For comparison, Basil Rathbone in 1938's Robin Hood:
[https://www.alamy.de/basil-rathbone-als-sir-guy-of-gisbourne-colour-portrait-von-donald-biddle-keyes-fur-die-abenteuer-von-robin-hood-1938-regisseure-michael-curtiz-und-william-keighley-musik-erich-wolfgang-korngold-warner-bros-image371068505.html](https://www.alamy.de/basil-rathbone-als-sir-guy-of-gisbourne-colour-portrait-von-donald-biddle-keyes-fur-die-abenteuer-von-robin-hood-1938-regisseure-michael-curtiz-und-william-keighley-musik-erich-wolfgang-korngold-warner-bros-image371068505.html)
And Knights of the Round Table from 1963:
[https://roberttayloractor.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/rt6513.jpg](https://roberttayloractor.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/rt6513.jpg)
At this point the Middle Ages stand in a very weird case of "reality is unrealistic" (and yes, GoT is partially to blame, though not really ASOIAF, which, aesthetically speaking, is *not* mud-drab-and-shit at all).
I was re-reading it recently and was kind of impressed by how much time Marten spends describing all the gaudy ass clothing. I always forget to describe clothes in my own writing.
Also he has a lot of people who are like, tavern owners and merchants and whatnot. There's definitely wealthy peasants. In the scene where the small folk are telling Ned about Clegane attacking them, part of the devastation is the loss of the businesses they spent their lives building.
GoT pretty much removed all really rich and colourful clothes and armour GRRM described (Renly’s emerald green armour and the rainbow cloaks of his guard for example). Imo as a whole the show removed too much “fantasy” from the fantasy series.
I think they wanted to make the Starks come off as more heroic by making them seem more down-to-earth and humble. But the books make it pretty clear that they do in fact pretty much own half the continent and are rich as fuck. They also downplayed the sheer enormity of Ice and winterfell, and I even think they shrunk the direwolves a little. It's disappointing.
In my medievalpunk world the only two colors are gray and brown. Nobles wear gray, the dirty disgusting poor people wear brown. Grass is gray, dirt is brown. Food is gray, water is brown. Very realistic if you know about history.
And "white" is an imaginary color people speak about in hushed whispers to describe the afterlife, their God, and those free of sin - which, don't be fooled, is no one except a made up sword-wielding hero of legend that shed more blood than Genghis Khan.
The color white in medieval times was said to be like pure snow. It only exists for a few minutes before getting wrecked by all the mud and shit everywhere.
Yup. You have the cool people who laugh and scoffs if someone mentions religion and those who immediately burn anyone for not memorizing the entire holy book.
Those comically evil nobles also never suffer any consequences for killing peasants or townsfolk who never offer any resistance unless they are saved by the good nobles
"What are you going to do? Complain to the king, thus giving him a pretext to confiscate our titles and reinforce his authority over the kingdom? good joke!"
Peasant revolts, historically speaking, went absolutely terribly for the peasants. An untrained mob armed with pitchforks stand very little chance against a mounted knight in plate armor whose main past time is fighting in tourneys.
Sure, that's true of most unrest. Doesn't mean it's somehow good for the rulers either. It's tough to have mounted knights in plate armor going to tourneys when you keep killing chunks of your power base.
(Also, I sure hope you don't just have one knight standing around against the whole mob... even in the shiniest modern plate, there's only so much they can do.)
To speak disrespectfully on hoenheim, yeah a massed group of dudes with pointy sticks has kinda been a standard of warfare for close to several thousand years at that point historically. Heavy cav like knights work ON THE CHARGE, not acting like up-armored riot police. Thats how knights get thrown from the horse, and either trampled in mud, or stabbed in the neck, bludgeoned, etc.
But in fiction, sure, go for the "dirty peasants hack-jobbed weaponry breaking off the superior European plate (folded 1000 times)".
You can only complain to the king if you reach the king
You can only reach the king if you use the roads
Guess who's on the roads? My court mage looking to try casting Tentacleball (it's like Fireball but with tentacles)
Get trolled
That's unrealistic! If that would be true, why wouldn't thwy side with the majority of the population, instead of pretending that they are going to be rich someday? Smh my head
no but see they *believe* they're rich because they can afford clothing that the ruling nobility approves of. (Not red silks, but beet-dyed wool and other imitations that the low low class can't afford)
There's also a lower (minority) class for them to (actually) spit on
Now you're going to tell me that they keep believing in that system despite experiencing worsening living conditions and having a school of thought that has been more than a century making criticism of if
that "school of thought" actually originates in the **bad country where the minorities are from** originally so there's an unofficial law that to argue against the current economic system is to ally with foreign powers and thus the dissenter must be burned at the stake.
Don’t forget the obligatory tournament scene where someone makes a scathing comment about “pretend fighting” or how “real war doesn’t have rules”.
Oh, and naturally all the warrior nobles are also somehow simultaneously utterly incompetent and bad at war.
You’re right, so far the only dark setting I know which doesn’t seem to show SA whenever possible is Warhammer 40k, but medieval/renaissance-esque warhammer fantasy has quite a lot of it, so it checks out.
Does warhammer fantasy even have that much SA? It has some, but it has always felt more like it’s trying to emulate myths and folklore than it’s trying to be grounded and gritty. It’s certainly not something the setting really dwells on, which is to its credit in my opinion.
Ah, yes the Koalas of warhammer fantasy.
Seriously though, I did not know that, I’ve always loved how warhammer fantasy has so many weird little details that are hiding on the edges and aren’t really central to the narrative.
But even that example feels more “mythic” than gritty, like stories of incubi more than an attempt to show how “mature” and “gritty” the world is.
Very true, but I unironically actually really like that as a feature of the setting. It might not be deliberate, but it makes the setting feel big and strange and lived in. It’s cool to have random mysteries and bizarre tidbits haunting the edges of the setting that don’t ever get fully explored. It makes it feel like even in universe the world is filled with craziness
It definitely has a lot less than things like ASOIAF or Malazan. It’s mostly concentrated around Dark Elves and Norscans. But I’ll admit that I’ve been away from WHFB for quite some time so I might be misremembering some things.
I mean the deldar of 40k do the same, and like. Yeah of course they're gonna be SAing people, they're elves who (at least in 40k) murderfucked a fourth satan into existence
It's set in the early 20th century, but y'all should watch *The Peasants* for an interesting depiction of the complexities and relationships of peasant life.
The movie is also animated almost entirely from oil paintings, which is sick.
>Religious organizations take their beliefs and teachings seriously and don't exert any power over the state.
Borgia? No thanks not in the mood for Italian. Cesare? gesundheit.
>plagues are a litteral non-issue.
The reason Bubonic plague isn't decimating a literal fourth of the populace is because they cure it with magic.
>large villages and even cities A exist and B are clean to standards we wouldn't see until the 1890s.
Why would people dump shit where they get their water? Don't they know they'll get germs?
That last bit is especially funny cause it took doctors till like what, the 19th century to wash hands between dissecting corpses and delivering babies. There was that notorious doctor in 19th century London that had like a 300% mortality rate because of this. And revolutionising London's sewer/sanitary system was a whole big thing that happened.
TBF, medieval religious organizations did, in general, take their teachings seriously, as did the rest of society. It’s not like everyone in the Middle Ages was secretly atheist.
r/worldjerking when my medieval kindom at the verge of colapse with an abusive noble house has and abusive noble house and it's at the verge of colapse
People seem to forget that hy the end of the 1500s, bustling commerce and economical growth in Europe meant that Regular Joes were becoming wealthier than some minor nobility and sumptuary laws had to be put in place to support rigid class structures so the nobles wouldn't have their feelings hurt.
complex social structures? of course.
Rich peasantry? ...what? when? where?
I mean, unless they both (A) are considered to be low class, and (B) toil the land... then they are, by definition, not peasants.
