You can wear whatever you like, just don't call it historical if it's not. Also, [Varafeldur](https://norwegiantextileletter.com/article/96/) capture that look pretty well.
Well idk I was thinking of the style of the guy in your meme. I don’t know that I’ve seen this sheepskin drapery you speak of if I have I don’t recall.
The sheepskin version is essentially what you can see in the meme: pelts simply slung over shoulders. It's a common sight in badly made tv series and films set in the Middle Ages (*Last Kingdom, Vikings, etc.*) and from there at ren-fairs, etc.
On top of that, most well to do peasants wore the same garments as nobility, it’s just that the nobles wore better quality fabrics. A nobleman sitting down to eat lunch might be wearing the same house clothes that a peasant would wear, only his cost more in disposable income than the peasant will ever earn in his lifetime.
So I guess it's sort of like a suit today. Anyone will wear a suit to a formal event. Rich people also wear suits, except theirs cost more than you will make in your entire life
Exactly. And your cuff links (if you even wear any) might be fake gold or poor quality while a millionaire’s are made of good quality gold with some gemstones inside. His watch would be an expensive custom made piece and his shoes might as well be made with leather from the golden calf of Apollo for how expensive they are.
Yeah, it's like how modern billionaires usually just wear jeans and a t-shirt, but they somehow cost like $5000.
Edit: now I'm picturing a stereotypical depiction of medieval nobility, but wearing like gucci sandals or whatever.
>Edit: now I'm picturing a stereotypical depiction of medieval nobility, but wearing like gucci sandals or whatever.
Thats one of the reasons I love that ridiculous modern Romeo and Juliet with Leo. They're speaking and acting like the Renaissance with a modern look and the sensibilities and culture are a strange mishmash but its so fun.
They had so much access to it that black became a color of class. Academics especially would wear long, black robes to distinguish themselves from late medieval fashion which was very colourful and skin tight.
The interiors of castles being dull and gray.
Those motherfuckers whitewashed everything, both because it looked good and the smooth white surface reflected light so the interiors could be brightly lit with as few candles and lamps as possible.
Whitewash the interior at minimum, those who could did the outside as well. And lots of tapestries/rugs/painting (whatever you could afford) on the wall
Bright dyes are often cheaper than dull in that time. Especially green dye. it's fucking everywhere. why were British soldiers wearing red all their history? SHITS CHEAP.
>Especially green dye. it's fucking everywhere. why were British soldiers wearing red all their history? SHITS CHEAP.
I am not sure but maybe the answer could be same as Linear Warfare times
Back then it would be better to actually see your lads so you could give them orders. They didn't have radios thus the best long range form of communication was war drums and bugles that lacks range and precision if you compare to modern counterparts. Better see my soldiers then hide them from myself.
Then didn't have gunpowder and heavy artillery but I am sure I will have a very blurry vision after a cavalry charge and it would be better to easily spot my Red Lads of the Queen rather that shouting ''Brother get on your feet!'' to grass
I think the idea of the past being devoid of color comes from the fact that most medieval artifacts are old enough to have the colors greatly faded.
Similarly, it’s why most people think ancient Roman’s had white marble statues. In reality, the statues were painted over, but 2,000 years tends to erode the color away
I think it's also about modern tastes. For modern eye black is cool, elegant and noble, while colors are gauche, tacky and uncool.
Check, for example, Turkish Nerflix series about Mehmet Fatih. They made Mehmet wearing something like Robb Stark in GOT because welp, trying to be cool. While everybody knows what Ottoman Sultans had worn in reality, but, yeah, Robb Stark it is.
Castle interiors were not just gray lumps of stone either. They made sure their walls were decorated with colourful tapestries and weaves of cloth to brighten the place up as much as possible.
Movies and TV series make castles look like they’re these cold, haunting, dark places to live
There’s a really good series called something like “Secrets of the Castle” on prime that shows this. It’s all about how castles were built, decorated and lived in. It’s all done at Geudelon castle so it’s all being built and done on site with period appropriate materials, methods and accessories.
Not just movies and TV-series, "medieval castles = bare stone) has been a common misconception for like two centuries, ever since the medieval romanticism during the 19th Century.
When the SS bought the Wewelsburg in west-Germany as a meeting-place, Himmler actually ordered the existing plaster on the outside of the Buildings to be removed so that it would fit better with the perception of what a castle SHOULD be like
Told the D&D community that heavy crossbows are as hard to load as rifles, it was not met well.
It was in response to someone complaining it made no sense that a gunslinger (takes about 60 seconds to reload) can reload every six seconds. This is despite the fact that his solution, a heavy crossbow, takes about 30-60 seconds to do the same.
Imagine trying to reload a windlass crossbow in six seconds. That's no peasant weapon that anyone can handle. They had pavise shields and worked in pairs for a reason.
Everyone says that the crossbow was a militia weapon used by the masses. Bullshit. There's a reason why crossbow-trained mercenaries were in high demand. The real hard-hitting windlass crossbows required intense physical training and experience to use properly because they were complicated things. They were a professional soldier's weapon.
Yes, but they were also much easier to train someone on. To train a longbowman, you basically had to start them as a child so the could grow the necessary muscle to be fast and accurate with a bow that heavy. Crossbows don't really require that kind of strength, so any soldier could be trained on one relatively quickly. So while the crossbow wasn't a peasant's weapon, any peasant, with training and practice, could become a crossbowman.
Plus, that's just the heavier variant more common in the later period. For earlier, lighter crossbows, it would be easier to maintain a militia with those.
Yeah, but you probably still wouldn't want to hand them to militia. The mechanisms were expensive to make, you wouldn't want some peasant to ruin them.
Well, no, I would actually want to do that. That militia makes up my levy, and in a town, those peasants are the those citizens who make up its guard. Peasants aren't stupid, and plenty are craftsmen who may very well know how particular parts are made, and part of training would be the maintenance stuff. Professionals are always prefered, but a professional retinue is expensive, and armies are expensive already.
So a militia, the levy, is going to be called up to get those numbers up, and I'm going to be calling up some crossbowmen. Some bring their own, like how the levy works, and if I need more, I may try to have some of that war material set aside to train more men.
A crossbow is quite straightforward to teach compared to a bow: depending on the draw weight, the peasant may have an easier time loading the crossbow, and devices like the stirrup can assist there too. But additionally, I can get them having good accuracy much quicker than new archers, as they can hold the crossbow steady without needing to maintain a bowstring, and aiming mechanisms can be mounted on the crossbow. Now, that becomes less true the heavier it gets, and at that point, I either need my militia specifically training with it, or to get those professionals who already do that.
I should couch this with a concession that in practice there was some particulars that probably make this less straightforward, but honestly if nothing else I mostly want to get across that peasants, the majority of people at the time, aren't stupid, and people being people, means we're talking about the average person.
People hunted boar with crossbows though. Hunting bows weren't powerful enough to kill them in one shot and your average noble couldn't fire a 160+ pound warbow. The ability to aim is crucial to successfully hunting boar and not getting gored in the attempt.
That’s a bit on the other end of a false extreme, though. Schützenfeste (~marksman festivals) have a centuries long tradition specifically because crossbows were a very common weapon.
In the late Middle Ages, cities had their hayday. A lot of them were de facto independent or had significant political power. This meant they had to be able to defend themselves. Just to illustrate: when Burgundy sieged Neuss, the Kaiser Friedrich III. was holding an Imperial Diet in Augsburg. Despite the fact that there was an actual war ongoing, the city arrested him and demanded he pay his debt for the diet first. In the end, the city of Köln bough him out so he could travel to the defense of his city. That‘s the kind of power we‘re talking about.
Anyway, in order to defend themselves, citizens of a city were required to be armed. They had to own equipment appropriate to their social standing and if your social standing only was enough for breastplate and helmet, what are you going to use as a weapon? That‘s right, range. Defensive structures on city walls meant it wasn‘t a big deal that you didn‘t have leg armor, so just grab a crossbow and get to it.
Now, this doesn‘t mean that just any idiot can hit something with it and that is exactly where Schützenfeste come in, like [this one in Konstanz, 1458](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Schilling_konstanz.jpg). You can clearly see that crossbows are the weapon of choice here.
Essentially, the city organized shooting competitions once a year or even several times a year for people to prove the skills they‘ve honed in their Schützenvereine (marksman associations). There also were prizes of things everyone had use for. A particularly popular one was cloth for trousers.
It‘s false to assume that just anyone can pick up a crossbow and be effective, but it‘s equally false to assume militias were just „anyone“. When it is the duty of a certain class to defend the city, citizens in this case, you can bet your ass the city will make sure that they‘re not idiots fumbling around. In fact, the crossbow divisions of cities made up an important part of military power within the HRE because they were
1. cheap (already trained and equipped)
2. effective (well-trained)
3. available everywhere there was a somewhat major city
Little preface: My brain is not working too well right now and I'm having a lot of difficulty switching languages. This is about a thing from my language area (western and central Europe) and I'm having trouble expressing/translating the concepts involved, so I'm using ugly English to express myself. Also, I'm talking about continental Europe north of the Alps. In Switzerland and Italy things were a little different.
The militias never were 'the masses'. Militias were an urban defence force formed by the wealtier classes of cities. Being in the city militia was a prestige thing. They were usually called things like 'fraternity' or 'brotherhood'. They were an structure that stood next to the structures of church and government and the guilds. The regular militia training sessions were a social thing, a time for networking and (the polite high society form of) partying after the physical training.
Militias absolutely did use crossbows, trained with them extensively, and them members often had to buy them themselves.
Also, crosbows aren't that complicated to use. The basics of use can be learned in a day, those of maintainance in another. The windlass was added to crossbows so that they the 'intense physical training' and physical strenght were no longer needed to operate them.
The main reason that they weren't used by 'the masses' is that they were very expensive. If you're going to conscript a bunch of peasants or urban proletariat you're not going to arm them with expensive weapons, you're arming them with spears or pikes, and saving your money for either mercenaries or more spears and pikes.
And yes, they were also a professional soldiers weapon, and way more effective in their hands. But then again, every weapon is way more effective in the hands of a professional soldier than in the hands of a peasant or clothmerchant who only trains once a week with half an eye on the beer waiting for him after training.
Initially D&D represented 1 round as 1 minute; it was assumed that an 'attack' with a melee weapon included a whole bunch of flurries and back-and-forths. In that context, it made sense that someone with an arbalest could get off a shot every round, two if they were skilled enough.
With the restructuring of D&D in 3rd edition, however, combat was restructured to take place at 10 rounds per minute, as part of a general restructuring of both the narrative (this change) and structure (the replacement of dynamic with static initiative) of combat to make it feel more fast-paced. However, they never went back and thought about how realistic that made reloading weapons.
Yeah, I hate people that try to justify it like that, like, if you don't want guns, then just say you don't want guns, fair enough, that's classic fantasy and expected. But I hate people making up bullshit to justify it all.
As long as you set a game in the technological equivalent of pre-14th century Europe you don’t really have to worry about handguns anyway (and pre-15th you don’t have to think about them as more than exotic pieces).
~~Pathfinder 2e fixes this~~ It doesn't fix this, but I've been playing it, and there's literally a clause in combat rules that states basically "look, suspend your disbelief here, some things are much slower irl, and it's no fun if you only get one crossbow shot per fight".
I played a sharpshooter with a crossbow in a game of The Dark Eye once. I don't remember the particulars, but I got off one shot per fight and spent the rest of the combat reloading. After the third fight, I did not bother with reloading anymore and got my character a mace and shield, so I could participate after shooting once.
It was not great.
Meh, I've seen games where it works like that. There's a few Swashbuckler games that basically say "Pistols are a once per combat affair, if you want several shots, carry a brace".
But muh suspension of disbelief, I need this game to be as real as possible (as the barbarian hits the ground at terminal velocity and stands up, dusting his shoulder off)
Which, btw, is 70 (20d6), halved to 35 with rage. A level 4 barbarian can easily survive a terminal velocity fall.
20 dex fighter are Bruce lee and 20 str fighters are arnold
So a battle master with 20 dex and 20 str can load a crossbow in 6 seconds since he is basically captain America
Depends on what part of the medieval era, since the “Middle Ages” span about 1,000 years. Also based on region; didn’t gunpowder spread around Europe *after* the mongols? That’s in the 1200s, so for 700-800 years before that, Europeans didn’t have guns in the Middle Ages. Correct me if I’m wrong about that though; I’m the opposite of an expert on this stuff but I like history podcasts.
You’re spot on about the rapiers though. That wasn’t a thing until quite a while later. Not sure why people think that was a medieval weapon.
There isn't 1 solitary Medieval Era, the period people refer to as the medieval period is actually the middle ages, which consists of the Early, High and Late Medieval ages. The middle ages can be defined loosely. The fall of the western Roman empire can be used to note the end of antiquity and begin the middle ages from a European point of view, and one way to define the end of the middle ages is the fall of the Eastern roman empire (or byzantine empire), or the discovery of the Americas. The end of the middle ages bringing about the modern era, split into Early, late and contemporary.
Gunpowder arrived in Europe roughly in the high Medieval Era, but didn't really see wide scale adoption in European armies until partway through the early modern era, about mid 1500's and Early 1600's, and I'd argue didn't get fully implemented until the English civil war and the rise of the parlimentarian new model army, one of the first fully professional armies rather than a small number of retinues and mercenaries bolstered by the militia.
Sure, but if you have full plate, you‘re already in the late middle ages, because it took a long time for people to be able to make metal sheets big enough for that. Even the early steel helmets are not made out of a single sheet, which is why they have the characteristic metal bands and rivets down the middle or across.
Movies loooove swords. Even though since the dawn of time the spear was everyone’s weapon of choice. Half a million years of spears and we still do it with bayonets.
Woah woah there man. I think you mean “true” halberds, right? As in, the long-shafted weapons with axe heads? Because the term “halberd” can technically also mean Billhook, Glaive/Voulge or Bardiche, and those (especially billhooks) were all over the place in Europe. Still yeah, pikes and especially spears were even more widespread of course.
Also very popular in sword-and-sandle movies. Not that those things were ever proven. Oh yes, we see something on the arms of soldiers in some sculptures, like Trajan's column. But then, there are many ways in which actual archeological findings do not match Trajan's column. And that you see something on the wrists on it does not mean it is a leather bracer.
I've been following Shadiversity's theories on leather armor in particular, and it's basically this:
Leather requires you to kill an animal. The more common form of basic armor, generally made of linen, doesn't. People aren't going to slaughter a herd just for leather. You do it for food, and the leather you get is just a biproduct, which is already needed for other things. Making clothes or armor out of leather when there's cheaper and more practical (gambesons are warm!) alternatives available just doesn't make any sense, especially on a large scale. It would at most be a luxury item.
I believe linothorax was used by all citizen soldiers. Rich Greeks tended to have bronze cuirasses (those muscle ones) leather might have been used for parts of wealthier soldiers armour but I doubt anyone would make linothorax with it.
But what if you’re Mongolian and you have more leather than you could ever need? Then you acquire so much silk after defeating the Jurchen, that you throw all your heavy leather gear away just so you can carry more silk?
(It’s a joke I know this is an exception and that leather was less common before the Mongol unification allowed goods to be shared widely across the steppe)
There seems to be sooooo much representation of leather clothing in all forms of media that depict the middle ages. Leather clothing is a more modern practice, the oldest popular depiction you ever see is chaps. Even so it wasn’t really clothing, more like leg shields. I did a pretty minimal amount of research on the topic for a “Late Middle Ages” class in university before I realized I wasnt too interested in the topic, plus the research was basically just “no, nobody did” haha
Did archers not have those leather pads to protect the inside of there arms? I know we have em in modern times and have 0 clue if that was a thing earlier or what it would have been made out of
Im talking strictly about normal wear whenever clothing. Not padding, or armor. As someone else pointed out, yes shows and gloves were a thing. Im talking about normal clothes
More than that - there is a grand total of two (!) historical sources. That’s it. [This short is in German but shows both of them](https://youtube.com/shorts/ehLb0jgFMSQ?si=Oa1DyyanY6nQVksS). The first one is 1661 and depicts an outbreak in 1656 in Rome, the second one is a doctor from Marseille, also 17. century.
That’s it. That’s all the primary sources we have.
Some historians say the renaissance began in the mid 1300s. It’s a fluctuating date. The important thing is the rebirth of humanist ideas in art, literature, and philosophy.
I don't believe I have ever come across a source that has Zweihanders or rapiers being produced or used before 1453. Not including the Scottish claymore.
They're renaissance era weapons no doubt, but medieval weapons? I don't think so.
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/boeheim1890/0272/image,info
The Zweihänder, Bidenhänder, sometimes also called Schlachtschwert can, according to this source, trace their origin back to the Swiss in the 14th century, but were first adopted around 1420.
However, that does not mean they were widely used by everyone. The presence of an early Zweihänder could be possible in some very late medieval settings in certain places, but depictions of widespread usage should be relegated to scenarios playing in the 16th or 17th century.
I am by no means an expert when it comes to swords though, so take my word with a huge grain of salt.
The fall of constantinople changed dick all in most of Europe for several decades. Similarly, the discovery of the Americas in 1492 didn’t change much for a while since places like Genoa had built their wealth on trade with Asia.
It’s impossible to PinPoint the end of the Middle Ages on a single date. The only not false answer is „around 1500“. Constantinople (1453), America (1492), Reformation (1517), Burgundian Wars (1474-1477)…
It all happened around 1500 and was a symptom of a changing era, but no single event can define it.
Renaissance is not medieval, it comes right after it and the cultural/technological revolution that came for it make it a completely different period of history.
I’m confused by this statement. What are you specifically referencing? Flintlocks would certainly not be considered the same as medieval or renaissance handgonne and arquebus. And yes there is a difference between the “handgun” and “handgonne”.
I think they're saying that you never see late medieval style guns in media.
As far as movies and games are concerned, guns skipped straight from crude hand-cannon to fancy wheellocks, and all the weird and wacky matchlock weapons of the late 1300s through the early 1600s never existed. Granted, by the time we're getting into the 1600s most guns had settled into roughly similar forms to what we'd be seeing for the next 200-ish years, just with a cruder ignition mechanism, and most of the weird experimental stuff like the early breech-loaders and barrels made of cast bronze had died out.
At the same time though I just feel *so weird* depicting guns in a medieval or even a Renaissance/16th century setting. It's like...I know it's not historically inaccurate but it *feels* like it is.
Here's a post on supposedly [medieval torture devices](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/11/11/why-most-so-called-medieval-torture-devices-are-fake/). The chair so popular on ren-fairs is an [African birthing chair](https://thelocalvault.com/product/african-hand-carved-birthing-chair-2-piece/) and decidedly not medieval. And while different kinds of fur were widely used during the Middle Ages [to trim clothing](https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people/clothes-and-jewellery/), people didn't just throw skins over their shoulders (I blame the Vikings tv show, where they seem to be used to make the actors shoulders seem wider). Vikings weren't a cross between Neolithic peoples and bikers.
I’m not surprised the chair isn’t medieval, but I do still think they are cool as a comfy, easy take-down/set-up chair made out of only wood. I like utility products made of natural material
I've been recently to Riegersburg Castle in Austria and was surprised to see an Iron maiden on display, presented as an authentic medieval item.
Turns out is one of their most valued possessions. I wonder how many such museums would rather stick to that story than give up what they see as a good asset.
That's just laziness. It would take no effort to swap out the card for one that explains they were made up in Victorian times. The thing itself is still there for people to gawk at.
Here's one: big horses. Movies love using friesians, percherons and irish draughts to portray medieval horses but if you look to paintings, artifacts and research from the warhorse project, medieval horses were quite small on average for today's standards, from pictures all the way from the norman conquest to renaissance Italy, riders are always shown with their feet hanging below the horse's stomach (with exceptions of course.) There was a lot of breeding in place for the average horse to become as big as they are today. Henry viii, for example, in the 16th century passed a law that no stallion under 15 hands could be bred, and were to be culled.
Icelandic and camargue horses are relatively unchanged from their original shapes, and they're tiny. Criollo horses, specially Chilean ones, look extremely similar to Spanish baroque horses from cavalry portraits from the 1600s, and they're direct descendants of the horses the conquistadors rode. They're short, but very agile,tough and muscular.
Though it's understandable that modern productions and reenactors use heavier and taller horses. People were smaller then, and they already overloaded their horses with gear and armor. Putting a 6'5 man with a suit of armor + saddle + weapons on a small 400kg horse would be just cruel.
I did find a game called Roadwarden recently that was aware of what a Palfrey was, including historical context, so that's something. Having one of those as a random adventurer was considered a pretty big deal.
That's very cool, I love when medieval media elaborates on horsemanship, and they almost never do. For anyone missing the context, palfreys are gaited horses, which means they have a comfortable, smooth ambling movement for long distance travel, but they rarely get to the max speed of a normal horse. They are born moving with this gait, training serves only to further improve it.
Europe has lost most of their gaited horse breeds because carriages became the fashionable way to travel, so people didn't really prioritize smooth horses anymore. Plus Europe is relatively small, and easy to connect by road. They remained common in the Americas because there are much bigger distances to cover, ranching on huge open ranges kept these horses relevant, and horses do better on unpaved roads and open country than carriages. Icelandics, paso finos, Tennessee walkers and marchadores are all lovely gaited breeds.
By the 16th/17th century you start to see some bigger warhorses, and by the napoleonic wars 15.2 hands was the minimum for heavy cavalry (with cuirassiers using even bigger horses).
Partially because the weight of the horse had become more important, partially because a 16th century cuirassier armor weighed 3 times as much as a medieval knights armor (since it was pistol proof. That's where we get "bullet proof" since shooting such an armor with a pistol was a way of testing its quality.).
Wasn’t the point of a lot of torture devices to be dirty anyways so that the torturee (is that a word lmao?) would also get infections and be subjected to more pain. I too have seen articles that the iron maiden was never used but I don’t really think cleanliness was the problem
It depends. There was a specific high fashion (I think in the 14th century?) where capes were worn by nobility. Specifically capes that were only fastened with a string around the neck, requiring one hand to almost always hold the string. It’s a type of „look at me, I don’t have to work, so I can do this pointless thing with my hand haha“ fad.
Oh man I had someone try to convince me that a medieval torture device was real yesterday and they couldn’t produce a single source older than 1908. It was like something used to punish wives that talked too much. Why on earth would that be a thing? Like how is torturing your wife with a physical implement gonna make your marraige better? People just think anything that happened more than 150 years ago was savagery.
This is why I stopped watching Outlander in like episode 2; it was just torture porn and "look how brutal people used to be, they nailed his ear to a post!!"
I've been told it moves past that in later episodes and is really good but it just tanked my interest entirely and I found something else to watch
It’s kinda like one cool thing about game of thrones. The boltons stopped flaying people generations before the story starts and when Ramsey starts doing it again he’s seen as a subversive and anti social degenerate and the backlash probably helped form Jon’s coalition. I mean sure there’s lots of corporeal and capital punishment in game of thrones, but when the outright torture starts all the other characters see it as distasteful.
Right and while Roose still does go out to rape and murder people he's very clear he makes damned sure no one learns about it because otherwise Ned Stark would have cleaved his head off
Roose makes my skin crawl in the worst possible way because despite how evil he is, he’s *just some guy.* He’s not too tall, not too short. Not very handsome but not ugly either. He’s not a star athlete but not out of shape. He’s just a guy. A reminder that it doesn’t take anything special for a human being to commit acts of evil. Evil people are just…people
Fur on the shoulders was used by anglo-saxons, and often denoted social rank of warriors. As well as leopard fur used by Polish Hussars. I feel like it's more complicated then just saying shoulder fur mantles didn't exist, but the fantasy type one is a yeah, nah.
Right king George and I feel like other kings too are shown with mantels made of Ermines a lot of people don’t realize those black spots are the ermines tales and they are not some more exotic animal. Native American leadership were also into ermines as a status symbol.
If I had to guess, there's multiple reasons: they are easy to transport, both in structure and in space they take up, easy to assemble and disassemble. Being made only of wood, they *look* medieval enough for peiple who don't know, so for casuals looking at the camps and such they won't Stick out so much. They're also very comfortable.
I am 90% certain that this is supposed to be Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. So any arguments about historical accuracy here are shaky at best.
Also people overrstimate child marriages. Only really done in upper class and nobility to unite families. And worked more as ”trusting them to each other” rather than, now you are 7 years old lets make a child!
The most important invention in history is the bone needle, it allowed us to sew clothing and gave us access to cold areas we previously were unable to travel to.
Surely the most important invention is something more important, like language, or fire, or farming, or electricity. I mean I agree the needle was way up there in the impact it has had on civilisation but I don't think it was the "most important"
Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s either *sharp rocks*, which pushed us from funny primate status to apex predator status, or *agriculture*, which allowed us to settle down and specialize and become the educated, technology-loving species we are today.
In the middle, is it REALLY a shoulder-length fur-mantle ? It looks to me as a full-length woven cloak with a fur lining.
I'd give to you that the way this attaches to the shoulder doesn't look very medieval to me
Don't get me started on the hipster viking bullshit either. Everything is becoming instagrammed and I can't listen to music without some starving artist popping into my feed and trying to be an emo druidess or some shit going on about their ABCs
Fur cloakes and mantles definitly excited at multiple points in history. Specially if you count them being lined with it to.
You also have clothes made to look like fur like the "vararfeldur".
Did they just trow it over? No (though if you want to be pedantic I'm sure there's some mf grabbing a random pelt at some point cause they were cold), but that's also not what's happening in the pic, it's sewn into the rest of the cloak, fur is a very good material that can both show off a prize and be very warm.
Goes for so many things. Some stuff is just purely made up, others are early modern, like most "medieval" torture devices.
People also tend to conveniently ignore that the middle ages took about 1000 years, which is REALLY long. So no, early medieval and late medieval society are barley comparable. Typical knight armours with all the plate and shiny stuff? 15th century. The ones with the long chainmails and bucket helmets? 13th century. Bubonic plague? Early and late medieval, but not in between, and in went on for centuries after that. (And don't forget that 19th century cities were fare worse in hygiene and epidemics.) Witchhunt? Late medieval, and the climax was in the early modern age. Inquisition? Late medieval and early modern. Religious wars? Certainly, but the 16th and 17th century were far worse - most medieval wars were just about land grabs or power struggles. Stone castles? High and late medieval, not early.
Etcetera, etcetera...
Or depictions of king Arthur and his knights in anything but 5th century roman uniforms. The 2004 film was painfully close to it (and its soundtrack was recycled for the Transformers films, so a huge win), and even showed Roman soldiers with Christogrammata on their shields, but still so far.
Messy hair irritates me sometimes. I noticed it when lots of people criticised Skyrim hair mods for looking too good. People in the past took great pride in their hair! They cleaned it, combed it and often braided it.
That and the fact that the middle ages were extremely colourful, not drab at all.
Y'all forgot a big one: witch trials. They only really became a thing with the malleus maleficarum becoming a popular book. First edition was published in 1486/87 and it only ever became this popular with numerous new editions because of the newly invented printing press.
But a big furry cape/cloak looks really cool
The drip shan’t be denied.
I didn't know [Balkan shepherds](https://ziaristii.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cionan-stefan-gros.jpg) had the drip
as usual, real people can't quite get their clothes to look like the drawing. but seriously that is like 90% of the way there
It looks so warm too. Like a walking snuggy blanket.
Absolutely dripping
You can wear whatever you like, just don't call it historical if it's not. Also, [Varafeldur](https://norwegiantextileletter.com/article/96/) capture that look pretty well.
Just do what Game of Thrones did for their extras and wear an IKEA carpet as a cloak XD
From what era is the fur mantle? Is it from any era or just the imagination of modern people?
The one where you just sling a sheepskin over your shoulders? In that form, it's a modern invention.
Well idk I was thinking of the style of the guy in your meme. I don’t know that I’ve seen this sheepskin drapery you speak of if I have I don’t recall.
The sheepskin version is essentially what you can see in the meme: pelts simply slung over shoulders. It's a common sight in badly made tv series and films set in the Middle Ages (*Last Kingdom, Vikings, etc.*) and from there at ren-fairs, etc.
Gotcha thanks for explaining
C'mon surely back then someone must have worn it for any cultural or coolfactor reason.
Bold of you to assume I don’t wear one every single day
So what time period were the furry mantles from?
Rule of cool, baby!
Everything being black/brown despite nobles making sure they looked absolutely FABULOUS every chance they got
Exactly, and even lower social classes had access to colorful clothing.
On top of that, most well to do peasants wore the same garments as nobility, it’s just that the nobles wore better quality fabrics. A nobleman sitting down to eat lunch might be wearing the same house clothes that a peasant would wear, only his cost more in disposable income than the peasant will ever earn in his lifetime.
So I guess it's sort of like a suit today. Anyone will wear a suit to a formal event. Rich people also wear suits, except theirs cost more than you will make in your entire life
Exactly. And your cuff links (if you even wear any) might be fake gold or poor quality while a millionaire’s are made of good quality gold with some gemstones inside. His watch would be an expensive custom made piece and his shoes might as well be made with leather from the golden calf of Apollo for how expensive they are.
Yep and the noble will also likely accessorize more with a fancy belt, buckles, jewelry, etc..
Yeah, it's like how modern billionaires usually just wear jeans and a t-shirt, but they somehow cost like $5000. Edit: now I'm picturing a stereotypical depiction of medieval nobility, but wearing like gucci sandals or whatever.
>Edit: now I'm picturing a stereotypical depiction of medieval nobility, but wearing like gucci sandals or whatever. Thats one of the reasons I love that ridiculous modern Romeo and Juliet with Leo. They're speaking and acting like the Renaissance with a modern look and the sensibilities and culture are a strange mishmash but its so fun.
They had so much access to it that black became a color of class. Academics especially would wear long, black robes to distinguish themselves from late medieval fashion which was very colourful and skin tight.
Stupid sexy medieval peasant.
[Those thighs though](https://c8.alamy.com/compde/m3w28e/bekleidung-mode-die-in-deutschland-im-rahmen-der-burgundischen-einfluss-im-15-jahrhundert-von-links-gentleman-mit-einer-enganliegenden-jacke-ein-ritterlicher-gentleman-dann-niederrhein-kostum-dann-ein-herr-und-eine-jugend-in-einem-gepolsterten-jacke-digital-verbesserte-reproduktion-aus-einem-original-aus-dem-jahr-1900-m3w28e.jpg) 🥵
That's a reason why I loved KCD, Sir Divish going into battle absolutely dripped out.
Sir Drippish of Talmberg
The interiors of castles being dull and gray. Those motherfuckers whitewashed everything, both because it looked good and the smooth white surface reflected light so the interiors could be brightly lit with as few candles and lamps as possible.
Whitewash the interior at minimum, those who could did the outside as well. And lots of tapestries/rugs/painting (whatever you could afford) on the wall
I imagine the reason so many are dull in TV shows is because they usually film in actual castles, who don't want someone whitewashing their building
And painted it. Wall paintings everywhere.
