What Our Fantasies About the European Middle Ages Say About Us

For me, The Princess Bride and the animated Disney Sword in the Stone (and a bit later, The Hobbit) shaped my early understanding of Europe and gave me a life-long love of Europe and European history. I even migrated here from the US in my 30s and, although I have yet to find any dragons, I love the old castles, historical centers, and other reminders of history all around - just enough to keep me connected with the fantasy books and films I loved as a kid.

“The story is so much more complex. If we can see [a] more equitable and inclusive medieval world through fantasy, I think that can really affect the way the period is interpreted today.”

I think history should be up for interpretation in about the same way as something like the laws of physics are, ie only if there's strong evidence that our current understanding is incorrect. I don't think a black Gandalf should be that evidence.

from the article... "There were people with many different racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, all present … in Western Europe,” Grollemond pointed out. But in the centuries since, a narrow, whitewashed vision of the past has frequently been perpetuated in popular fiction and fantasy versions of the Middle Ages."

so it was about white racism, huh? that's a new one...

I never understood this obsession. The middle ages, for most, were a miserable and brief existence of hard labor, indentured servitude or conscription. Life expectancy was around 35 due to plague, war, childbirth, or even plain tooth decay.

Camelot is a fun tale but the masses suffered.

> “There were people with many different racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, all present … in Western Europe,” Grollemond pointed out. But in the centuries since, a narrow, whitewashed vision of the past has frequently been perpetuated in popular fiction and fantasy versions of the Middle Ages.

This is a lie. This is an absolute lie. It is simply not true. There were no “different racial and religious backgrounds”. For medieval Western Europe, it was europeans ( for the americans, read white ) of different ethnicities, entirely catholic. There no other “races” and certainly no other religions.

“But but the jews” - No. A few of them were occasionally tolerated in the middle ages, for short periods of time before being expelled. Again, I am talking about the medieval period and western europe. Renaissance and after, as well as eastern europe are somewhat different but for medieval western europe, there most certainly were not different races and different religions.