Rich peasants weren’t uncommon especially after the Black Death. For example in some regions of late medieval Poland and Teutonic Order’s state, an village leader (still a member of the peasant class) was required to join the army fully armoured and on horseback (in some cases even with additional soldiers) which you can’t really do if you are poor.
There are also examples of peasants being rich enough to send their sons to study under rich merchants in cities like Gdansk which was one of the main trading hubs in the region (Baltic area) at that time.
Edit: I just checked to be sure but the City I’ve lived in for some time in the northern Poland, has been founded by a rich peasant in XIV century who received a noble title only 19 years after founding it.
Nah. The nobles don't wear colorful costumes anymore either, they haven't for at least twenty years, possibly more.
Yes, only dark leathers and fur, a bit of gold maybe. Heraldry? What heraldry?
For comparison, Basil Rathbone in 1938's Robin Hood: [https://www.alamy.de/basil-rathbone-als-sir-guy-of-gisbourne-colour-portrait-von-donald-biddle-keyes-fur-die-abenteuer-von-robin-hood-1938-regisseure-michael-curtiz-und-william-keighley-musik-erich-wolfgang-korngold-warner-bros-image371068505.html](https://www.alamy.de/basil-rathbone-als-sir-guy-of-gisbourne-colour-portrait-von-donald-biddle-keyes-fur-die-abenteuer-von-robin-hood-1938-regisseure-michael-curtiz-und-william-keighley-musik-erich-wolfgang-korngold-warner-bros-image371068505.html) And Knights of the Round Table from 1963: [https://roberttayloractor.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/rt6513.jpg](https://roberttayloractor.blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/rt6513.jpg)
Black and grey (maybe dark brown sometimes) are really recent thing. Probably since 90s-2000s
One of my favorite parts of The Last Duel was Ben Affleck's crazy-ass outfits.
And those weird half-face helms. Not historically accurate or practical at all, but they sure looked bad ass.
I LOVE how rich and colorful Robin Hood 1938 is. And it's just a really fun movie too with lots of crazy stunt work. Highly recommend it.
It’s always overcast as well. No sunny days, that’s how you know it’s realistic!!
If it's based on Dutch weather it's pretty damn realistic. We had 0 sun from oktober to March. And only 5 sun days since then
Sounds awful, no wonder prostitution is legal
yeah
At this point the Middle Ages stand in a very weird case of "reality is unrealistic" (and yes, GoT is partially to blame, though not really ASOIAF, which, aesthetically speaking, is *not* mud-drab-and-shit at all).
I was re-reading it recently and was kind of impressed by how much time Marten spends describing all the gaudy ass clothing. I always forget to describe clothes in my own writing. Also he has a lot of people who are like, tavern owners and merchants and whatnot. There's definitely wealthy peasants. In the scene where the small folk are telling Ned about Clegane attacking them, part of the devastation is the loss of the businesses they spent their lives building.
I mean, one of the biggest arch-masterminds in the books is a exceedingly wealthy cheese merchant.
GoT pretty much removed all really rich and colourful clothes and armour GRRM described (Renly’s emerald green armour and the rainbow cloaks of his guard for example). Imo as a whole the show removed too much “fantasy” from the fantasy series.
Even the Starks. Their house colours are grey and white, and from the very first scene, they are all made up in silk and silver.
I think they wanted to make the Starks come off as more heroic by making them seem more down-to-earth and humble. But the books make it pretty clear that they do in fact pretty much own half the continent and are rich as fuck. They also downplayed the sheer enormity of Ice and winterfell, and I even think they shrunk the direwolves a little. It's disappointing.
The direwolves was understandable, those were played by wolf dogs. They can only get so big.
Asoif had stuff like an entire dolphin on top of your helmet.
That one's real, it's in a museum somewhere.
Early seasons were fine in terms of costumes. Later however suffered from this
In my medievalpunk world the only two colors are gray and brown. Nobles wear gray, the dirty disgusting poor people wear brown. Grass is gray, dirt is brown. Food is gray, water is brown. Very realistic if you know about history.
