Have I mentioned The Merlin Murders, my cozy mystery series set in King Arthur’s Camelot? Perhaps not. The idea arrived last year, but I had to get some other projects out of the way first (and that process isn’t finished yet). Still, one can’t help dreaming… and worldbuilding.
For this series, I knew I needed more than just Excalibur and the Round Table to make the setting come alive. Even deep research and careful worldbuilding wouldn’t deliver everything that was needed to truly (a) immerse the reader and (b) ensure that the reader had all the experiences, feelings, and excitement they expect from the two colliding genres. I needed to systematically think through what readers really want from reading, and I found a way to do that through the concept called “Universal Fantasy” (or “Universal Fun,” depending on who you ask).
If you’re not familiar with the term, Universal Fantasy is a relatively recent concept in genre fiction, first introduced by author Theodora Taylor. According to Natasha C. Sass’s How to Write a Cozy Mystery Step-by-Step, the method has “taken the genre writing world by storm”, and it’s easy to see why.
What Is Universal Fantasy?
UF refers to the specific, tangible elements of a setting that readers find inherently appealing or exciting. These aren’t plot points, tropes, or character traits. They’re the environmental and social features that make a world feel rich, lived-in, and worth spending time in. They’re evocative. And since you can’t literally transport your reader into your world, you have to evoke that world in their minds.
Think of it this way: when someone says they love Hogwarts, they’re not just talking about Harry Potter’s journey. They’re talking about moving staircases, house rivalries, Quidditch matches, secret passages, the Great Hall feasts, and Hogsmeade weekends. These are the UF elements that make readers want to live in that world.
For a cozy mystery, UF serves a dual purpose. First, it makes your setting attractive to readers who want to return book after book. Second, these UF elements often generate conflict, secrets, and motives. The very things that make a community appealing also make it ripe for… murder.
Setting the Stage: Oxford in the 1200s
At first, I thought perhaps I’d set my King Arthur murder mystery at Camelot, during a jousting tournament or something. “First thought, best thought”? Not often when writing fiction! When I learned that Arthur moved his court around to various locations in England throughout the year, I wondered about possibly setting it in London, Bath, or some other picturesque English location. And then I remembered that Oxford’s university is over a thousand years old.
The historical Arthur, if there was one, likely lived between 500 and 700 AD. That’s too early for Oxford (well, slightly). But the historical Arthur wasn’t what I was interested in writing about. The stories of Arthur of Romance, based on how much French is used at court, is set between 1150 and 1450, and Oxford was founded sometime in the early 1100s. Jackpot.
But before I could layer Arthur’s court onto Oxford, I needed to understand what medieval Oxford actually offered. The university was just emerging in the early 1200s, growing organically from clusters of scholars and students gathering around teachers. It wasn’t yet the organized system of colleges we know today.
The town itself was a fascinating collision of worlds: scholars studying theology and philosophy, students of varying ages and seriousness, townspeople trying to make a living, and church authorities trying to maintain control. Add to this the tension between Town and Gown (a conflict still alive today), and you have a setting already thick with tension.
Now imagine dropping Arthur’s court, with all its knights, quests, oaths, and magical elements, into this environment for a summer season. Suddenly you have French-speaking aristocrats mixing with Latin-speaking scholars, professional warriors encountering professional thinkers, and ancient magic brushing up against emerging academic rationalism.
Careful! Someone could end up killed.
UF: Oxford Edition
Using Sass’s framework, I brainstormed the specific fun elements that medieval Oxford offers. I needed anything that was atmospheric, colorful, quirky, particular, prototypical, vivid, and evocative. What would a reader be expecting from this kind of story? What would make it live for them? Here’s some of what I came up with:
Academic & Intellectual Life:
- Student pranks and rivalries between different student groups
- Library visits and access to rare scrolls
- Gardens and outdoor spaces for walking and debate
- Old stone buildings with their history and atmosphere
- Professors and their various eccentricities
- Wine gardens and social gathering spots
- “Weird knowledge” – esoteric subjects being studied
- Recruitment of promising students
- Incomprehensible professors who can’t explain clearly
- Secret societies and exclusive academic clubs
Town Life:
- Off-campus pubs and taverns
- Graduates who didn’t leave (always hanging around)
- Guild clubs and professional organizations
- Dorm life and late-night discussions
- Illegal student/scholar affairs (forbidden romances)
- Professor-only pubs and clubs
- Special reading rooms in libraries
- Secret cults
- Outdoor theater performances
- A gymnasium for physical training
The Oxford Vibe:
- Cemetery contemplation and philosophical walks
- Campus housing for the poorest scholars
- Mad scientists conducting strange experiments
- Conferences and academic gatherings
- Faculty drama and departmental politics
- Immoral staff behavior
- Student government and its machinations
- Vespers, prayers, and other religious observations
- Debate and rhetoric clubs
- A cappella singing groups
- Folk singers performing in the quad
- The quad itself as a gathering place
- Ancient trees with their own legends and histories
- Statues and legends associated with them
- Missionaries and foreign visitors
- Mandatory worship services
- Monks in monasteries
- Student pranks (worth mentioning twice)
- Late night labs for alchemical experiments
- Clock towers marking the hours
- Visiting scholars and parents
Each of these elements is indeed window dressing, but they also suggest relationships, hierarchies, secrets, and potential conflicts.
