: Re: Can I use they/them pronouns in a medieval style fantasy novel? I'm writing a book and I'd really love to include a person with they/them pronouns. However, the novel takes place in a sort

@Kaufman555

How fantastic is this world? Is it basically historical fantasy (i.e. it's earth unless otherwise noted differently) OR is it another earth like planet in a medievel plot?
I will say that the use of modern tolerance standards centuries ahead of modern standards pulls me out of the story a bit. I can accept dragons flying around England, but not a medievel European society being more tolerant of two men kissing openly in public than not... and I'm in a homosexual relationship. That's just me though. I will say that the they/them third person singular usage is very very recent in English and would only exist as a third person plural (I'll wave aside that Old English is almost linguistically distinct from Modern English... language evolves with time this isn't just an English issue).
The word "Tomboy" was first recorded in the 1500s to describe a person who was a girl but enjoyed typically male gender role activities over female gender role activities. People matching this description would still use the female third person singular pronouns (she/her) though would see being called a "girl" as insulting especially when used in a Sandlot manner ("You play ball like a girl" being the most offensive thing to said to the protaganists, cementing the stakes of the following competion... the humor in the scene was that there way worse things said to them and they gave as good as they got... this line was rather tame in comparioson but their response is that it's an unforgiveable insult). The medical and psychological sciences would not have existed to make a non-binary gender character period plausible.
That said, this is fantasy and it's not a reason to shy away, depending on how fantastic it is. Perhaps your Elves do not identify as male/female because the Elvish Language does not have linguistic genders. Thus an elf that speaks English may not fully understand gender (despite having a sex i.e. a bilogical gender) and struggle with identifying as a He when the Elf doesn't get the concept (this is actually a translation problem, as English is a gendered language, but it uses gender pretty much in line with sex for nouns, where as German does not ("The Turnip" is male, while "The Girl" is neutral) and most Romance Languages use it to denote sentance structure AND thus it's vitally important to know the gender syntaxes in order to parse the sentance order (Latin, and thus langugaes that descend from it, don't have a typical order in sentance sturcture, so gender ties adgectives to nouns as well as the subject or object of a sentance. Germanic Languages like German and English seperate all subject modifiers and nouns from the Predicate modifiers and nouns by the verb. Usually it's Subject Verb Predicate order, but Yoda speak of Predicate Verb Subject is acceptable as well.). If you don't want to fall into the trap of Effeminant Elves having no gendered language in Elvish, go with the hilarious twist that Dwarves have no concept of Gender in Dwarven Languages (it helps if even the female Dwarves have beards and act in overly macho ways near viking like warrior culture ways).

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