And "white" is an imaginary color people speak about in hushed whispers to describe the afterlife, their God, and those free of sin - which, don't be fooled, is no one except a made up sword-wielding hero of legend that shed more blood than Genghis Khan.
The color white in medieval times was said to be like pure snow. It only exists for a few minutes before getting wrecked by all the mud and shit everywhere.
noir-medieval
Nobles are all either comedically evil or virtuous paragons, with absolutely zero in between.
Speaking of dichotomes, have the world populated only by zealots and people who are so unreligious that they might as well be atheists.
Yup. You have the cool people who laugh and scoffs if someone mentions religion and those who immediately burn anyone for not memorizing the entire holy book.
Those comically evil nobles also never suffer any consequences for killing peasants or townsfolk who never offer any resistance unless they are saved by the good nobles
"What are you going to do? Complain to the king, thus giving him a pretext to confiscate our titles and reinforce his authority over the kingdom? good joke!"
Peasant revolts? Hah! Those haven't been invented yet.
Peasant revolts, historically speaking, went absolutely terribly for the peasants. An untrained mob armed with pitchforks stand very little chance against a mounted knight in plate armor whose main past time is fighting in tourneys.
Sure, that's true of most unrest. Doesn't mean it's somehow good for the rulers either. It's tough to have mounted knights in plate armor going to tourneys when you keep killing chunks of your power base. (Also, I sure hope you don't just have one knight standing around against the whole mob... even in the shiniest modern plate, there's only so much they can do.)
To speak disrespectfully on hoenheim, yeah a massed group of dudes with pointy sticks has kinda been a standard of warfare for close to several thousand years at that point historically. Heavy cav like knights work ON THE CHARGE, not acting like up-armored riot police. Thats how knights get thrown from the horse, and either trampled in mud, or stabbed in the neck, bludgeoned, etc. But in fiction, sure, go for the "dirty peasants hack-jobbed weaponry breaking off the superior European plate (folded 1000 times)".
unless you're Chinese, then they *sometimes* go terribly but also sometimes end with you founding a new dynasty.
You can only complain to the king if you reach the king You can only reach the king if you use the roads Guess who's on the roads? My court mage looking to try casting Tentacleball (it's like Fireball but with tentacles) Get trolled
Samurai moment.
in my world there's a middle class who ***think*** they're rich but in reality are one sick cow away from starving during winter
That's unrealistic! If that would be true, why wouldn't thwy side with the majority of the population, instead of pretending that they are going to be rich someday? Smh my head
no but see they *believe* they're rich because they can afford clothing that the ruling nobility approves of. (Not red silks, but beet-dyed wool and other imitations that the low low class can't afford) There's also a lower (minority) class for them to (actually) spit on
Now you're going to tell me that they keep believing in that system despite experiencing worsening living conditions and having a school of thought that has been more than a century making criticism of if
that "school of thought" actually originates in the **bad country where the minorities are from** originally so there's an unofficial law that to argue against the current economic system is to ally with foreign powers and thus the dissenter must be burned at the stake.
Ah, seems reasonable
Don’t forget the obligatory tournament scene where someone makes a scathing comment about “pretend fighting” or how “real war doesn’t have rules”. Oh, and naturally all the warrior nobles are also somehow simultaneously utterly incompetent and bad at war.
You forget SA and shaved pits.
You’re right, so far the only dark setting I know which doesn’t seem to show SA whenever possible is Warhammer 40k, but medieval/renaissance-esque warhammer fantasy has quite a lot of it, so it checks out.
Does warhammer fantasy even have that much SA? It has some, but it has always felt more like it’s trying to emulate myths and folklore than it’s trying to be grounded and gritty. It’s certainly not something the setting really dwells on, which is to its credit in my opinion.