UF: King Arthur’s Court
Arthur’s court brings its own set of UF elements:
Knightly Culture:
- Swordfights and martial training
- Gleaming armor and heraldic display
- Dragons (or at least rumors of them)
- “Pendragon” – Arthur’s title and all its weight
- Tents and camps when traveling
- Healing and healing magic
- Healing scars and the stories they tell
- Round Table discussions and the symbolism of equality
- Once-and-future prophecies
- Lancelot and his complicated relationships
Quests & Adventure:
- The Lady of the Lake and her mysteries
- Excalibur and its significance
- Jousting tournaments and competitions
- Crests and heraldic symbols
- The Grail and Grail quests
- Grail Quests as spiritual journeys
- Questing beasts and legendary creatures
- Green Knight challenges and tests of honor
- Riddles and tests of wit
- Defending ladies from danger
- Sword in the stone legends
- Sword in the tree variations
- Ghouls and supernatural threats
- Murder at the ford (a classic Arthurian motif)
- Water magic and lake spirits
- White stag hunts
- Sea voyages and island adventures
- Cauldrons with magical properties
Court Life:
- Spies at court and political intrigue
- Sumptuous feasts with elaborate courses
- Celebrations and festivals
- Arthur demands adventure before eating (a tradition from the romances)
- Knights’ meetings and councils
- Squires, knaves, and valets in service
- Gawain and his particular code of honor
- Galahad and his purity
- Travellers arriving from afar
- Heralds announcing important visitors
Magic & Mystery:
- Honor vs. combat situations
- Honor vs. forbidden adoration
- Dwarf’s appearances (dwarfs show up surprisingly often in Arthurian romance)
- Time magic and immortality
- Transformations both magical and metaphorical
- Celtic mysticism and ancient traditions
- Druids and their wisdom
- Giants threatening the land
- Conflicting allegiances between old ways and new
- Glamour and illusion magic
- Courtly love and its elaborate rules
- Traveling minstrels spreading news and song
- Courtesy codes and proper behavior
- Love triangles (inevitable in Arthurian romance)
- Daring rescues
- Ancient ruins with their secrets
From Fantasy to Murder: Building the Mystery
Here’s where UF becomes genuinely useful for mystery plotting. When you list out all these elements, patterns emerge. Conflicts and motives swim into focus.
Looking at my combined lists for Oxford and Camelot, I started seeing natural friction points:
Academic vs. Martial Values: Scholars prize knowledge and debate; knights prize action and honor. What happens when a knight feels intellectually humiliated by a professor? Or when a scholar’s research threatens a knight’s reputation?
Old Magic vs. New Religion: The Church is establishing itself in Oxford just as Arthur’s court brings ancient fey magic into town. Someone’s going to see this as heresy worth killing over.
Town vs. Gown vs. Court: The existing tension between Oxford townspeople and university scholars gets exponentially more complicated when you add aristocratic knights who think they outrank everyone. Patience is finite. Resentments build.
Secret Societies and Forbidden Knowledge: Both Oxford and Camelot have their secret clubs, mystery cults, and hidden knowledge. When these overlap or compete, people die to protect secrets.
From these friction points, I developed my initial suspect list and motive categories:
Motives that emerged:
- Protecting reputation or honor
- Prank gone wrong
- Missing valuable item (scroll, artifact, magical object)
- Prison escape attempt / helping someone escape justice
- Living gargoyles or other supernatural threat
- Student/knight rivalry turned deadly
- Secret romantic entanglements
- Sports gambling (on jousts, contests, and even boardgames!)
- Valuable alchemy discovery – or someone stealing credit for it
Suspect categories that suggested themselves:
- University archivist with access to dangerous knowledge
- Rogue scholar or wizard
- Local religious figure torn between old ways and new
- Angry townspeople fed up with both scholars and knights
- Zealot demanding religious purity
- Student angry about unfair treatment
- Powerful alumni with something to hide
- Ancient entity awakened by the mingling of Oxford’s learning and Camelot’s magic
- Town vs. gown conflict escalated to murder
- Grail-seeker willing to kill for clues
Systematic Magic
I’m not a writer who likes to discover things as I go along. I’ve done that before, especially when I was younger, and I ended up having to re-write and re-write again to capture all the themes and interconnections I’d missed the first time through. (This is one reason why Axon, Inc. has required so many rewrites.)
Instead, for good or ill, I’m methodical. I work my way out from the core ideas and gather themes and interconnections and storylines in copious notes. Then I lay out my story in an intricate pattern, and only when I’ve plotted things down to a scene-by-scene outline am I ready to start. It’s just the way I have to work.
These UF elements aren’t arbitrary. They emerge from the historical reality of Oxford and the legendary reality of Arthurian romance. And by listing them systematically, you start to see connections you might otherwise miss. You notice that “secret societies” appears in both your Oxford list and your Camelot list, which suggests a plot point about competing mystery cults. You realize that “healing magic” and “mad scientists” could create conflict between traditional fey healing and emerging alchemical medicine.
Each UF element does triple duty:
- It makes the setting more appealing to readers
- It suggests character types who would naturally be present
- It generates potential conflicts and motives
By the time I finished my UF lists, I had a murder waiting to happen, with a cast of suspects who had logical reasons to be in Oxford during Arthur’s visit, and motives that emerged organically from the clash of these two worlds. Multiple murders, in fact. I could write dozen Oxalot murders from these lists alone. It was systematic, but it generated magic.
“Then when the lady was delivered, the king commanded two knights and two ladies to take the child, bound in a cloth of gold, and that ye deliver him to what poor man ye meet at the postern gate of the castle. Thus the child was delivered unto Merlin, and made an holy man to christen him, and named him Arthur…” — Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur
