Medieval Historian Marc Morris Breaks Down Middle Ages Films & TV Shows

more decapitated heads hello my name's mark morris i'm a medieval historian and i'm here to break down clips from tv shows and films about the middle ages we are going to look at a bit of game of thrones and this is this particular clip is known as the red wedding what's going on here is everyone sat down to dinner and and it seems that hatchets have been buried and a piece has been broken and it's been sealed with this marriage between the two houses but at the last moment it's seen to be a ruse and everyone is armed and everyone is now being massacred in the most horrible way imaginable being stabbed and and shot with crossbows people often ask me to comment on the realistic nature or the realism or otherwise of fantasy shows like game of thrones and the answer very much depends on which bit of the middle ages they are supposed to be based on because that kind of behavior absolutely par for the course in england prior to the norman conquest you could get away with pretty much all of that stuff there's lots of examples i can think of off the top of my head the godwin family in the years leading up to 1066. or indeed an english earl earl wolfie off of northumbria in the years immediately after 1066 doing things in an old-school anglo-saxon way by executing his enemies when he had apparently patched things up with them he had them round to dinner and then had them all bloodly murdered after the conquest no going forward into the 12th and 13th centuries they didn't do that kind of thing they spared each other even if they really hated each other i'll find another now that that line i'll find another wife that's the kind of thing you get in kind of stories from all periods across the middle ages like you know you will execute your son or i can make more sums you know we'll execute your your wife i can marry another wife that's the kind of thing that villains say all the way through the middle ages the lannisters we should have done this before lunch shouldn't we i suppose we ought to give game of thrones a rating out for historical accuracy we're going to say if this is based on the kind of thing that went on prior to the norman conquest then 10 out of 10 absolutely nailed it george r.r martin probably do quite well that chap robin hood prince of thieves just a minute robin hood steals money from my pocket forcing me to hurt the public and they love him for it of course we have the late great irreplaceable alan rickman uh playing the sheriff of nottingham one of his greatest comic turns this that's open this hooded viper simply slithers into the forest you maram 10 30 tonight you 10 45 bring a friend lots to enjoy there um mostly uh alan brickman's performance as the sheriff of nottingham lots of anachronisms which are deliberate like uh you 1045 you know as if he's got an early 13th century digital clock somewhere in his castle my main bug bear with films of this uh era and and depictions of the middle ages like this on screen is the drabness of the interiors i mean obviously the sheriff of nottingham is the villain and so he has to be in a sort of drab uh evil looking environment so he has to have burning torches on the walls and candles everywhere and yet we know that uh norman castles like this were a riot of color inside so if you go for example to dover castle it's a riot of color vivid reds and bright blues and gold and silver and vermillion uh etc because these were the richest people in society these were kings or earls or sheriffs you know robin hood prince of thieves uh was a film that came out when i was a teenager and even then we were aware of its anachronisms you don't have to be kind of like a fully paid-up medieval historian with a doctorate to know that you can't get off the boat at dover and then be at hadrian's wall by nightfall and i think that this was done in a tongue-in-cheek way by the film's producers they knew they were taking huge liberties and they didn't care so i sort of salute it as a piece of filmmaking and historical fiction so a score for robin hood prince of these i think probably it's around about a seven in terms of its historical accuracy maybe a six seven because i'm affectionate towards it ironclad in the year 1215 had been under the reign of king john for 16 years john was renowned for losing wars with france levying punitive taxes and sleeping with the wives of barons you see i think that's a reasonably good summary of king john he he was a coward who repeatedly lost battles and lost war and lost land he did tax uh england more heavily than any king since the norman conquest 150 years earlier and he did according to contemporary chroniclers force himself on the women folk of his nobility so these are all things that annoy people but we go on baron's wearing hats okay so that's the first big no-no uh that's this is now we're in trouble so perhaps you don't have hats in the early 13th century finally rebelled against their king and became locked in a bloody civil war lasting for over three years it wasn't a three-year civil war they rebelled against him they finally rebelled against him in the spring of 1215 and they brought him to running media and in the space of weeks and decimating both armies in time the knights templar were drawn into this country where the knights templar come in i think the knights templars are drawn into this conflict because the knights templar sounds sexy the knights temple had nothing to do with this conflict i mean i wrote a book about king john and