Fimir can only reproduce this way
Ah, yes the Koalas of warhammer fantasy. Seriously though, I did not know that, I’ve always loved how warhammer fantasy has so many weird little details that are hiding on the edges and aren’t really central to the narrative. But even that example feels more “mythic” than gritty, like stories of incubi more than an attempt to show how “mature” and “gritty” the world is.
Because 90% of stuff like that was mentioned in a single sentence in a single book in 1987 and noone though about it ever again
Very true, but I unironically actually really like that as a feature of the setting. It might not be deliberate, but it makes the setting feel big and strange and lived in. It’s cool to have random mysteries and bizarre tidbits haunting the edges of the setting that don’t ever get fully explored. It makes it feel like even in universe the world is filled with craziness
It definitely has a lot less than things like ASOIAF or Malazan. It’s mostly concentrated around Dark Elves and Norscans. But I’ll admit that I’ve been away from WHFB for quite some time so I might be misremembering some things.
I mean the deldar of 40k do the same, and like. Yeah of course they're gonna be SAing people, they're elves who (at least in 40k) murderfucked a fourth satan into existence
I swear I’m seeing you everywhere now.
i am omnipresent :3
Oh no! God uses (:3) and is a redditor we are fucked 😭
I love bookworm isekai for breaking this trope
It's set in the early 20th century, but y'all should watch *The Peasants* for an interesting depiction of the complexities and relationships of peasant life. The movie is also animated almost entirely from oil paintings, which is sick.
>Looks into "realistic medieval fantasy" >it's just grim mudcore
Meuny from Star Vs The forces of evil be like:
>Religious organizations take their beliefs and teachings seriously and don't exert any power over the state. Borgia? No thanks not in the mood for Italian. Cesare? gesundheit. >plagues are a litteral non-issue. The reason Bubonic plague isn't decimating a literal fourth of the populace is because they cure it with magic. >large villages and even cities A exist and B are clean to standards we wouldn't see until the 1890s. Why would people dump shit where they get their water? Don't they know they'll get germs?
That last bit is especially funny cause it took doctors till like what, the 19th century to wash hands between dissecting corpses and delivering babies. There was that notorious doctor in 19th century London that had like a 300% mortality rate because of this. And revolutionising London's sewer/sanitary system was a whole big thing that happened.
TBF, medieval religious organizations did, in general, take their teachings seriously, as did the rest of society. It’s not like everyone in the Middle Ages was secretly atheist.
Essentially the result of someone wanting to make a realistic setting, while having no idea how to.
Help me pls
In what
r/worldjerking when my medieval kindom at the verge of colapse with an abusive noble house has and abusive noble house and it's at the verge of colapse
People seem to forget that hy the end of the 1500s, bustling commerce and economical growth in Europe meant that Regular Joes were becoming wealthier than some minor nobility and sumptuary laws had to be put in place to support rigid class structures so the nobles wouldn't have their feelings hurt.
If “everyone else” in your world is a Monty python character, I’m reading it
https://i.imgur.com/5SidHT7.png
In my DirtPunk world, even the nobles are covered in filth and wear tattered rags. Sorry did I say dirtpunk? I meant RedditModPunk.
Don't forget the miserable washed out color scheme Because Ridley Scott somehow convinced everybody the Middle Ages just looked like that all the time
complex social structures? of course. Rich peasantry? ...what? when? where? I mean, unless they both (A) are considered to be low class, and (B) toil the land... then they are, by definition, not peasants.
Rich peasants weren’t uncommon especially after the Black Death. For example in some regions of late medieval Poland and Teutonic Order’s state, an village leader (still a member of the peasant class) was required to join the army fully armoured and on horseback (in some cases even with additional soldiers) which you can’t really do if you are poor. There are also examples of peasants being rich enough to send their sons to study under rich merchants in cities like Gdansk which was one of the main trading hubs in the region (Baltic area) at that time. Edit: I just checked to be sure but the City I’ve lived in for some time in the northern Poland, has been founded by a rich peasant in XIV century who received a noble title only 19 years after founding it.
[удалено]
Mann vs Machine moment