Line #21 Headscratchers/RobinHood


1	!!General
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3	* In most versions of Robin Hood, Robin heads home to England from Jerusalem during the Crusades. Was that possible in real life? I find it especially jarring in ''Prince of Thieves'' when he escapes imprisonment and heads back home instead of heading towards King Richard's armies.
4	** He's probably had enough of the Crusades what with the imprisonment and horrific torture/near loss of his hand. It's not unreasonable to expect that he would just want to go home and see England again.
5	** It's called desertion.
6	*** Militaries weren't exactly as formal back then. As a knight he presumably did owe fealty to the King and would be in violation of his oath for leaving but that's not quite the same thing. In any case King Richard presumably included that in his pardon.
7	** It's also not found in a lot of versions where Robin becomes an outlaw because he refuses to go.
8	** It was not only possible, it was a not-uncommon occurrence. Quite a few Lords, knights, soldiers and peasants on Crusade simply packed up their bags and went back home; heck, in the First Crusade, that's what happened with most of the ''leaders''.
9	** There seems to be a bit of confusion; Richard I didn't finish Crusading and go straight back to England - he was captured and imprisoned for two years by the Duke of Austria (who accused Richard of murdering his cousin), so Robin probably went home expecting Richard to show up any day only to learn he's been incarcerated and the corrupt Prince John is happy for him to languish in chains and rule England as a corrupt tyrant instead. Richard I would not be released for another year or so, so Robin had a whole year to raise a band of outlaws and rebel against John. Plus, even after Richard was released and returned (despite John trying to pay his captors to [[RefugeInAudacity hold Richard for even longer]], Richard [[EasilyForgiven forgave John anyway and named him his heir]] before heading off to Europe [[BloodKnight to go fighting again]], so it still makes sense that Robin was fighting the corrupt John while his "true king" was away. Either way, Robin didn't have to do anything wrong to come home from Crusading before Richard did.
10	* An irritating one, especially if you are an archer, but why is nobody ever shown to be wearing either a shooting glove or a tab when pulling back on their bows in any live action portrayal of Robin Hood? Those bow strings hurt if you are repeatedly pulling back on them with no finger protection, no matter how experienced an archer you are, so are all these actors immune to pain or something?
11	** Speaking as an actor, a lot of the time, they simply aren't real modern-built bows. This is especially the case in versions that try to be at least somewhat historically accurate. There'll often be at least two bows built, one that looks more as though it could actually be capable of firing an arrow that's used for closeups and the like, and the other for wide-shots that will essentially amount to a slightly more sophisticated version of a child's toy. It still hurts if you're doing this for take after take but it's not nearly as painful as doing so with an actual working bow. An actor will be given archery lessons so that they know how to make it look right when they use the bow while filming but (for various reasons) very rarely will any of the actual bows they use in the film be capable of propelling an arrow more than a couple of feet at best, even when drawn and loosed at full strength as it were.
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13	!![[WesternAnimation/RobinHood1973 Disney movie]]
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15	Now has [[Headscratchers/RobinHood1973 its own page]].
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17	!![[Series/RobinHood TV series]]
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19	* Arrow-splitting: it was awesome and impossible and exciting, but it does NOT win the game. Other dude hit the target dead centre, Robin hit the target dead centre with bells and whistles. That round was a DRAW. They should continue play. The contest was hit the centre of the target It was not a bells and whistles contest.
20	** I've always presumed it was a case of the score being close, and only a dead-centre hit on Robin's part would get him a win. Since there was already an arrow there...
21	** The skill needed to hit the point of an arrow and actually pierce all the way through it may be considered enough to tip the scales in his favor. I'm not sure, since I'm not an archer myself, but that may be the reasoning behind it.
