Mythic Europe isn't entirely like historical Europe. Sure, the basic dates are the same, the same nobles rule, and the same Popes pass out decrees, but the texture and scope of the setting is different. This is not a world for historians alone. This is a world for those who want to dance to the music of eternal myth.
The people of the Middle Ages believed in some pretty incredible stuff. Rumors that circulated were even more exotic than stories of soot-covered dragons and twisted hermits who cast spells. Many people thought Jews had horns and tails, that Saracens built fantastic cities and rode to hunt with giant cats, and that the Ethiopians who lived out somewhere beyond the desert were as black as paint, had one eye, faces in their bellies, and possessed the richest Empire in the world. Medieval folk sometimes thought the Holy Land was like the Garden of Eden, that it was were God walked the earth, and that trees there flowered and bore fruit all at once, throughout the winter.
Medieval beliefs about what the world was like and what sorts of things comprised it varied wildly, not only from our view, but from each other's view. It is this paradigm on which Tela Magica is based - a paradigm in which legends are truth.
We have all been taught a modern version of medieval reality, which is not the version that medieval people themselves believed in. For instance, most farmers in the Middle Ages left the last shock of grain standing in their fields after harvest, so the faerie of the field had a place to live through the winter. If the shock was cut down, the faerie would die and the field would cease to be fertile. Modern people may look at this practice and either dismiss it as wasteful or praise it as respectful, but we take it for granted that there were never little faeries hiding in the wheat stalks. Much of Mythic Europe is derived from answering the question: what if things really were the way medieval people believed they were?
It is very important to remember that, at first glance, Mythic Europe looks pretty much like medieval Europe would; armies of trolls don't invade France, and demons don't roam the land. However, subtle differences exist between the two. Perhaps in Mythic Europe, the farmer who cuts down the last shock of grain never returns home. Perhaps, in Mythic europe, an oddly shaped birthmark is the sign of demonic possession. The two worlds may seem one, but they are not, and that difference is what we wish to evoke here on Tela Magica MUSH.