Gravity, hmm, like vertically going up straight pipes?
In an environment following real world physics only kinetic energy dictates the damage not the type of a melee weapon or its weight alone.
A fictional context maybe fictional?! *cough*
Only your very nice phrasing made me read your post further.
The fact that Mario is capable of transportation through 'Pipes' (much like sucking coke through a straw) does not negate the fact he is subject to gravity when outside them.
A point more relevant. I seem to remember in one Mario game, you were capable of collecting a powerup that added wings to Mario and enabled flight. Consider this - what if Mario by default had Wings and was
incapable of flight? What if by picking up a powerup he then lost those Wings and was suddenly
capable of flight? Would that make sense to you?
In my opinion, a sword doing more damage than an axe makes as much sense as a winged Mario that cannot fly.
To make it short: Adapting small concepts of reality into a game does NOT make it realistic,
carrying out as much aspects as possible in the given limits does.
Injuries of falling from a horse at full speed? No! Possible? Yes! Realistic NO!
But it would break the game for cav -> Balance
Reality is where we exist. Realism is a concept that can be applied by desire to that which does not exist. Realism is not binary, it varies by the quantity of it's application. I'd consider something like Team Fortress 2
less realistic than Mount and Blade. However, I'd consider Operation Flashpoint
more realistic. Within the context of a game realism is only ever unbalanced when it is applied without consideration to balance. Which is not my desire. If I were to implement damage on forced dismount, I would not do so without first (for one example) increasing the survivability of horses.
To make it long: Adapting concepts of reality into a game makes it more realistic than it was without them. You continue to assert (with much frothing) that games are either realistic or they are not. To the worrying stage where I think you believe that because Caladria does not exist in a physical sense, then it is not subject to
any rule which exists in our reality. Therefore; if in Caladria horses were to ride knights and people walked around on their hands and communicated by clapping their heels together, you would not have cause to complain!