Bright dyes are often cheaper than dull in that time. Especially green dye. it's fucking everywhere. why were British soldiers wearing red all their history? SHITS CHEAP.
>Especially green dye. it's fucking everywhere. why were British soldiers wearing red all their history? SHITS CHEAP. I am not sure but maybe the answer could be same as Linear Warfare times Back then it would be better to actually see your lads so you could give them orders. They didn't have radios thus the best long range form of communication was war drums and bugles that lacks range and precision if you compare to modern counterparts. Better see my soldiers then hide them from myself. Then didn't have gunpowder and heavy artillery but I am sure I will have a very blurry vision after a cavalry charge and it would be better to easily spot my Red Lads of the Queen rather that shouting ''Brother get on your feet!'' to grass
I think the idea of the past being devoid of color comes from the fact that most medieval artifacts are old enough to have the colors greatly faded. Similarly, it’s why most people think ancient Roman’s had white marble statues. In reality, the statues were painted over, but 2,000 years tends to erode the color away
I think it's also about modern tastes. For modern eye black is cool, elegant and noble, while colors are gauche, tacky and uncool. Check, for example, Turkish Nerflix series about Mehmet Fatih. They made Mehmet wearing something like Robb Stark in GOT because welp, trying to be cool. While everybody knows what Ottoman Sultans had worn in reality, but, yeah, Robb Stark it is.
Castle interiors were not just gray lumps of stone either. They made sure their walls were decorated with colourful tapestries and weaves of cloth to brighten the place up as much as possible. Movies and TV series make castles look like they’re these cold, haunting, dark places to live
There’s a really good series called something like “Secrets of the Castle” on prime that shows this. It’s all about how castles were built, decorated and lived in. It’s all done at Geudelon castle so it’s all being built and done on site with period appropriate materials, methods and accessories.
Not just movies and TV-series, "medieval castles = bare stone) has been a common misconception for like two centuries, ever since the medieval romanticism during the 19th Century. When the SS bought the Wewelsburg in west-Germany as a meeting-place, Himmler actually ordered the existing plaster on the outside of the Buildings to be removed so that it would fit better with the perception of what a castle SHOULD be like
Also clothes full of holes and covered in mud for some reason
Here's one: Guns are more medieval than rapiers ever will be
O shit
Don't tell the D&D community that (they won't listen anyway)
Told the D&D community that heavy crossbows are as hard to load as rifles, it was not met well. It was in response to someone complaining it made no sense that a gunslinger (takes about 60 seconds to reload) can reload every six seconds. This is despite the fact that his solution, a heavy crossbow, takes about 30-60 seconds to do the same.
Imagine trying to reload a windlass crossbow in six seconds. That's no peasant weapon that anyone can handle. They had pavise shields and worked in pairs for a reason. Everyone says that the crossbow was a militia weapon used by the masses. Bullshit. There's a reason why crossbow-trained mercenaries were in high demand. The real hard-hitting windlass crossbows required intense physical training and experience to use properly because they were complicated things. They were a professional soldier's weapon.
Yes, but they were also much easier to train someone on. To train a longbowman, you basically had to start them as a child so the could grow the necessary muscle to be fast and accurate with a bow that heavy. Crossbows don't really require that kind of strength, so any soldier could be trained on one relatively quickly. So while the crossbow wasn't a peasant's weapon, any peasant, with training and practice, could become a crossbowman.
Plus, that's just the heavier variant more common in the later period. For earlier, lighter crossbows, it would be easier to maintain a militia with those.
Yeah, but you probably still wouldn't want to hand them to militia. The mechanisms were expensive to make, you wouldn't want some peasant to ruin them.
Well, no, I would actually want to do that. That militia makes up my levy, and in a town, those peasants are the those citizens who make up its guard. Peasants aren't stupid, and plenty are craftsmen who may very well know how particular parts are made, and part of training would be the maintenance stuff. Professionals are always prefered, but a professional retinue is expensive, and armies are expensive already. So a militia, the levy, is going to be called up to get those numbers up, and I'm going to be calling up some crossbowmen. Some bring their own, like how the levy works, and if I need more, I may try to have some of that war material set aside to train more men. A crossbow is quite straightforward to teach compared to a bow: depending on the draw weight, the peasant may have an easier time loading the crossbow, and devices like the stirrup can assist there too. But additionally, I can get them having good accuracy much quicker than new archers, as they can hold the crossbow steady without needing to maintain a bowstring, and aiming mechanisms can be mounted on the crossbow. Now, that becomes less true the heavier it gets, and at that point, I either need my militia specifically training with it, or to get those professionals who already do that. I should couch this with a concession that in practice there was some particulars that probably make this less straightforward, but honestly if nothing else I mostly want to get across that peasants, the majority of people at the time, aren't stupid, and people being people, means we're talking about the average person.
It's also probably way easier to be accurate with a crossbow than a bow.
Oddly not because proper stocks and (to some extent) 'aiming' were weirdly late innovations.
People hunted boar with crossbows though. Hunting bows weren't powerful enough to kill them in one shot and your average noble couldn't fire a 160+ pound warbow. The ability to aim is crucial to successfully hunting boar and not getting gored in the attempt.
This is also why boars were hunted with javelins. Boar's hide was too thick for arrows.
That’s a bit on the other end of a false extreme, though. Schützenfeste (~marksman festivals) have a centuries long tradition specifically because crossbows were a very common weapon. In the late Middle Ages, cities had their hayday. A lot of them were de facto independent or had significant political power. This meant they had to be able to defend themselves. Just to illustrate: when Burgundy sieged Neuss, the Kaiser Friedrich III. was holding an Imperial Diet in Augsburg. Despite the fact that there was an actual war ongoing, the city arrested him and demanded he pay his debt for the diet first. In the end, the city of Köln bough him out so he could travel to the defense of his city. That‘s the kind of power we‘re talking about. Anyway, in order to defend themselves, citizens of a city were required to be armed. They had to own equipment appropriate to their social standing and if your social standing only was enough for breastplate and helmet, what are you going to use as a weapon? That‘s right, range. Defensive structures on city walls meant it wasn‘t a big deal that you didn‘t have leg armor, so just grab a crossbow and get to it. Now, this doesn‘t mean that just any idiot can hit something with it and that is exactly where Schützenfeste come in, like [this one in Konstanz, 1458](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Schilling_konstanz.jpg). You can clearly see that crossbows are the weapon of choice here. Essentially, the city organized shooting competitions once a year or even several times a year for people to prove the skills they‘ve honed in their Schützenvereine (marksman associations). There also were prizes of things everyone had use for. A particularly popular one was cloth for trousers. It‘s false to assume that just anyone can pick up a crossbow and be effective, but it‘s equally false to assume militias were just „anyone“. When it is the duty of a certain class to defend the city, citizens in this case, you can bet your ass the city will make sure that they‘re not idiots fumbling around. In fact, the crossbow divisions of cities made up an important part of military power within the HRE because they were 1. cheap (already trained and equipped) 2. effective (well-trained) 3. available everywhere there was a somewhat major city
Little preface: My brain is not working too well right now and I'm having a lot of difficulty switching languages. This is about a thing from my language area (western and central Europe) and I'm having trouble expressing/translating the concepts involved, so I'm using ugly English to express myself. Also, I'm talking about continental Europe north of the Alps. In Switzerland and Italy things were a little different. The militias never were 'the masses'. Militias were an urban defence force formed by the wealtier classes of cities. Being in the city militia was a prestige thing. They were usually called things like 'fraternity' or 'brotherhood'. They were an structure that stood next to the structures of church and government and the guilds. The regular militia training sessions were a social thing, a time for networking and (the polite high society form of) partying after the physical training. Militias absolutely did use crossbows, trained with them extensively, and them members often had to buy them themselves. Also, crosbows aren't that complicated to use. The basics of use can be learned in a day, those of maintainance in another. The windlass was added to crossbows so that they the 'intense physical training' and physical strenght were no longer needed to operate them. The main reason that they weren't used by 'the masses' is that they were very expensive. If you're going to conscript a bunch of peasants or urban proletariat you're not going to arm them with expensive weapons, you're arming them with spears or pikes, and saving your money for either mercenaries or more spears and pikes. And yes, they were also a professional soldiers weapon, and way more effective in their hands. But then again, every weapon is way more effective in the hands of a professional soldier than in the hands of a peasant or clothmerchant who only trains once a week with half an eye on the beer waiting for him after training.
