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Location, Location, Location!: Wrong About the Dark Ages?

So yesterday I told you that I’d we’d talk a little bit about using history as a basis for your fantasy setting. In short, go ahead, but keep in mind that the history you ‘know’ might be one written not by the winners but instead by the Victorians.

That is to say, in today’s Location, Location, Location, let’s talk about bending their little minds just by knowing your sources.

Here’s the deal, everything you think of when you think of the ‘Dark Ages’ or the Medieval era might be more than just a bit left of the truth. Clearly, you don’t believe that knights in shining armor were fighting dragons. (Sad, I know.) Here’s another important fairy tale that is really only that. The damsel in distress.

She wasn’t as common in castles, dungeons or even quiet hamlets ruled by cruel and lustful dukes. More likely, you’d run into noble women ‘kidnapping’ knights to force them into marrying them. (Seduce is another word.) Or girls just running away from home to the relative freedom of the Church in order to avoid marriages she didn’t want. Or what about the middle class woman who takes over her husband’s business after her husband dies during the Black Plague. (Check out Mathilda for an NPC type example.) For a good period of the Dark Ages women had some considerable rights and powers because the male population had been destroyed thanks to the plague. You really want to mimic a time in history when it stunk to be a woman, (and I have NO idea why you would,) you want to look to the early Renaissance and the Inquisition, but that’s another post.

What about the noble knight with his Chivalric code roaming the country side to right wrongs and fight evil doers? Love him, right? Wrong. Turns out knight varied from a stuck up private club where rich men got away with murder to straight up mercenaries with all the honor of… well.. these guys.