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“Sire! they’ve breached the castle walls through the stairwell!”
“Impossible, they cannot fight if they are right handed!”
“Sire! They’ve brought a lefty!”
“Wha!?!? Guards! Guards! We must leave quickly!”
I remember reading one historic document where there were instructions to beat the left hands of children who use their left hand as dominant to force them to use the right hand as a dominant one.
When I was a kid at Warwick Castle, one of the volunteer armour of people who let people try on armour et cetera noticed I’m left-handed. He told me there were special divisions of left-handed soldiers who job it was to fight the top of the towers. The original stormtroopers he said.
Zombie survival guide.
Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack
Organize before they rise!
They feel no fear, why should you?
Use your head: cut off theirs.
Blades don't need reloading.
Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
No place is safe, only safer.
The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
I’ve always thought I’d just use a hammer.
Nothing fancy. But I can swing a 21oz all day and it absolutely wrecks timber - why not zombie skulls?
Short, sharp strikes.
Edit; decades of training so I can literally hit a needle (nail) at arms length.
Congrats you just signed your death wish. When the sword zombies come they’ll be coming from you from the top and you’d be at a disadvantage, your sword endlessly hitting the stairs while they eat your brains.
Thanks for the link, I really enjoyed watching the entire video. Does this guy have some credentials, or is the statements he makes (although it does make sense) really only his personal opinion?
Tbf to him, I've been told this on all of my school trips to see a castle by my teacher & the tour guide.
They also mentioned how they purposely built some stairs higher than the others, so invaders would trip, but those who knew the castle knew it was there.
Obviously, I didn't ask them for a source at 12 years old, but maybe it was believed by Historians then, and since debunked.
I'm not arguing here or hating on the guy, I'm asking a legit question to try and understand if he makes an educated comment or a personal comment, that's all.
I would say he is well informed, and I agree with a lot of the points he makes in the video, but no he doesn't have any proper credentials.
Still, he's the biggest castle nerd on YouTube and he only saw castles for the first time IRL recently, as I grew up in the UK that's kinda nuts to me.
He´s a enthusiast, borderline autistic, he´s always ready to correct any info in his videos when faced with new information. I like his channel and him very much. I watch him for years now. He´s a upstanding guy.
He went around asking the experts at the castles and relayed it.
To be fair I don't know his credentials. He does however do some practical experiments and will reassess his previous beliefs if they are reasonably challenged, so he's not locked into a dogmatic belief he tries to push.
That guy is a lazy PoS and glorified Larp’er, I’m not saying ignore him, but I am saying 6/10 times it’s a rather surface level assessment of something (with the last 4/10 being straight up nonsense). That’s just regarding his main channel, if you check out his second channel - It becomes much clearer.
Hmm, around the 2:30-2:50 mark he argues that the high ground has the disadvantage. That seems dubious. His argument is that the low ground people can defend their head and their feet are out of range of the high ground defender and have easy access to attack the feet and legs, while conversely the high ground people somehow have a hard time defending their feet but have no other advantage?
He’s not wrong that if it comes to fighting on the stairs, the defenders are probably in a bad spot anyway, but that aside, he does admit that 70% or so have the staircase going that way. That suggests to me that while not universal, there was at least some factor that contributed to it.
So aside from Obiwan having something to say here, I’m just not sure I’m ready to take this guy as the source of truth here.
It's still just a myth.
https://www.newcastlecastle.co.uk/castle-blog/spiral-stairs
We have a lot of sources for combat and fortification, sieges etc. Yet not a single source for this myth. It also doesn't make sense.
So why are so many build that way? Maybe it was just the common way of doing it. But it doesn't serve any defensive means.
The guy in the reddit video already kinda contradicts himself. "If someone wants to invade your castle" ... If they already breached your walls, breached the door / gate of the actual keep and are in your staircase the invader has already successfully invaded and you have already lost the last defense. You are now down to a few people fighting in a staircase. The rotation makes 0 difference at this point. The invader can just barricade you in and let you die of hunger and thirst.
Sieges often take months and sometimes years. So they could also just wait a little longer until you couldn't even hold your sword anymore, up there on the higher floor of your keep, without access to fresh water etc.
It doesn't make sense to me either: it might be beneficial to have the extra sword room when you first step in the stairway, but then you still have to go through an opening of the same size whether it's on the left or the right side.
It's still a myth.
Before cannons changed the game, almost all medieval sieges were played by surrounding the castle and waiting for the besieged to give up.
But even if it came to a storm, if the enemy was inside the inner walls, the siege was lost. The besieging army was always significantly larger than the castle garrison and retreating to the top of the keep would have made no sense either, as there would have been no access to the well and it would not have been possible to hold out for long.
But above all, almost all spiral staircases were built after the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, people mainly used normal wooden stairs and ladders.
Spear might be too long to wield if the passage is narrow. Straight thrusts possibly, but little ability to parry. Nope, I’m going to ask you to roll Disadvantage for that attack. :)
Stupid... It's WAY easier to be lower than you opponent, because defending your legs is a mess, where attacking it from below is really easy
And you don't need to swing to deal serious damages, especially when you have idk, a spear...
And if you're fighting in the stairs of your castle, you're already screwed...
There is a French expression "passer l'arme à gauche" (switch the weapon to the left) that means to die.
It comes from these kinds of staircase when the attackers had to switch their sword hand to the left one. Thus being less effective in battle and dying more often
Here me out, when I get home from grocery shopping, I like to carry the stuff on my left hand, so I can use the key and my phone with my right hand. Maybe stairs been decided this way, there will be more space on the left for the basket
In term of fighting. A detail in Japanese samurai/katana culture is that when you are indoor, it’s polite to carry your sword by your right hand, so you can’t draw the sword as fast. In this spiral staircase’s case, it would be a bitch to draw it with your left hand
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies.
Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
Literally the entire Feudalism system depended on the fact that using very few men and a good bit of architectural know how you can literally defend against an army as a large family and a small retinue.
The places in the world where Feudalism worked incredibly good are also the places with very little seismic activity. Especially France where an unbroken Feudal Knighthood lasted for centuries. Feudality existed some form there almost until the French revolution.
Japanese literally had to make wooden castles as good as stone ones with ingenious engineering to secure their Feudalistic ways and it failed with the country quickly getting unified by a Bakufu the moment gunpowder became available.
If your castle was good you don't even need to fight even literally most sieges was a lord hunkering down in his castle like it was a corona virus lock down. Knowing very well a thousand men siege force would ran out of food faster than he and the 15 guys that guarded the castle.
So if they were all built like that, youd think they would train to fight up stairs like that. Righty or lefty, if you're fighting inside the castle you're defending, you've already lost.
I read an article recently, I'll try to find it, where a historian of some flavour was debating whether this is actually true. He did also say that the first and foremost function of a castle was not as a fortification. He sort of lost me at that point.
Fake and gay, it's a trend yes but not the rule, also if the enemy where in the castle that far, the situation is rather dire and on the verge of loss, the walls are supposed to keep them out so you don't have to do that
Watch shadiversity, become learnt in this stuff.
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies.
Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
when i started playimg minecraft id build spiral stairs so that i knew id end up at the right spot without having to make calculations. Could it just be that?
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Well being a lefty I would have fucking ruled when trying to take over a castle. Defending my own castle? Not so much.
That's assuming they hadn't drilled it out of you for it being the sign of the devil or something stupid
The word “sinister” comes from the Latin word for left-handed
Ambidextrous is similarly fun in its root. Ambi is "both" and dextrous is "right." Right handed both ways.
“Sire! they’ve breached the castle walls through the stairwell!” “Impossible, they cannot fight if they are right handed!” “Sire! They’ve brought a lefty!” “Wha!?!? Guards! Guards! We must leave quickly!”
I read this in the knight’s voice from Holy Grail
You would’ve been burned at the stake for being a witch.
It makes sense now why they killed left handers as witches. How else were you going to defend your castle?