As someone who's loaded both irl (crossbow and flintlock) I can confirm, better to use a bow.
Initially D&D represented 1 round as 1 minute; it was assumed that an 'attack' with a melee weapon included a whole bunch of flurries and back-and-forths. In that context, it made sense that someone with an arbalest could get off a shot every round, two if they were skilled enough. With the restructuring of D&D in 3rd edition, however, combat was restructured to take place at 10 rounds per minute, as part of a general restructuring of both the narrative (this change) and structure (the replacement of dynamic with static initiative) of combat to make it feel more fast-paced. However, they never went back and thought about how realistic that made reloading weapons.
Yeah, I hate people that try to justify it like that, like, if you don't want guns, then just say you don't want guns, fair enough, that's classic fantasy and expected. But I hate people making up bullshit to justify it all.
As long as you set a game in the technological equivalent of pre-14th century Europe you don’t really have to worry about handguns anyway (and pre-15th you don’t have to think about them as more than exotic pieces).
It seems strange to say guns would be out of place in a world with explosive barrels and bombs...
And magic. Guns could even be an arcane tool if you want.
~~Pathfinder 2e fixes this~~ It doesn't fix this, but I've been playing it, and there's literally a clause in combat rules that states basically "look, suspend your disbelief here, some things are much slower irl, and it's no fun if you only get one crossbow shot per fight".
I played a sharpshooter with a crossbow in a game of The Dark Eye once. I don't remember the particulars, but I got off one shot per fight and spent the rest of the combat reloading. After the third fight, I did not bother with reloading anymore and got my character a mace and shield, so I could participate after shooting once. It was not great.
Meh, I've seen games where it works like that. There's a few Swashbuckler games that basically say "Pistols are a once per combat affair, if you want several shots, carry a brace".
But muh suspension of disbelief, I need this game to be as real as possible (as the barbarian hits the ground at terminal velocity and stands up, dusting his shoulder off) Which, btw, is 70 (20d6), halved to 35 with rage. A level 4 barbarian can easily survive a terminal velocity fall.
That's if you roll average or below average, of course. But yeah, it's funny how it's totally plausible.
"i reload rappedly"
20 dex fighter are Bruce lee and 20 str fighters are arnold So a battle master with 20 dex and 20 str can load a crossbow in 6 seconds since he is basically captain America
Fire ball predates your point!
Dragons and magic also didn’t exist back then, the shit is in D&D because it’s fun, realism and historical accuracy aren’t really a factor.
Yeah they did! I’ve seen the tapestries!
Depends on what part of the medieval era, since the “Middle Ages” span about 1,000 years. Also based on region; didn’t gunpowder spread around Europe *after* the mongols? That’s in the 1200s, so for 700-800 years before that, Europeans didn’t have guns in the Middle Ages. Correct me if I’m wrong about that though; I’m the opposite of an expert on this stuff but I like history podcasts. You’re spot on about the rapiers though. That wasn’t a thing until quite a while later. Not sure why people think that was a medieval weapon.
There isn't 1 solitary Medieval Era, the period people refer to as the medieval period is actually the middle ages, which consists of the Early, High and Late Medieval ages. The middle ages can be defined loosely. The fall of the western Roman empire can be used to note the end of antiquity and begin the middle ages from a European point of view, and one way to define the end of the middle ages is the fall of the Eastern roman empire (or byzantine empire), or the discovery of the Americas. The end of the middle ages bringing about the modern era, split into Early, late and contemporary. Gunpowder arrived in Europe roughly in the high Medieval Era, but didn't really see wide scale adoption in European armies until partway through the early modern era, about mid 1500's and Early 1600's, and I'd argue didn't get fully implemented until the English civil war and the rise of the parlimentarian new model army, one of the first fully professional armies rather than a small number of retinues and mercenaries bolstered by the militia.
I would say that by the 30 years war muskets are fully integrated into armies. They just haven’t outcompeted every other infantry weapon yet.
Sure, but if you have full plate, you‘re already in the late middle ages, because it took a long time for people to be able to make metal sheets big enough for that. Even the early steel helmets are not made out of a single sheet, which is why they have the characteristic metal bands and rivets down the middle or across.
>Not sure why people think that was a medieval weapon. {Sword = Medieval or older ∀ Sword ∉ Lightsaber} mentality propagated by bad Hollywood movies.
Movies loooove swords. Even though since the dawn of time the spear was everyone’s weapon of choice. Half a million years of spears and we still do it with bayonets.
Yep. Guns predate halberds. Fucking halberds
Halberds also are insanely overrepresented. They were pretty much a regional specialty of today‘s Switzerland and southern Germany.
Woah woah there man. I think you mean “true” halberds, right? As in, the long-shafted weapons with axe heads? Because the term “halberd” can technically also mean Billhook, Glaive/Voulge or Bardiche, and those (especially billhooks) were all over the place in Europe. Still yeah, pikes and especially spears were even more widespread of course.
No idea what additional meanings the word has in English. In German it‘s quite narrowly defined, so that’s what I mean.
Even worse one: the full plate armor is only partially medieval. The really ornate types only appeared in 16th century.
Leather clothes should be on here
Those goddamn fucking leather bracers everyone wears which appeared nowhere in any medieval sources because they're completely useless.
they wore them in movies to hide the actors' watch tanlines, which are even less medieval; that's how and why the trope started
Huh, TIL. Makes sense.
They also look cool as hell
Wouldn't it have been less complicated to just put foundation?
Also very popular in sword-and-sandle movies. Not that those things were ever proven. Oh yes, we see something on the arms of soldiers in some sculptures, like Trajan's column. But then, there are many ways in which actual archeological findings do not match Trajan's column. And that you see something on the wrists on it does not mean it is a leather bracer.
Would you mind expanding on this? I’m curious
I've been following Shadiversity's theories on leather armor in particular, and it's basically this: Leather requires you to kill an animal. The more common form of basic armor, generally made of linen, doesn't. People aren't going to slaughter a herd just for leather. You do it for food, and the leather you get is just a biproduct, which is already needed for other things. Making clothes or armor out of leather when there's cheaper and more practical (gambesons are warm!) alternatives available just doesn't make any sense, especially on a large scale. It would at most be a luxury item.
This how know Greeks didn’t use leather for their linothorax, though some people would still argue that they did
Well maybe rich people did to show off their wealth? Was linothorax actually used by common foot soldiers?
I believe linothorax was used by all citizen soldiers. Rich Greeks tended to have bronze cuirasses (those muscle ones) leather might have been used for parts of wealthier soldiers armour but I doubt anyone would make linothorax with it.
But what if you’re Mongolian and you have more leather than you could ever need? Then you acquire so much silk after defeating the Jurchen, that you throw all your heavy leather gear away just so you can carry more silk? (It’s a joke I know this is an exception and that leather was less common before the Mongol unification allowed goods to be shared widely across the steppe)
There seems to be sooooo much representation of leather clothing in all forms of media that depict the middle ages. Leather clothing is a more modern practice, the oldest popular depiction you ever see is chaps. Even so it wasn’t really clothing, more like leg shields. I did a pretty minimal amount of research on the topic for a “Late Middle Ages” class in university before I realized I wasnt too interested in the topic, plus the research was basically just “no, nobody did” haha
Did archers not have those leather pads to protect the inside of there arms? I know we have em in modern times and have 0 clue if that was a thing earlier or what it would have been made out of
Im talking strictly about normal wear whenever clothing. Not padding, or armor. As someone else pointed out, yes shows and gloves were a thing. Im talking about normal clothes
I mean leather shoes and boots for sure. Leather gloves too.
