We're Not So Different

this time, we take a dive into the backlog of questions from our patrons and answer a few of them. we tackle everything from how to explain the Middle Ages to a 5 year old, to how bad was Henry VIII really to Eleanor Rykener and even who was the worst person in the Middle Ages. we cover 11 questions in total and it's a lot of fun, enjoy!

as you may have heard, the Princes in the Tower are in the news again, 540 years after their supposed deaths. recently, Philippa Langley, who famously help find Richard III's body in a parking lot back in 2012, hosted a television special in the UK which alleged a new theory about the Princes in the Tower: they survived and later returned to the island in attempts to take back the throne. as you may recall from our series on the Wars of the Roses, the historical consensus is that the young Princes were murdered on the orders of the usurper king Richard III, an event which led to his overthrow and defeat at the hands of Henry Tudor. we discuss the evidence that Langley puts forth, what it means if true, and, most importantly, how this affects George RR Martin's writing schedule for The Winds of Winter.

folks, we're finally doing a review of Ridley Scott's 2021 Medieval history film, The Last Duel, a film that asks the question: what if Ridley Scott just didn't do all the stuff he's known for and instead made an intimate portrait of a Medieval soap opera in the style of Rashomon that revolves around both an obscure land dispute based on manorial custom and a lengthy legal proceeding. it is a surprisingly well done film based on the director and subject matter and we're glad you get to experience it with us in our longest episode ever (or close to it)!

folks, in this episode we brought in a special guest and friend of the show, Phoebe Roy, co-host of the Ten Thousand Posts and Masters of Our Domain podcasts, to talk with us about depictions of Tudor England in books and TV. the Tudors are, of course, a foundational aspect of English history and culture, so it's interesting to see the many and varied depictions they get nowadays, especially when those depictions are made for American audiences or others who might not be so familiar with the Tudors. we talk with Phoebe about three works: Wolf Hall, the historical fiction novel by Hilary Mantel; Blackadder II, the BBC sitcom about Elizabeth's courtiers; and The Tudors, a big budget prestige drama about Henry VIII's court.check it out, you'll love it and check out Phoebe's other shows too!

Long cold open this time, actual episode starts around 18 mins in.Luke and Eleanor close our their series on the Medieval Arthurian canon in style, covering the rest of the post-Galfridian era to the end of the Middle Ages. finally, at long last, we get the real connective tissue in place to link all these disparate stories and narratives together into a cohesive canon that can be understood to modern people. it's no longer just one-off stories about Arthur or his buddies but an interlaced narrative (reminiscent of Tolkien) that weaves everything together from Arthur's birth to his death. we start with the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate cycles, which are two collections of French short stories from the 13th century that begin to tie the tales and themes of the round table knights together. then we get to the last part of the Medieval canon: the Mort d'Arthur. this is the big reboot that ties everything together, adds some new characters and twists and sets up the Arthur that we will eventually know in the present day.

this time, the series on Arthuriana continues into the post-Galfridian era. following Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, which created the narrative structure and foundation of the Arthurian canon we know today, a whole bunch of writers got in on the fun and started adding to that template. in this case, we focus on 7 stories that begin to flesh out the knights who make up Arthur's round table such as Lancelot, Gawain, Yvain, Percival, Kay, and Erec. these 7 stories include 4 French poems and 3 Welsh romances that were each written toward the end of the 12th century and while they do overlap somewhat, they also add a lot to the canon as we know it.4 French poems by Chretien de Troyes: Eric and Enide; Lancelot, Knight of the Cart; Yvain, Knight of the Lion; Percival, The Story of the Grail3 Welsh Romances: Owain or the Lady of the Fountain; Geraint and Enid; Peredur, Son of Efrawg

update: the last 3 minutes of this episode got cut off in the initial upload for unknown reasons, the file has now been fixed. sorry about that and enjoy!in our 4th installment in the Arthuriana series, we finally get to the work that truly defines Medieval Arthurian legend: Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 magnum opus, Historia Regum Britanniae aka The History of the Kings of Britain aka the Galfridian era of Arthur. we talk about the work itself, how it changes everything we know about Arthur, turned him into a historical figure for a few hundred years, erroneously portrayed him as a historical figure, and attempted to give the people of the Britain a founding myth of some kind that they could unite around. we also cover a bit of Geoffrey's other extant work, The Prophecies of Merlin. check it out!

our series on Arthuriana continues as we move past introductions and start talking about the stories that make up the early part of the Arthurian canon, known as the pre-Galfridian (aka before Geoffrey of Monmouth). these stories survive to us in Welsh and Latin from roughly 600 to 1135 AD and show how the Arthurian legend was being built using other existing tall tales to flesh out the narrative and was then contextualized alongside real, historical events to give it a veneer of legitimacy. The stories we cover today include: Culhwch & Olwen, Pa Gur, Preiddu Annwfn, Historia Brittonum, Annales Cambriae, and Gesta Regnum Anglorum. Next week will focus on Geoffrey of Monmouth.

we're back with more talk of Arthurian legend. this time, we continue to trace the canon into the Modern era, from its nadir in the Early Modern period to its resurrection in the 19th century by Lord Alfred Tennyson and finally to taking its place as a foundational myth in the English-speaking world. then, we introduce a host of recurring characters, settings, and tropes that commonly appear both in the Medieval canon and in the modern adaptations we see today. check it out!

folks, we're finally doing that series on King Arthur and the Arthurian Legends you've all been asking for. Luke and Eleanor start the series by talking about Arthur and the legends more broadly before discussing how a bunch of people in the Middle Ages built a cohesive, narrative canon with defined literary cycles out of a bunch of Welsh spoken-word stories without the aid of the internet or any of the modern conveniences that normally go into modern universe building. check it out!