historical Domain Characters, but time travel and magical powers exist.
  • Merlin (2008) adapts and retells the Arthurian Legends about Merlin, and the entire shiw takes place in Great Britain hundreds of years ago.
  • Shaka Zulu: Some of the flashbacks of Shaka's early life seem to take the supernatural myths surrounding him seriously. Justified, since this is set within a Framing Device where one of the European hostages is putting the embellished stories from the Zulu tribesmen about the king down to paper.
  • The Terror: The 1845 Lost Franklin Expedition is slowly destroyed by a supernatural monster and meets Inuit shamans that are mystically connected to it.
  • The Terror: Infamy: A ghost haunts a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.
  • Wonder Woman: Season 1 was set in World War II, albeit a World War II that included Paradise Island and Wonder Woman defeating Nazis all the time.
  • Young Blades: The Musketeers during the time of Louis XIV, and Cardinal Mazarin is the leader of an evil magical cult.

    Music 
  • The Power Metal Rock Opera project Avantasia's The Metal Opera duology tells a story of an early 1600's Dominican monk named Gabriel who in an attempt to save his sister from a Witch Hunt ends up discovering a gateway to another dimension called Avantasia.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Ars Magica
  • Maelstrom takes place in Tudor England, with some magic and mostly superstitions to guide the players.
  • White Wolf's Old World of Darkness features a detailed alternate history of the world, in which powerful supernatural forces rage behind the scenes of most major historical events.
  • Any of the Gurps historical volumes can be fantasized to discretion and many contain information on the mythology of the time period as a guide to doing this. One common trick is to assume the PCs think they are in a fantasy world, the way average people in the time period might, and not tell the players running the characters whether or not the GM is running a fantasy world until after the game is over.
  • Lamentations of the Flame Princess: While not officially given a setting; the corebook implies, and several official adventures take place in, a Low Fantasy version of 17th century Europe.