22	** Speaking as an archer, splitting an arrow from knock to point is impossible. It is possible to split arrows, but not perfectly all the way down. (It's due to the grain of the wood.) However the competition is to find the BEST archer, not the one with the most points. In a modern competition splitting an arrow doesn't get you any extra points (it just means you have to pay for a new arrow to replace the one you wrecked) but if you do it on purpose rather than accident, and can do it on demand, then you get kudos for being THAT good (and always get a target to yourself!) so in a more informal competition it might sway the verdict in a draw.
23	* This is minor, but irritating. When Robin and Kate first meet, it's pretty clear that they've never met before. He calls her "young lady" before she introduces herself, and she says, "You're Robin Hood!" in the tone of one who is meeting someone they've heard about for a long time, but never actually seen before. Yet Robin has previously been shown to be a very hands-on Lord of Locksley, on first name basis with all of his servants and practically every single serf who lives in the tiny village, and Robin even ''explicitly calls'' her mother "Rebecca" without any introductions. How can he recognise and know Rebecca and not Kate? [[DawsonCasting Is Kate apparently so young]] that she and Robin don't know each other from the ''first'' time he went on Crusades; which by the show's rather tenuous time-line, would have been eight years ago?
24	** So I guess my question is - how old is Kate meant to be?
25	* Allan's death. Dear God, this was the absolute worst case of DroppedABridgeOnHim I've ever seen, especially for the only character left on the show that I didn't want to beat around the face with a heavy object. Getting shot down by the man who killed his brother, failing in his attempt to warn his so-called "friends" of the approaching army, and dying alone on the side of the road was horrific enough, but the only reason this even happened was because the rest of the outlaws (once again) proved themselves to be ''complete idiots''. If Isabella had been paying Allan to act as TheMole inside Robin's gang, then ''why would she announce his pardon to the entire population of Nottingham''?? Geez outlaws, you don't think that the woman who has been double-crossing you for the last six or so episodes just MIGHT be trying to stir up dissent among the ranks?? If Allan had been the only one left standing at the end of the carnage (having nicked everyone's stuff and hitchhiking back to Will and Djaq in the Holy Land), I would have considered it a perfect ending to the show.
26	** Given she'd been "double-crossing them for the last six or so episodes", it is not equally possible (from the outlaws' point of view) that she double-crossed Allan by announcing his pardon in the knowledge that the outlaws would learn of it? Robin promises to come back and "sort it", he doesn't make any decision on Allan's guilt or not.
27	*** Then couldn't they have ''said'' that? As it played out, it was clear that that option simply hadn't occurred to them. It grates that a) the outlaws ''knew'' that Isabella wasn't trustworthy, and b) Robin was prepared to implicitly trust the man who shish-ka-bobed his wife and yet not give Allan the benefit of the doubt.
28	*** Little John insists they can't trust Allan and it snowballs from there. I think the writers were sort of going for mob mentality.
29	*** Oh yeah...Little John insisted that Allan couldn't be trusted...''one episode after Allan saved his life.'' Thanks John, your one and only contribution to season three was to be an ass and get your friend killed. That and insist to Robin to that he should hook up with the Shrieking Harpy of Despair.
30	* So I'd like to know what happened to all the other outlaws from the first two episodes, the one's that Little John led, all of a sudden, it's just John, Roy, Allan, and Will. what happened to the rest of the outlaw bunch, did they just say "okay, Robin's here, let's leave?" I'd hate that this was the director's way of doing some major screw up
31	** Maybe they died in an offscreen battle. At least one of them had a loved one still in Nottingham - maybe all the business with John seeing his wife and son convinced them to reunite with what families they had. The most likely out-of-universe reason is that they were CanonForeigners - after they're gone, the only CanonForeigner left in the gang is Roy and he leaves two episodes later. It's the same as the fact you never see specific villagers again after their DayInTheLimelight. Occasionally it's written that they have to leave but a lot just end up disappearing. The writers seemed to want to focus on the core Robin (& gang) vs Sheriff (& Guy) storyline that Robin Hood is most famous for. Doing that meant losing a lot of the dead weight. Besides, they were never exactly hugely important enough to be missed...

Context Headscratchers / RobinHood