Bias!? Me!?

I’m as unbiased as a Roman historian writing about the barbaric savages to the far north (they wear pants, which is proof that they’re basically animals instead of people)

“Idk, we lost a fleet, I guess it must have been a sea monster or something.”

(and become banned from the Threadiverse)!

Only the shitty parts

Do you… do you think that’s the current pressing issue

that current events are being ‘overblown’?

[atom splits]

As a nomad, he spent most of his time either outdoors or in tents. The Mongols during this period had no sedentary cities of their own, and Genghis rarely spent much time around the lands he conquered after the war was over.

Explanation: During Caesar’s Gallic Wars, some Germanic tribes thought it would be a good lark to cross the Rhine and do some raiding. Caesar, rather than fording the river or crossing in boats, built a bridge in ten days, crossed 40,000 Roman soldiers over, did some retributive raiding of his own, then crossed the bridge back to Gaul… and burned it so he couldn’t be followed.

This was stunning to the Germanic tribes, as they had thought themselves safe on the far side of the Rhine from large-scale intervention - bridges of the kind and scale Caesar and the Romans built were unknown to the Germanic tribes, and they watched this architectural marvel be built in a matter of days - and then be burned once Caesar was done with it. Quite a shock!

Explanation: After the ruler of the Khwarizmi Empire provoked a war with Genghis Khan by robbing his merchants and executing his diplomats (twice), Genghis prosecuted a quick and brutal war against the Khwarizmi in which the majority of the empire was destroyed inside of two years.

Memorably, upon taking a particularly valuable city, Bukhara, he briefly entered the mosque in full view of the town’s detained notables (the only time Genghis is known to have entered a sedentary building himself), and then re-emerged to give a short speech, in which he harangued them as bringing down the Mongol conquest on themselves. “If you had not committed such great sins, God would not have sent such a punishment like me upon you.”

Considering that Genghis’s polity even at that early point contained a multitude of religions, including many Muslims, he probably understood the religious tropes that would most rattle the Muslim audience of the Khwarizmi nobility.

The nobility were then shipped off to Mongolia as slaves.

tbf, the medieval period still had plenty of blood sports, just the particular form of gladiator games and arena venatio faded. Animal-on-animal baiting was always popular, and bullfighting likewise existed in the early Medieval period.

And that’s not getting into the question of public judicial duels and the loose rules of early tournament melees

Hey now, this is a place to learn and share, not shame. At least, not shame for a lack of pre-existing knowledge on subjects. Many of the events we meme about here are not commonly addressed in school or in popular culture; and hell, even on those subjects which are, expecting someone to retain everything they were taught in school is not really fair.

This is a comm about celebrating the interest in history.

Least incompetent Mussolini moment

Oof, a long list, unfortunately.

The shortest and most important bits are:

• Balian of Ibelin was a middle-aged guy who had been born in the Levant, certainly not a young French blacksmith, and as much of a fanatic as most other Christians of the crusader states of the time.

• Baldwin IV was not exceptionally tolerant for the time or region, and was generally close with Reynald de Chatillon, the pirate/raider crusader whom he rebukes and imprisons in the movie.

• Guy de Lusignan and Sibylla of Jerusalem were quite close - to the point where she was forced to divorce him by court politics in order to become queen (as Guy was not liked by many), exacting a promise from the nobility to allow her to marry anyone she wished in exchange for doing so, and after being given that concession, she was crowned queen… immediately after which she re-married Guy and made him king.

• Saladin’s terms of surrender for Jerusalem were much harsher, by modern eyes - only some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem were allowed to go free unconditionally (the offer was for all of Jerusalem in the movie). The rest had to be ransomed, or else would be enslaved, as was common practice when taking a town in that era. Considering that Saladin ‘purchased’ a great many of these people to immediately free them, and that armies of the period expected loot (including slaves) which Saladin could not easily beg off, I think this is probably the most acceptable break from historical detail. True in spirit, if you will.

Nonetheless, despite these inaccuracies, the Director’s Cut is an amazing movie, and I love it.

Sometimes we pretend that the electorate cares.

Then we’re generally disappointed.

KETTLE HAT FOR JOUSTING LET’S GO

Him, the senile orange, and their bootlickers.

I have to meet my Horny Jail arrest quota

Explanation: To our modern eyes, the gladiator games, and like bloodsports, are extremely gruesome, if sometimes grimly fascinating, spectacles that sit at some exceptional position of horror and entertainment. To the Romans, however, they were a fun, family-friendly activity! The Roman poet Ovid even recommends the arena as a place to pick girls up at (amongst other places)!

In the defense of ancient peoples who were not Romans, the Romans themselves noted that other contemporary peoples, themselves generally not the sweetest fellows by modern standards, often found the gladiator games gruesome. Obviously, this was proof of Roman superiority, as ‘even’ Roman women and children enjoyed the games!