Hollywood Historians like to lump all of the Middle Ages into one indistinct era, but a study of real history will show that the period of the fall of Rome and the rise of Monasticism in Europe was more of a prelude to the true
Middle Ages. It began with
an alleged dark age, when people were supposedly too busy staying alive to write histories, had a few peaceful years in the middle, and ended with Vikings ravaging the coasts, and horsemen storming out of the east.
In reality, there were substantial intellectual and cultural advancements during the alleged "Dark Ages,"
and modern historians universally reject classifying the Early Middle Ages as being an "age of darkness."
Most Hollywood monks are pious men with tonsures, clad in long black robes. They frequently spend all their days dipping feathered pens into inkwells and scribbling strange uncials into large books by candlelight. If they're being played by
Derek Jacobi, they may take time out of their busy schedule of scribbling, praying, singing, and rejecting all of their worldly goods to mill about the town and
solve a murder mystery or two...
If not a monk, the Hollywood European of this time is generally either a
cruel warlord pursuing his
droit-de-seigneur or an oppressed
peasant.
Or he is a barbarian invader. For this is also the time of the
Vikings, hearty sailors in horned helmets who loved burning down monasteries and carrying off struggling peasant women, while
Alfred The Great burnt cakes.
Other vaguely remembered names from this period are Canute, trying to turn back the tide, and Charlemagne.
The arrival of the Normans in 1066 is as good a cut-off point as any, especially since they were the ones who really started building castles with a vengeance. After that, see
The High Middle Ages.
Tropes Associated with this era include
- An Axe to Grind (probably the most frequent non-spear weapon, as an axe is fairly easy for a relatively unskilled smith to make, and peasants tended to have these around anyway for firewood)
- Ancestral Weapon (often Truth in Television, as the difficulties of making steel and pattern welding made high-quality blades expensive, and they tended to get passed down, some eventually receiving a name and a legendary Back Story.)
- Barbarian Hero
- Blade on a Stick (What most fighters actually had to settle for, when they weren't stuck with farming implements or just the stick)
- Drop the Hammer
- The Dung Ages
- Here There Were Dragons
- Heroic Fantasy
- Historical Domain Character, though, except for King Arthur (and possibly Attila The Hun or Alfred The Great), most people will never have heard of them. (Gunthaharius of Burgundy is not exactly a household name.)
- Horny Vikings
- Just Before the End, for Rome
- King Arthur
- Knight in Shining Armor (historically inaccurate though it is: "warlord in rusty chainmail" was the best they had then. Knighthood as we picture it didn't exist yet)
- Medieval Morons
- Norse Mythology
- Swiss Army Weapon (inverted— most Dark Agers carried one big knife that they used for everything from cutting food to carving wood to killing. Hopefully with a cleaning of some kind in between— you wouldn't want to get foodstains on your dead enemy, after all)
- The Time of Myths
Works set in this period include
Anime and Manga
Film
Literature
Live-Action TV
Newspaper Comics
Theatre