    Theatre 

    Video Games 
  • Assassin's Creed:
    • Subverted with the "Trials of the Gods" segment in Assassin's Creed Origins. Although it appears that Bayek is fighting the Egyptian gods Anubis, Sobek, and Sekhmet, this is caused by an emotional sensor overload in Layla Hassan's Animus. Zigzagged with the Curse of the Pharaohs DLC which seemingly incorporates explicitly magical elements in the Assassin's Creed franchise with Bayek fighting the ghosts of Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Akhenaten, and Ramses II, but at least some are explicitly illusions created by Akhenaten's Apple of Eden. The Duat areas, on the other hand, are far more ambiguous.
    • Assassin's Creed: Valhalla contains multiple nods to Norse Mythology (right down to its title) as well as elements of the mythical Arthurian Legend such as the appearance of the legendary Excalibur. The game goes even further to have entire segments set in Asgard, not to mention that Eivor, Sigurd, and Basim are the human reincarnations of Odin, Tyr, and Loki respectively.
  • Banner of the Maid takes place in an Alternate History of 19th century France, where Queen Antoinette nearly changed the course of history by using magical powers to predict the future. In the end, the Revolution takes place as historical and fictional women (especially Napoleon's real-life sister) are turned into witch-generals leading an independent strike team into the heart of the nation.
  • The Bastard of Kosigan, a mod for Neverwinter Nights, revolves around a fictionalized version of 14th-century France combined with the Standard Fantasy Setting inherent in the D&D rules, leading to things like the King of France having a red dragon or two as personal pets. Most of the wider setting isn't detailed, but the Duke of Burgundy seems to have incorporated magic into his court pretty effectively.
  • Castlevania is set across the greater part of a millennia and then some, featuring the Belmont lineage of Vampire Hunters' generational conflict between the Eternal Villain Dracula. The chronologically first game in the series, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence is even set in 1094 A.D., and the history of the Belmont family taking them across numerous points of time all the way up to The '90s, when Dracula was finally put down.
  • Crusader Kings II is set in medieval Europe from 769 to 1412. It had some fantasy elements from the beginning but until The Reaper's Due DLC tended to take the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane route (in the sense that what the characters believed to be supernatural events may have had perfectly mundane explanations, such as peasants telling tall tales about giants and dragons). The Reaper's Due has a couple of event chains that let characters become immortal, and Monks and Mystics added secret societies that can accomplish blatantly magical feats. The game also has an optional Alternate History DLC, Sunset Invasion, where Western Europe is invaded by the Aztec Empire (the Aztecs didn't exist until nearly the end of the playable time period, and no Native American/Indigenous culture ever built ships that could survive a transatlantic voyage).
  • Dante's Inferno is very loosely based on The Divine Comedy, and features Dante Alighieri as a Crusader returning home from war to find his wife dead and Dragged Off to Hell after making a Deal with the Devil. How does he respond? By going into hell himself and fighting through countless demons and Satan himself in order to get her back. Along the way, he bumps into demonic versions of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, and his own father, Alighiero.
  • Darklands is a fantasy RPG set in the Holy Roman Empire during the 15th century, with various elements from local folklore used to flesh out the fantasy aspects.
  • Nioh follows William Adams, an English sailor who became one of the few foreigners to become a samurai. The game's story is set in the final years of the Sengoku period interwoven with creatures and figures from Japanese Mythology.
  • Onimusha follows a semi-historical person (Hidemitsu Samanosuke Akechi is based on a real person, but very loosely) in games one and three, and a heavily fictionalized Yagyu Jubei in the second. Oda Nobunaga was obviously real, although not fueled by demons in real life.
  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and its sequel are set in Taisho-era Japan, and well, you play as a devil summoner. You summon demons.
  • Sakura Wars is 1920s Japan/France/America but with demons — it's also somewhat Alternate History, although the crazy steam technology and demonic presence doesn't seem to have affected the timeline too much outside of canceling World War I and World War II.
  • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice takes place in late Sengoku period Japan (around the end of the 1500s or so), where a very fictionalized Ashina clan, on the verge of being nearly destroyed by the forces of the Interior Ministry (all but outright stated to be the armies of the Tokugawa), has turned to "heretical arts" in a bid to make their forces immortal. Additionally, the more isolated corners of Ashina territory are filled with giant snakes, gun-wielding monkeys, bug-infested Buddhist monks, undead spirits, etc. Even the relatively more grounded forces of the Ashina themselves include ogre-men and the like among their ranks. And that's without mentioning that the main character is an immortal shinobi with a very advanced prosthetic limb. That said, it's implied that Ashina is a rather strange land compared to the rest of Japan.
  • The Shadow Hearts trilogy is set around and after World War I. You even get to recruit Princess Anastasia Romanov as a party member in Covenant, and meet historical figures like Al Capone in From The New World.
  • The Soul Series is a bunch of fighting games set in 16th-century Eurasia, pitting various warriors from all over the world against one another in search of the Living Weapons Soul Calibur and Soul Edge. Expect to see such characters as a Spartan-turned lizard, a Gorgeous Greek chosen by the gods who wears Awesome Anachronistic Apparel, a Ghost Pirate, and an alchemist Magic Knight.
  • A Plague Tale: Innocence is set during The Hundred Years War in 14th century France amidst the rapid spread of The Black Death across the cities and the countryside. With rats swarming by the thousands from underground, eating everything in their paths, and one of the main characters having a supernatural condition that has historical records going back to Roman times. With this condition, said character unintentionally summons the rats and learns to control it by the end of the game.

    Visual Novels 

    Webcomics 

    Web Video 
  • The general gist of Unbiased History is that it tells a very propagandized version of history - as in, looking like a moving propaganda poster. This often includes adding fantastic element, such as making the Romans a race of demigods, making Cleopatra both a witch and a reincarnation of Dido, making Attila a Sorcerous Overlord, making the Germanic tribes an Always Chaotic Evil horde, and generally adding some magic to the setting.

    Western Animation 
  • Castlevania (2017) is a Historical Dark Fantasy show set in the 15th century, in which southeastern Europe (and apparently other regions of the Old World as well) were infested with and terrorized by evil sorcerers, vampire warlords, and their armies of undead demonic monsters, with some of those vampire warlords having conquered and ruled their own personal fiefdoms with enslaved human subjects. Also, the famous fictional vampire Dracula seems to exist in this world in place of the real Vlad Dracula Tepes.
    • Castlevania: Nocturne is set to follow Trevor Belmont’s descendent Ricter Belmont as he continues the family legacy of vampire hunting in the French Revolution.
  • Onyx Equinox takes place in a vague post-classical Mesoamerican time period. Ruins of the Olmecs and old Maya cities abound, and the many rises and falls of Mesoamerican civilisations are actually partly justified with the gods creating and destroying the world as they please.

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