Posted By admin on October 8, 2010

Medieval Silver Knight

What's a good currency system for a fiction novel?

I'm working on a novel and I need to find a good currency system that's simple and good for a fantasy novel in a time of Kings, Knights, pirates, etc. Something like the way Ramond E Feist's Midkemia functions.I would prefer something that uses copper, silver, and gold. But I would need to understand the worth of the coins to properly know what something in my story should cost. I don't know any currency system but US. I have already looked at Doubloons, pounds, shillings etc but I don't understand them and as I said, I would rather have something simple that involves copper, silver, and/or gold. Does anyone happen to have any idea the system that Feist uses? I don't know the price of what something would cost in a medieval based time either so I need a system that I can research to find its worth within that time frame.

Please help.

Do what Rowling did and invent your own currency. Historically, shillings were silver coins the size of a quarter. Every country had them, but they all were a bit different. A swedish shilling was different than a English shilling. In England and many other countries they had copper pennies called pence. Before the English went metric, it was 24 pence to the shilling. But that did change because of the price of copper vs silver. In England they had gold guineas and sovereigns. In the 1800s a guineas was worth a Lbs of silver. 16 shillings equaled a Lbs.
Now the spanish had lots of silver from america. They had a coin called the spanish silver dollar, which is where our dollar came from.

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