the knights templar i think maybe i don't say they don't even get a look in they might get a mention but they're certainly not central to the story as this film would have you believe king john and his royal army were eventually defeated king john wasn't defeated in battle then what really did for john in the in this isn't barely a civil war in the standoff between him and his barons in the spring of 1215 is the barons seized london and that is what forced john to negotiate it was the loss of his capital and the treasury that was in the tower of london so he was forced to negotiate runnymede in 1215 because of that not because he was um beaten into submission by this point that john could remain on the throne on one condition that he would sign a document sign look they're signing actually not just they're not just saying sign which i think is unforgivable because sign might mean a fix your seal to but they actually show john and all the barons signing you know writing their names at the bottom of magna carta you can check surviving copies of magna carta there are no signatures england welcomes you does the pope holders were oh no have faith captain tiberius captain tiberius i've no idea where this guy's supposed to be from he looks like a viking though i think there's a suggestion later in the film that these guys are pagans i mean john did recruit foreign mercenaries to fight against his native baronas but he got them from the low countries he got them from christian places like flanders this story has been improved by suggesting they've come from i think 9th century scandinavia his eminence is waiting to hear you hold to yours the church will stay out of your lands you have his word okay so there the church will stay out of your lands implying these guys are heathens so this is king john uh sort of employing vikings who've been hiding in the north sea zone for four centuries yeah king john and magda carter is a subject i know a bit about fair bit about because i did a book uh for penguin um about uh kim jong king john's reign has a great ending i mean you can't ask for a better ending for a for for a reign than it to end in a civil war against his own barons and foreign invasion and sort of the country's set of flame and it's it's all very dramatic stuff and so there's absolutely no need to sort of push the boat out even further and say well his he must have vikings as his allies and he must sign magna carta and it's just it's sort of smacks of laziness i think so i'm i think i'm only going to give ironclad maybe a 3 out of 10 for historical the accuracy kingdom for my lines for my lights chill jump right so they're forming a shield wall one of the problems with this period is we have virtually nothing in the way of written sources describing battle tactics so to some extent you can get away with whatever you like when you're making movies covering this [Applause] period so this is the generally accepted way that army's made war in the 9th 10th centuries is is two shield wars clashing and colliding though as i say when it comes to written sources from those two centuries we we have virtually nothing so how they actually fought is anyone's guess but a shield wall or the clash of shield walls is the generally accepted method so here we've got the the vikings riding into the english or the anglo-saxon camp and attacking non-combatants which strikes me as a bit of a flaw in the english plan i mean why are the non-combatants so exposed on the field this is what vikings would do vikings don't play by the rules i mean nobody really played by the rules there weren't there weren't really many rules in ninth century warfare i i think this is a bit of a major achilles heel for the english people being ridden down and mowed down she looks important [Music] [Applause] i have a gift for you your queen ah that'll do it problem i have with this is the fact that that's exactly the kind of behavior i would expect from a viking army is those kind of atrocities that you might not associate with later medieval warfare you would totally anticipate in in the 9th or 10th century so i i see this as a kind of a a major um lack of foresight that they haven't thought they're vikings they might sneak around the back and and attack the non-combatants [Music] see the viking leader has just shouted no mercy as if anyone would anticipate mercy from vikings they're not being very chivalrous these vikings so that was a clip from the last kingdom which is a tv series based on books by bernard cornwell who's been very complimentary about my own book it looks tremendous i would give it sort of a strong 9 out of 10 in terms of the visuals perhaps just a 6 or 7 out of 10 when it comes to that particular story element i think the english should have seen that coming okay so now we're going on to vikings let us prepare look at what they've done what have they done more decapitated heads so uh here we've got the vikings turning up their ships emerging from the mist and people uh the english saying look what look what they've done and they have also decapitated their enemies heads which is exactly the kind of thing i'd expect vikings to do i think one of the things that made vikings so terrifying for anglo-saxons or for english was was the fact that they had done the same thing if you look at english chronicles from the 7th century the 8th century they make war in exactly the same way they chop each other to bits after battle they put heads on spikes and hands on spikes so they'd only recently stopped doing this themselves and i