Arslan Senki - Historical Analysis - Kingship in the Middle Ages

This is a video I made on the Anime series Arslan Senki. I analyse it's use of Kingship and compare it to medieval kings.

Medieval Society - The Three Estates

So I recently made a mind map on the society during the middle ages, and I decided to post it and write a few words about it.

So first you can see the basic layer of the three estates, those who work, those who pray and those who fight. A common mistake is to call these layers peasants, aristocracy and clergy. This doesn’t really work because there can be aristocratic clergymen and also merchants, and being aristocratic is more about a title than what you actually are supposed to do in society.

 Also usually - especially in schoolbooks when examining medieval society - we are often shown pyramids, implying a power structure from the top down. Although this is very typical for medieval society, it does not help to describe the makeup of the society as a whole. Each of the three estates has a pyramid power structure from the top down. For those who fight it would be - roughly – foot soldiers, then men-at-arms, knights and squires, lords, barons, and finally earls. For those who pray it at the bottom would be novice monks and nuns and travelling preachers. Then priest, monks and nuns, abbots and abbesses, bishops, and at the top archbishops. You could build the same kind of hierarchy for those who work, too. At the bottom you have unfree serfs, then free farmers and labourers, then more skilled craftsmen and artisans, and at the top goldsmiths, jewellers and rich merchants.

Of course there are people outside of society. Some examples are prostitutes, mercenaries – they fight but only for money and are known to change sides to the highest bidder -, money lenders, and peddlers, all those who focus on making money and not serving society – peddlers are in here because as travelling merchants they left a place once they sold their wares and therefore couldn’t been held responsible if their wares weren’t worth the price paid.

One major different to most other descriptions I made is that I don’t put the king as part of those who fight. I mean, yes, he does fight and lead armies but he does more than that. He is also part of the other two estates. When a king is crowned he is anointed by a bishop or archbishop making him one of them and he also swears to defend and protect the rights of the people. The king is really a representative of all three estates and one of his main jobs is to make sure that none of the three estates gains power over the others.

Medieval society really was centred around the king and his household. The king didn’t do much of ruling and administrative work. The three estates essentially ruled themselves and kept each other in check. The king and his household was really more of a power outside the estates which could tell the estates on what big projects to focus on. Perhaps to go on crusade or mount an invasion in to another country would stop the warriors from fighting among themselves and stimulate the economy. Perhaps use the workers to build a cathedral or monastery to make those who pray more powerful. Etc.

I’m going to write another blogpost about how societies form around kings soon.

History – It has changed and I love it

I have a confession to make – I love history. Ok, this might be fairly obvious - I mean this is a post on a blog called the Nerd Historian – but I simply have to say it. And I am not the only one.

 History is currently experiencing a great resurgence. The Game of the Year Award 2015 went to “The Witcher 3” – a role playing game set in a realistic medieval world. Also in 2015 the Anime “The Heroic Legend of Arslan” aired which’s story is based on an old Persian legend. The TV show performed well and a second season was announced. Not one but two dark ages TV shows aired on British television in 2016 with “The Last Kingdom” based on the bestselling historical novels by Bernard Cornwell and a remake of the classic “Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands”. In American television both “Vikings” and “Game of Thrones” are getting another season this year. Currently there are four (!) videogames in development that focus on realistic medieval warfare “Mordhau”, “Mount and Blade Bannerlord”, “Kingdom ComeDeliverance”, and “For Honor”. Also renaissance fairs are springing up everywhere and more and more international universities feature medieval history. And last but not least history is getting a larger online presence as well with more YouTube channels and podcasts about history growing in number. Yes this doesn’t mean everybody loves it as much as I do, but it shows that at least interest is growing in history. But why is this happening and why now?

The Nerdwriter1, a YouTube channel which creates weekly essays, made a great video on this: “Atemporality: Our Relationship ToHistory Has Changed”. In this video the Nerdwriter1 argues that because of the replacement of the book through the internet our values have changed. There isn’t one master narrative in our values simply because there are so incredibly many narratives due to the vastness of the internet. One thing this generation has been often accused of is it’s in ability to define itself. But the Nerdwriter1 thinks this is a good thing: “As Sterling notes, historians really used to worry that their interpretations of the past were clouded by their own values. Maybe the good news is for us right now we just don’t know what our values really are.”

 I could not agree more. When I read history books I often see values influencing the writer. For example, a modernist would write that knights were a great step forwards for medieval societies in that they would fight only with their ethnic code in mind for order and justice. A postmodern writer would on the other hand write that knights were a symbol of the oppression by the monarchy and they were only after land, money and plunder and would rape, pillage, and burn as much as the Vikings. But today we are in a position to see them not as a symbol for anything, but as human beings. Today a George R.R. Martin can write a novella like “The Hedge Knight” where a knight is portrayed as complex human being in a realistic world making the choices he thinks is right at that time. Without values we can see the people in history how they were and judge them not by our standards, but by theirs.

 This gives us not only a more accurate view of history but a more interesting one because now we can emphasize with the peoples of the past more easily and imagine how it was to live like them. A great example of this is the TV show “Vikings”. In it we follow the exploits of the legendary Viking Ragnar Lothbrok (or Lodbrok) and his brother Rollo. He is not portrayed as great hero or as a villain, but as a human being. In the second episode we see him and his band landing on Lindisfarne Island in England. There they find a monastery filled with unarmed monks. What do the Vikings do? They start killing the monks and plunder the monastery. But not because they are inherently evil, but rather because it is what they did in real history. It was part of their culture. And in the series Ragnar is still a likable and sympathetic character because that’s who he was as a human being. He just lived in a warlike culture where mercy was considered weak and you were had to kill other people to be accepted. In this TV-show they manage to create an accurate depiction without pushing modern values on the characters and this makes the show so much more interesting.

And I love this development not only because the history itself becomes more accurate, but because much more people are getting drawn into it and history is very important. It shows us where we come from and why current day problems exist. If more people learned about history we would many of today’s political discussions would be less complex or would even vanish altogether.

I am with Bruce Sterling when he says: „History is not a science. History is an effort in humanities”. History shouldn’t be about values and policies or great leaders and battles it needs to be about the humans. Yes humans have great leaders and battle and have values and policies and we should see them in context with and through the human being.

History has radically changed over the years and it has changed for the better. History is by definition about the humans and it always should be.