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Originally Posted by Anthony
Hm. Some interesting things I hadn't considered, though details are in flux anyway, I was mostly just thinking "sometime in living memory there was a demonic invasion with horrific damage and deaths, what is it like now?"
To simplify away the 'and the neighboring countries invade' possible outcome of such a situation, perhaps a large island, and sea travel limited (could just be generally difficult, could be leftover aquatic monsters).
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And/or it so happens that many or most of your skilled mariners were lost in the invasion. Seafaring and shipbuilding, even (or esp!) at low TLs, is a skilled trade.
Another possibility would be a society occupying a fertile region surrounded by extensive deserts.
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I would assume deaths not evenly spread over the land, and disproportionately among fighting age men, though no area or group untouched. The effect of essentially wiping out a generation of males would certainly change society, though I'm not sure exactly how.
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1. Young men are at a premium, for labor, fighting, and breeding. For at least one generation, you've got more women than there are men to marry them. The effect of this depends on the social customs of the society.
If it's mostly monogamous and holds on to that through the catastrophe, the surviving young, able-bodied men have a wide pick of mates, and even the semi-able-bodied men probably can find a wife easily enough. The rest of the females settle for what they can get or stay single. There'd be a substantial percentage of 'old maids' in the subsequent generation, and society would place a premium on marriage prospects for girls. As others have noted, see post Great War France for an example of a little of this.
Possibly, a former monogamous culture might become at least a bit more polygamous after such an event, but that's by no means guaranteed.
Many families will have lost all of their male offspring. Depending on the culture, this may leave a large population of elderly with no means of support as time passes. It also may mean that quite a few farms, shops, etc. are going to be up for sale, cheap, for lack of heirs over time.
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possible outcome would be that healthy male orphans would be highly desired for adoption because of all the families that lost their sons. This too would leave a mark on the society.
As others have noted, the shortage of labor is likely to mean that wages will rise, maybe by quite a lot. There's a fair chance that the remaining power structure from before will try to stop this by legal actions or other means (that happened after the Black Death) but such efforts are likely to be futile at best.
2. The shortage of labor also means that every healthy male in the military is a young male not working. This would apply pressure for female labor, but at the same time, the population shortage would argue for motherhood as the societal ideal for women.
Social power, officially or not, is likely to move from the former ruling class toward the surviving laborers, at least for at time. There just won't be many other sources of labor to tap into.