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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48951
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Sorry, I don't have answers for you, only more questions and a few thoughts:

I think it **doesn't have to be a waste of time** , it can still be a really cool story  
- **Game of Thrones was a hit TV series and almost the complete first season works without any magic**.

Another question would be **how big the audience for such a story would be**. I think fantasy fans love discovering new fantastic magic details and magic/fantasy elements might support the escapism while historic novel fans prefer a setting in the real world (not a world _like_ the middle ages).

Why did you decide for this format? Did you want to create exactly these cultures and tell this story or **do you simply have not enough knowledge yet to base it in a real historic setting**? Respectively: Why should the user decide to read your story, instead of fantasy with some magical eye candy or a "real" historic novel - what arguments speak in favour of your story?

**Fictional settings** of course have one **big advantage** (at least from my personal experience as a reader/audience): **The reader is more open to empathize with protagonists and antagonists**. For example, if I watch a story about an outsider who finally gets acceptance in the Nazi party, as a reader I instantly draw back from that character, thinking he now fell for the dark side. Even if at that point no war and no holocaust have taken place (and yes, I know that the Nazis were bad enough even before that) the reader keeps that in mind. If you want your reader to feel with your protagonist/antagonist, maybe let him experience the sheer joy about being accepted into a group for the first time, it could be easier and lighter if you have a fictional world, a bit like a [fable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop%27s_Fables).  
Amazon's _Carnival Row_ does exactly that, while on the other hand making use of fantasy to make things more interesting.

If you would still call it fantasy, I don't know.  
**There actually are similar borderline cases.**  
For example how would you define a wild West movie? [**The Dark Valley**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Valley) is a movie about a mysterious lone rider, arriving at a remote village of log cabins one day in the late 18th century, driven by vengeance against the outlaws that oppress the village. Only the story takes place in the mountains of Austria, not in the wild West. (On the other hand it is still realistically depicted in its historic era, so not a completely made up world).

I myself actually work on building a post apocalyptic world, which _feels_ like a high fantasy story, just withoug magic. Instead of ancient powerful magic elven weapons there are highly effective weapon relics of the old world, that can't be copied by the primitive means of the post apocalyptic world, instead of "kingdoms" there are groups of survivors who formed own cultures over decades...

Original score: 3