think the the arrival of the vikings was a kind of reminder of the pagan past from which the the english themselves had emerged there's really no atrocities i would put past vikings so in that respect i think this is this is pretty much on the money based based solely on that clip nine out of ten braveheart oscar-winning film hard to believe where are you going i'm going to peck a fight mel gibson of course covered in woad like they did in 14th century scotland sorry late 13th century scotland they didn't you know scotland's terms lower your flags and march straight back to england stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for 100 years of theft rape and murder i mean that i've been asked to comment a lot over the years on braveheart because my first big book was a biography of the villain of this film king edward the first the english king who they pretty much exclusively referred to as long shanks which that bit is historically historically accurate edward was called by several contemporary chroniclers edward the long or edward with the long shanks so 10 out of 10 for accuracy there and like a lot of historical epics a lot of the foreground detail in this is is very very accurate so the arm is very good it's just that just on the cusp of plate armor so we've got we've got male shirts and little bits of plate being added the detail is very accurate the problem with braveheart and other films like it is they get their history wrong and they get the the mentalities wrong and that's the great lie at the heart of braveheart is that line that gibson speaks just then when he says lower your flags march back to england stopping in every village you pass through to apologize for 100 years of rape pillage and slaughter or whatever it was the tragedy about the war between scotland and england that was unleashed in edward the first reign is for the previous century they've been getting on like a house on fire the english and the scots the aristocracies have married together countless aristocrats on both sides of the border who've been married there have been tradesmen merchants crossing the border from england to set up new set up shop in new scottish boroughs they have been royal weddings there have been monks from english monasteries going into scotland to form to to found scottish daughter houses so culturally the the the gap between these two countries was being closed in the 13th century and they hadn't had anything so much as a skirmish for about 60 or 70 years i think prior to 1090 seven i think this film starts in so that's that's the fallacy really the the the the is the problem with braveheart braveheart is not based on history though braveheart is based on a 15th century track called um called the wallace by by blind harry it's fueled by the very genuine hatred that the english and the scots had for each other as a result of by this stage two centuries of knocking you know seven bells out of each other that i say that's there's there's a more accurate far more accurate story of william wallace to be told um whether it makes good cinema or not is anyone's guess do that and your men shall live do it not and every one of you will die today mel gibson would warrior so we have to we have to come up with a rating for braveheart um again it depends what you're rating if you're rating the costumes then it's probably a nine or a ten out of ten in terms of the history it's probably a five out of ten it's the way the scottish saw their history by say the the 15th century filmmakers when they stretch for accuracy often end up delivering a very po-faced version of the past and of course in all these periods there was high-heartedness and there was humor and it's a pity they can't capture that some of the time i mean the other thing is that i've commented on is these films are awash with violence but you do get the the misapprehension that the the middle ages were basically anarchic and that you know any amount of violence was acceptable and it was lawless and you know that it was every man for himself never go out your house without putting your helmet on otherwise someone will dash your brains in and there'll be another cinematic arterial split of blood but um for most people in the middle ages you know life if if not pleasant was not sort of didn't they didn't experience these levels of violence every day on a day-to-day basis we do get this skewed view of the middle ages by what's offered up to us in films like this i'm not here to say you know the middle ages was a great time to live i'm very happy living in the early 21st century thank you very much but um it was a good deal more pleasant than these films would have you believe thanks for watching you can get my new book the anglo-saxons in hardback and in audio by clicking the link in the description below and don't forget to 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Channel: Penguin Books UK

Views: 158,881

Keywords: Penguin, Penguin Books, Penguin Books UK, Marc Morris, Marc Morris Anglo Saxons, Marc Morris Historian, Marc Morris Middle Ages, medieval break down, historian breaks down, historian reacts, historian reacts to medieval, historian reacts to game of thrones, marc morris reacts, marc morris break it down, vikings reacts, braveheart, game of thrones, robin hood prince of thieves, the last kingdom, vikings tv, ironclad, ironclad reacts, red wedding reaction, middle ages history

Id: foBaW3YKokE

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lisajhooper]

One of my favorite Historians, thank you for sharing!