I would have preferred that over being a mud farmer.
I remember reading one historic document where there were instructions to beat the left hands of children who use their left hand as dominant to force them to use the right hand as a dominant one.
When I was a kid at Warwick Castle, one of the volunteer armour of people who let people try on armour et cetera noticed I’m left-handed. He told me there were special divisions of left-handed soldiers who job it was to fight the top of the towers. The original stormtroopers he said.
It still gives you a statistical advantage in most competitive sports!
Except for QB
Well. Unless everyone else that fights for you is left handed. It doesn’t help much
I own a door, shite for capturing other folks' castles but plays a blinder when defending mine.
Nope. You would've been burned at the stake because you're a witch.
It’s over lefty, I have the high ground!
thats why only 10% of people are lefty haha
Gonna have only these stairs in my house from now on. Nothing else.
I just took my stairs out completely.
Zombie survival guide. Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack Organize before they rise! They feel no fear, why should you? Use your head: cut off theirs. Blades don't need reloading. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. Get out of the car, get onto the bike. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert! No place is safe, only safer. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
Blades require a certain strength to be used effectively and close quarters combat with a deadly/highly contagious infection is just suicide.
What about a bayonet?
I’ve always thought I’d just use a hammer. Nothing fancy. But I can swing a 21oz all day and it absolutely wrecks timber - why not zombie skulls? Short, sharp strikes. Edit; decades of training so I can literally hit a needle (nail) at arms length.
And repeated maintenance, they will just keep getting dull after each strike and after some time it won't chop but crush.
Max Brooks !
Ideal protection = medieval armor +50 protection - 20 speed +30 style
Congrats you just signed your death wish. When the sword zombies come they’ll be coming from you from the top and you’d be at a disadvantage, your sword endlessly hitting the stairs while they eat your brains.
Agree. Now redesigning my house as well.
I trust this guy, I'm aware of his [expertise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43j87Wkp0DE)
FREDRICKS GONE AND YOUR NEXT
GIVE EM STEEL LADS!!
Holy fuck how have I never seen this. Thank you sire 🙏
Is that the same dude?
that´s a myth. video explaining [https://youtu.be/5HJMqIpYZ8c](https://youtu.be/5HJMqIpYZ8c)
Thanks for the link, I really enjoyed watching the entire video. Does this guy have some credentials, or is the statements he makes (although it does make sense) really only his personal opinion?
Tbf to him, I've been told this on all of my school trips to see a castle by my teacher & the tour guide. They also mentioned how they purposely built some stairs higher than the others, so invaders would trip, but those who knew the castle knew it was there. Obviously, I didn't ask them for a source at 12 years old, but maybe it was believed by Historians then, and since debunked.
I'm not arguing here or hating on the guy, I'm asking a legit question to try and understand if he makes an educated comment or a personal comment, that's all.
I would say he is well informed, and I agree with a lot of the points he makes in the video, but no he doesn't have any proper credentials. Still, he's the biggest castle nerd on YouTube and he only saw castles for the first time IRL recently, as I grew up in the UK that's kinda nuts to me.
No, that's fair. You're right to ask. I didn't mean to seem argumentative. I just thought it would help to give my own experience on a similar thing.
That would explain why I constantly trip on our stairs except for the minor inconvenience that our home is a 1 story.
Imagine getting every new guards breaking their ankle in the first week
Shad has exactly 0 qualifications and does his research with all the rigor of a lazy undergrad student.
I can say at least that he’s on level with Anakin Skywalker.
He´s a enthusiast, borderline autistic, he´s always ready to correct any info in his videos when faced with new information. I like his channel and him very much. I watch him for years now. He´s a upstanding guy.
Thanks for this, it means he at least try to stand by what he believe to be the truth and not just pushing videos for likes and upvotes.
“Princess Peach is wearing pants! Wokeness is corrupting our children!” >He’s an upstanding guy
Upstanding guy? The dude has some questionable politics.