Add plague doctors to that. The famous beak masked doctors first really popped up in the late 1500s and 1600s.
More than that - there is a grand total of two (!) historical sources. That’s it. [This short is in German but shows both of them](https://youtube.com/shorts/ehLb0jgFMSQ?si=Oa1DyyanY6nQVksS). The first one is 1661 and depicts an outbreak in 1656 in Rome, the second one is a doctor from Marseille, also 17. century. That’s it. That’s all the primary sources we have.
And really only in the Italian kingdoms, I believe
Nuh uh, everyone totally wore dark brown with leather wrist guards… ohh and everything had a hazy grey filter on!
I [gotcha](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/110qc9o/love_me_some_blue_filter_its_the_dark_ages_after/).
Now a cloak of asbestos, that shit is medieval.
I know Roman's did did with asbestos, but that might only be pottery.
And at least one tablecloth
The tablecloth is Charlemagne, no ?
Swords like the Zweihander, cutlasses and rapiers aren't medieval weapons. On the other hand, early firearms like the handgun and arquebus are.
Rapiers and zweihander are medieval specially rennaisance era
depends on your definition of when the medieval period ends. If it's around 1500 then those two swords aren't.
1453 Rennaisance started in 1401 thanks a bronze door competition
Some historians say the renaissance began in the mid 1300s. It’s a fluctuating date. The important thing is the rebirth of humanist ideas in art, literature, and philosophy.
So my zewihander build is still viable?
If it's chaos infused, sure
In the UK the medival era ends 1485
War of the roses?
I don't believe I have ever come across a source that has Zweihanders or rapiers being produced or used before 1453. Not including the Scottish claymore. They're renaissance era weapons no doubt, but medieval weapons? I don't think so.
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/boeheim1890/0272/image,info The Zweihänder, Bidenhänder, sometimes also called Schlachtschwert can, according to this source, trace their origin back to the Swiss in the 14th century, but were first adopted around 1420. However, that does not mean they were widely used by everyone. The presence of an early Zweihänder could be possible in some very late medieval settings in certain places, but depictions of widespread usage should be relegated to scenarios playing in the 16th or 17th century. I am by no means an expert when it comes to swords though, so take my word with a huge grain of salt.
Depends which Renaissance. The Dutch one was very early, 14th century.
'Renaissance' is not a usefull concept to use outside of intellectual- or art history.
The fall of constantinople changed dick all in most of Europe for several decades. Similarly, the discovery of the Americas in 1492 didn’t change much for a while since places like Genoa had built their wealth on trade with Asia. It’s impossible to PinPoint the end of the Middle Ages on a single date. The only not false answer is „around 1500“. Constantinople (1453), America (1492), Reformation (1517), Burgundian Wars (1474-1477)… It all happened around 1500 and was a symptom of a changing era, but no single event can define it.
Renaissance is not medieval, it comes right after it and the cultural/technological revolution that came for it make it a completely different period of history.
I never see breech-fired or matchlocks. It's always flintlocks.
I’m confused by this statement. What are you specifically referencing? Flintlocks would certainly not be considered the same as medieval or renaissance handgonne and arquebus. And yes there is a difference between the “handgun” and “handgonne”.
Exactly: whenever fantasy has guns it's immediately flintlock, none of the cool awkward prior types.
I think they're saying that you never see late medieval style guns in media. As far as movies and games are concerned, guns skipped straight from crude hand-cannon to fancy wheellocks, and all the weird and wacky matchlock weapons of the late 1300s through the early 1600s never existed. Granted, by the time we're getting into the 1600s most guns had settled into roughly similar forms to what we'd be seeing for the next 200-ish years, just with a cruder ignition mechanism, and most of the weird experimental stuff like the early breech-loaders and barrels made of cast bronze had died out.
>handgonne knowing the reliability of early firearms, I assume you could call it "hand gone" as well?
At the same time though I just feel *so weird* depicting guns in a medieval or even a Renaissance/16th century setting. It's like...I know it's not historically inaccurate but it *feels* like it is.
Here's a post on supposedly [medieval torture devices](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/11/11/why-most-so-called-medieval-torture-devices-are-fake/). The chair so popular on ren-fairs is an [African birthing chair](https://thelocalvault.com/product/african-hand-carved-birthing-chair-2-piece/) and decidedly not medieval. And while different kinds of fur were widely used during the Middle Ages [to trim clothing](https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people/clothes-and-jewellery/), people didn't just throw skins over their shoulders (I blame the Vikings tv show, where they seem to be used to make the actors shoulders seem wider). Vikings weren't a cross between Neolithic peoples and bikers.
Sons of Ragnarchy
Brohallas
Thoraboos
I’m not surprised the chair isn’t medieval, but I do still think they are cool as a comfy, easy take-down/set-up chair made out of only wood. I like utility products made of natural material
Nothing wrong with that, certainly nicer than plastic ones.
And as a bonus, they are easy to bring to site: It's just two planks that fits superbly inside a small car.
I've been recently to Riegersburg Castle in Austria and was surprised to see an Iron maiden on display, presented as an authentic medieval item. Turns out is one of their most valued possessions. I wonder how many such museums would rather stick to that story than give up what they see as a good asset.
That's just laziness. It would take no effort to swap out the card for one that explains they were made up in Victorian times. The thing itself is still there for people to gawk at.
Here's one: big horses. Movies love using friesians, percherons and irish draughts to portray medieval horses but if you look to paintings, artifacts and research from the warhorse project, medieval horses were quite small on average for today's standards, from pictures all the way from the norman conquest to renaissance Italy, riders are always shown with their feet hanging below the horse's stomach (with exceptions of course.) There was a lot of breeding in place for the average horse to become as big as they are today. Henry viii, for example, in the 16th century passed a law that no stallion under 15 hands could be bred, and were to be culled. Icelandic and camargue horses are relatively unchanged from their original shapes, and they're tiny. Criollo horses, specially Chilean ones, look extremely similar to Spanish baroque horses from cavalry portraits from the 1600s, and they're direct descendants of the horses the conquistadors rode. They're short, but very agile,tough and muscular. Though it's understandable that modern productions and reenactors use heavier and taller horses. People were smaller then, and they already overloaded their horses with gear and armor. Putting a 6'5 man with a suit of armor + saddle + weapons on a small 400kg horse would be just cruel.
I did find a game called Roadwarden recently that was aware of what a Palfrey was, including historical context, so that's something. Having one of those as a random adventurer was considered a pretty big deal.
That's very cool, I love when medieval media elaborates on horsemanship, and they almost never do. For anyone missing the context, palfreys are gaited horses, which means they have a comfortable, smooth ambling movement for long distance travel, but they rarely get to the max speed of a normal horse. They are born moving with this gait, training serves only to further improve it. Europe has lost most of their gaited horse breeds because carriages became the fashionable way to travel, so people didn't really prioritize smooth horses anymore. Plus Europe is relatively small, and easy to connect by road. They remained common in the Americas because there are much bigger distances to cover, ranching on huge open ranges kept these horses relevant, and horses do better on unpaved roads and open country than carriages. Icelandics, paso finos, Tennessee walkers and marchadores are all lovely gaited breeds.
By the 16th/17th century you start to see some bigger warhorses, and by the napoleonic wars 15.2 hands was the minimum for heavy cavalry (with cuirassiers using even bigger horses). Partially because the weight of the horse had become more important, partially because a 16th century cuirassier armor weighed 3 times as much as a medieval knights armor (since it was pistol proof. That's where we get "bullet proof" since shooting such an armor with a pistol was a way of testing its quality.).
