A Worldbuilding Post (with questions)
So, as August folds into September, I start thinking about possible NaNo ideas and fleshing out a world to write in. So, I have this thing. And I realized, while I had added magic, there might not be a reason I need magic -- neither of the protagonists have it, and it doesn't impact the plot. On the other hand, the worldbuilding might not make sense with it. So I wanted to get others' opinions.
I also worry that, since it's based a lot on the history of astronomy, that it's going to turn into Obvious Retelling of Galileo's Life in Fantasy-land.
So, this is an approxiumately late-Renaissance/early-Enlightenment world. The local religion plays a pretty large role in politics -- it covers most of the countries in the area, and the priests have a pretty big influence. The priests also make up a large percentage of the scholars. The king is pretty weak compared to the nobles, so he relies a lot on the power of the church to back his power up.
Local religion is polytheistic. Astrology plays a major role in the religion and in politics by extension -- one's birth date often determines one's early education (under the basis of 'what the astrologers say Little Johnny will be best at'), which could make the difference between the heir and the not-heir, or the scholarly priests versus the administrative priests versus the ones who actually speak to the laymen. As a result, there's a pretty good industry for the church in measuring the positions of the planets. As one can imagine, this lead them to find the errors in the old geocentric model pretty quickly. This lead to a church schism between the scholarly priests and the more theological priests (Do we go with doctrine over observation?). The nobles weighed in with the scholars, on the basis that observation meant better horoscopes, and they were starting to chafe under the theological priests' restrictions. When the equivalent of the Galilean satellites were discovered, this lead to a boost in their camp, so as a result, the theologic-types lost ground.
Post-that, the theology of the religion shifted -- Earth might not be the center of the universe, but one still could mark it as special, since one couldn't see that the planets were like Earth looked (the Moon became a small point of contention, since, with telescopes, one could see mountains and craters on it). A heretic sect of the religion (working title: the Gaians, which will get changed once I start naming stuff) started celebrating the Earth as equal to the other planets in a theological sense, and was adopted by a lot of merchants/middle-class people as a way of getting rid of the power of the noble class and church (sort of a populist religion like some of the Protestant sects started as, except people still pretend the peasants don't exist). Neither the nobles nor the church authorities like them much, for obvious reasons.
Enter the protagonist, a scientist-type who gets the design for a new telescope (a reflector, not a refractor), builds it, and starts seeing features on the planets. (Probably the Great Red Spot-analog and the polar caps on the Mars-analog) Being a scientist, she wants to publish. Being in the less interesting part of astronomy (to this society), she doesn't get noticed by anyone important -- until someone brings her work to the Gaians, and suddenly she's a heretic by association.
Now, originally I'd planned when a planet (or dwarf planet or large moon) comes into close conjunction with the Sun or Earth's moon, people born during that time got some type of magic gift related to the planet. This would strengthen a belief in astrology determining personality, since it DID determine magic affinity. It would also foster interest in celestial mechanics (how the planets move), so that the models would be accurate, and nobles could plan to have children at a certain time. (Both to have magic and to avoid it.) Plus, if I do another story in the same world, I could do something with it then.
On the other hand, the magic's part of the world, but none of the main characters so far have it, and it doesn't play a major role in the plot (yet). And, it's not like people don't believe odd things without any magical back-up in our world -- including astrology.
So, here are my questions.
1. Which do you think would be easier -- planning on ditching the magic angle, then weaving it back in if I have to, or keeping it in, then removing all mentions in editing, if I decide it doesn't do anything to the finished story. Heavens know, I've had drafts change directions on me.
2. General opinions on this idea. I don't want it to get preachy, but it's probably going to at least be influenced by my views on science versus religion. (Plus, it just occurred to me, while reading limyaael's rants, that I risk falling into the Sky Religion versus Earth Religion that usually marks a book about thinly-disguised Wicca versus Christianity books. Which is funny, since I was aiming for Catholicism versus Protestantism type conflict.) Plus, I don't want anyone who sat through the Standard History of Astronomy Lecture to get bored.