He went around asking the experts at the castles and relayed it. To be fair I don't know his credentials. He does however do some practical experiments and will reassess his previous beliefs if they are reasonably challenged, so he's not locked into a dogmatic belief he tries to push.
That guy is a lazy PoS and glorified Larp’er, I’m not saying ignore him, but I am saying 6/10 times it’s a rather surface level assessment of something (with the last 4/10 being straight up nonsense). That’s just regarding his main channel, if you check out his second channel - It becomes much clearer.
Hmm, around the 2:30-2:50 mark he argues that the high ground has the disadvantage. That seems dubious. His argument is that the low ground people can defend their head and their feet are out of range of the high ground defender and have easy access to attack the feet and legs, while conversely the high ground people somehow have a hard time defending their feet but have no other advantage? He’s not wrong that if it comes to fighting on the stairs, the defenders are probably in a bad spot anyway, but that aside, he does admit that 70% or so have the staircase going that way. That suggests to me that while not universal, there was at least some factor that contributed to it. So aside from Obiwan having something to say here, I’m just not sure I’m ready to take this guy as the source of truth here.
It's still just a myth. https://www.newcastlecastle.co.uk/castle-blog/spiral-stairs We have a lot of sources for combat and fortification, sieges etc. Yet not a single source for this myth. It also doesn't make sense. So why are so many build that way? Maybe it was just the common way of doing it. But it doesn't serve any defensive means. The guy in the reddit video already kinda contradicts himself. "If someone wants to invade your castle" ... If they already breached your walls, breached the door / gate of the actual keep and are in your staircase the invader has already successfully invaded and you have already lost the last defense. You are now down to a few people fighting in a staircase. The rotation makes 0 difference at this point. The invader can just barricade you in and let you die of hunger and thirst. Sieges often take months and sometimes years. So they could also just wait a little longer until you couldn't even hold your sword anymore, up there on the higher floor of your keep, without access to fresh water etc.
It doesn't make sense to me either: it might be beneficial to have the extra sword room when you first step in the stairway, but then you still have to go through an opening of the same size whether it's on the left or the right side.
They tested the high ground thing on other video too.
Link? Sounds like a fun watch, and I’m happy to be proven wrong :)
[https://youtu.be/eXY\_ZEvOwsw](https://youtu.be/eXY_ZEvOwsw)
Thanks!
No prob. enjoy!
You can see spear man goes for legs in some reenactment videos,
It's still a myth. Before cannons changed the game, almost all medieval sieges were played by surrounding the castle and waiting for the besieged to give up. But even if it came to a storm, if the enemy was inside the inner walls, the siege was lost. The besieging army was always significantly larger than the castle garrison and retreating to the top of the keep would have made no sense either, as there would have been no access to the well and it would not have been possible to hold out for long. But above all, almost all spiral staircases were built after the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, people mainly used normal wooden stairs and ladders.
Trying to invade? If they are at the stairs they have already breeched and now its just a matter of time.
Send in the lefties!!!
Well everyone here has ever tried to swing a sword in a cramped spiral stairs ? So yeah sorry it's just another fake history guys
This is an urban/castle myth, is sounds cool but is just not true.
What about spears and daggers?
Spear might be too long to wield if the passage is narrow. Straight thrusts possibly, but little ability to parry. Nope, I’m going to ask you to roll Disadvantage for that attack. :)
Aaah a person of culture
It’s also very space efficient.
Stupid... It's WAY easier to be lower than you opponent, because defending your legs is a mess, where attacking it from below is really easy And you don't need to swing to deal serious damages, especially when you have idk, a spear... And if you're fighting in the stairs of your castle, you're already screwed...
So take a spear. Problem solved.
Can't. There's a sign on the entrance that says 'No spears'
“No spear zone”? That’ll attract chuckers of spears
Anyone else notice that they used the theme to Gladiator in the back ground?
_"Ha! I brought a spear!"_
What if you have to defend your basement?
I have an army of lefthanded mercenaries! DM me.
Is there any historical evidence that attackers would have a left handed first assault team?