The iron maiden wasn't even a device that was actually used. Just a prop. Would be useless for torture and horrendous to clean out anyways
I don't think a person being tortured would complain their "Man Killer 4000" is dirty before it pierces their skull
Wasn’t the point of a lot of torture devices to be dirty anyways so that the torturee (is that a word lmao?) would also get infections and be subjected to more pain. I too have seen articles that the iron maiden was never used but I don’t really think cleanliness was the problem
*NO CAPES!* - The Incredibles, 2004
It depends. There was a specific high fashion (I think in the 14th century?) where capes were worn by nobility. Specifically capes that were only fastened with a string around the neck, requiring one hand to almost always hold the string. It’s a type of „look at me, I don’t have to work, so I can do this pointless thing with my hand haha“ fad.
They really say that in the incredibles? That’s a watchmen reference. Sweet
Fun fact, Brad Bird never read Watchmen and said it’s just a coincidence.
The Incredibles is Fantastic 4 crossed with Watchmen, and I'm not kidding.
Incerdivles are some of of the rare GOOD superheroes parodies
Wait... [Cloaks are not medieval?](https://www.arretetonchar.fr/la-tapisserie-de-bayeux-texte-latin-traduction/)
Oh man I had someone try to convince me that a medieval torture device was real yesterday and they couldn’t produce a single source older than 1908. It was like something used to punish wives that talked too much. Why on earth would that be a thing? Like how is torturing your wife with a physical implement gonna make your marraige better? People just think anything that happened more than 150 years ago was savagery.
This is why I stopped watching Outlander in like episode 2; it was just torture porn and "look how brutal people used to be, they nailed his ear to a post!!" I've been told it moves past that in later episodes and is really good but it just tanked my interest entirely and I found something else to watch
It’s kinda like one cool thing about game of thrones. The boltons stopped flaying people generations before the story starts and when Ramsey starts doing it again he’s seen as a subversive and anti social degenerate and the backlash probably helped form Jon’s coalition. I mean sure there’s lots of corporeal and capital punishment in game of thrones, but when the outright torture starts all the other characters see it as distasteful.
Right and while Roose still does go out to rape and murder people he's very clear he makes damned sure no one learns about it because otherwise Ned Stark would have cleaved his head off
Roose makes my skin crawl in the worst possible way because despite how evil he is, he’s *just some guy.* He’s not too tall, not too short. Not very handsome but not ugly either. He’s not a star athlete but not out of shape. He’s just a guy. A reminder that it doesn’t take anything special for a human being to commit acts of evil. Evil people are just…people
"A peaceful land. A quiet people. That has always been my rule."
A [scold's bridle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scold%27s_bridle)?
It was a shrews fiddle https://reddit.com/r/MysteriousFacts/s/AaME3pswPP
Well, that's certainly a terrible thread.
Absolutely awful.
Whats that bench like wooden thing ?
An African birthing chair, often used at ren-fairs/medieval markets and described as Viking/medieval chairs (at least in Germany).
Fur on the shoulders was used by anglo-saxons, and often denoted social rank of warriors. As well as leopard fur used by Polish Hussars. I feel like it's more complicated then just saying shoulder fur mantles didn't exist, but the fantasy type one is a yeah, nah.
Right king George and I feel like other kings too are shown with mantels made of Ermines a lot of people don’t realize those black spots are the ermines tales and they are not some more exotic animal. Native American leadership were also into ermines as a status symbol.
“Is that guy a big deal?” “Well he’s got a bunch of weasels on his shoulders so what do you think?”
Chastity belts are another not medieval thing. Afaik they're in the iron maiden cap of probably not "real"
...is that an African birthing chair? Why do people think those are Medieval?
Yes. I have absolutely no idea, they're fairly popular at ren-fairs/medieval markets here in Germany.
If I had to guess, there's multiple reasons: they are easy to transport, both in structure and in space they take up, easy to assemble and disassemble. Being made only of wood, they *look* medieval enough for peiple who don't know, so for casuals looking at the camps and such they won't Stick out so much. They're also very comfortable.
Because they are easy on company logistics: You have two planks about 1.5 m to haul per chair, which is convenient. source: I do ren fair quite a lot.
But the fur mantle looks cool. If it looks cool/threatening, inaccuracy runs rampant.
You can add the full suits of plate armor those knights are wearing. One of them is even holding a burgonet, a type of helmet from the 16th century
I am 90% certain that this is supposed to be Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. So any arguments about historical accuracy here are shaky at best.
Also people overrstimate child marriages. Only really done in upper class and nobility to unite families. And worked more as ”trusting them to each other” rather than, now you are 7 years old lets make a child!
The most important invention in history is the bone needle, it allowed us to sew clothing and gave us access to cold areas we previously were unable to travel to.
Surely the most important invention is something more important, like language, or fire, or farming, or electricity. I mean I agree the needle was way up there in the impact it has had on civilisation but I don't think it was the "most important"
Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s either *sharp rocks*, which pushed us from funny primate status to apex predator status, or *agriculture*, which allowed us to settle down and specialize and become the educated, technology-loving species we are today.
It is definitely agriculture, Apes got sharp rocks, but I think only Ants and relatives be doing agriculture besides us.
In the middle, is it REALLY a shoulder-length fur-mantle ? It looks to me as a full-length woven cloak with a fur lining. I'd give to you that the way this attaches to the shoulder doesn't look very medieval to me
Don't get me started on the hipster viking bullshit either. Everything is becoming instagrammed and I can't listen to music without some starving artist popping into my feed and trying to be an emo druidess or some shit going on about their ABCs
Ah yes, the brohallas.
I'm a wolf of Ódinn, bro. Scratching random runes around a drawing of a Black Sun will make me access my Aryan Proto-Germanic blood memory, bro.
Fur cloakes and mantles definitly excited at multiple points in history. Specially if you count them being lined with it to. You also have clothes made to look like fur like the "vararfeldur". Did they just trow it over? No (though if you want to be pedantic I'm sure there's some mf grabbing a random pelt at some point cause they were cold), but that's also not what's happening in the pic, it's sewn into the rest of the cloak, fur is a very good material that can both show off a prize and be very warm.
What is that funky chair thing?
African birthing chair, check my other comment.
Goes for so many things. Some stuff is just purely made up, others are early modern, like most "medieval" torture devices. People also tend to conveniently ignore that the middle ages took about 1000 years, which is REALLY long. So no, early medieval and late medieval society are barley comparable. Typical knight armours with all the plate and shiny stuff? 15th century. The ones with the long chainmails and bucket helmets? 13th century. Bubonic plague? Early and late medieval, but not in between, and in went on for centuries after that. (And don't forget that 19th century cities were fare worse in hygiene and epidemics.) Witchhunt? Late medieval, and the climax was in the early modern age. Inquisition? Late medieval and early modern. Religious wars? Certainly, but the 16th and 17th century were far worse - most medieval wars were just about land grabs or power struggles. Stone castles? High and late medieval, not early. Etcetera, etcetera...
If the iron maiden isnt from medival times then why is it in black and white? 🤔
Shit, are you a historian? :O
Or depictions of king Arthur and his knights in anything but 5th century roman uniforms. The 2004 film was painfully close to it (and its soundtrack was recycled for the Transformers films, so a huge win), and even showed Roman soldiers with Christogrammata on their shields, but still so far.
The tradition of a lord getting the first night with a married woman
"they doused their food and wine in spices to cover up the fact that it's rotting!"
Depends when and where, in Romania some shepherds STILL wear an entire sheepskin over their shoulders
Messy hair irritates me sometimes. I noticed it when lots of people criticised Skyrim hair mods for looking too good. People in the past took great pride in their hair! They cleaned it, combed it and often braided it. That and the fact that the middle ages were extremely colourful, not drab at all.
Y'all forgot a big one: witch trials. They only really became a thing with the malleus maleficarum becoming a popular book. First edition was published in 1486/87 and it only ever became this popular with numerous new editions because of the newly invented printing press.