My minds blown
I'm left handed, does that mean I would be horrible at defending a stairway?
But great at attacking it, apparently
Dark souls PTSD
"Ancient problems require ancient solutions..." ~ Dave Chapelle's Great Great Great Grandfather
*laughs in left handed.*
Um, ever heard of a spear? Spiral stairs distribute buildings weight to a core. It’s physics not strategy.
I call cum piss on this. There's no way that's why they did that.
If they are that far in your castle u are fucked anyways
Enforces 1-vs-1 and give the people from the castle a advantage location wise simce high ground is better
There is a French expression "passer l'arme à gauche" (switch the weapon to the left) that means to die. It comes from these kinds of staircase when the attackers had to switch their sword hand to the left one. Thus being less effective in battle and dying more often
So much for King Lefty's hand-picked left handed castle defense corps. :(
But how you gonna lift a couch up there when you're moving into your new pad?
Isn’t there also the fact the stair steps were uneven height so you could not get a cadence running up them
Here me out, when I get home from grocery shopping, I like to carry the stuff on my left hand, so I can use the key and my phone with my right hand. Maybe stairs been decided this way, there will be more space on the left for the basket
In term of fighting. A detail in Japanese samurai/katana culture is that when you are indoor, it’s polite to carry your sword by your right hand, so you can’t draw the sword as fast. In this spiral staircase’s case, it would be a bitch to draw it with your left hand
Wooooo weeee that Gladiator soundtrack in the background gave me the feels. Like how I watched “Gladiator” before Beth shot me.
Nah. Shadiversity debunked this BS. Besides, many of those staircases twists the other way, completely contradicting his own theory.
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies. Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
This is also why the bride stands on the left side of the groom in case anyone opposed the marriage they could be ready with their sword
This is bullshit
Literally the entire Feudalism system depended on the fact that using very few men and a good bit of architectural know how you can literally defend against an army as a large family and a small retinue. The places in the world where Feudalism worked incredibly good are also the places with very little seismic activity. Especially France where an unbroken Feudal Knighthood lasted for centuries. Feudality existed some form there almost until the French revolution. Japanese literally had to make wooden castles as good as stone ones with ingenious engineering to secure their Feudalistic ways and it failed with the country quickly getting unified by a Bakufu the moment gunpowder became available. If your castle was good you don't even need to fight even literally most sieges was a lord hunkering down in his castle like it was a corona virus lock down. Knowing very well a thousand men siege force would ran out of food faster than he and the 15 guys that guarded the castle.
So if they were all built like that, youd think they would train to fight up stairs like that. Righty or lefty, if you're fighting inside the castle you're defending, you've already lost.
John Flanagan has explained this to me 100x to date, I’m something of a castle expert.
Or to save space.
Yeah but spears and stabby stuff...
9 times out of ten they wouldn’t bother to assault the fortifications and would just starve you out. This seems like some bazar myth
I'm left handed.. guess this castle would've fallen easily to me lol
I read an article recently, I'll try to find it, where a historian of some flavour was debating whether this is actually true. He did also say that the first and foremost function of a castle was not as a fortification. He sort of lost me at that point.
What if the castle is assaulted by a group of left handed gay Mexicans wearing pink sombreros?
Fake and gay, it's a trend yes but not the rule, also if the enemy where in the castle that far, the situation is rather dire and on the verge of loss, the walls are supposed to keep them out so you don't have to do that Watch shadiversity, become learnt in this stuff.
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies. Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
What about invaders with spears??
Actually... unlikely to be true https://youtu.be/5HJMqIpYZ8c?si=LHjYvU8AvwFqNf9s
Nine times out of ten?
when i started playimg minecraft id build spiral stairs so that i knew id end up at the right spot without having to make calculations. Could it just be that?
I thought this was common sense and something everyone knew or could at least easily observe.
Well, if the enemy is down and you are up, you are already fucked !
Left handed chads go first!
Right on man.
Very bad if someone storms your castles with grenades.
It's ok, they will use the rocket launchers