History Series / MarcoPolo

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking:

* FakeNationality: With the sole exception of Ariq Boke, all the Mongols are portrayed by people of Chinese and Korean background (and in some cases, by people from Australia and New Zealand). Ahmad Fanakati, who in real life was a Tazhik (a Central Asian Iranian person), is portrayed by an Indian.

** During season 2, Jingim is invited to compete in Bokh - Mongol Wrestling - one of the three manly skills along with horsemanship and archery that Chinggis Khaan told us creates a [[RatedMForManly real man]]. He starts out the fight facing the Hurts Arslaan (though he's not called that in the series, of course) of... some part of the Empire, it's not made clear where exactly, and gets thrown down repeatedly before winning using Chinese martial arts. Now, different Mongolic and Turkic people have different rules regarding what constitutes a loss in traditional wrestling, but generally speaking, if any body part above the knee hits the ground, you've lost. Jingim gets thrown on the ground full body several times and is still allowed to keep fighting.

** Season 1: [[Ahmad, Kublai Khan’s adopted son, serves as this due to being responsible for the Khan’s assassination attempt. He is the BigBad of the series overall.]]
** Season 2: [[Pope Gregory X serves as this due to being the looming threat against Kublai Khan and his kingdom throughout the season and, because of history, the entire series.]]

** Season 2: [[spoiler: Ahmad, Kublai Khan’s adopted son who tried to assassinate him in order to overthrow and seize the throne for himself.]]

* ActionGirl: [[MamaBear Mei Lin]], [[LadyOfWar Empress Chabi]], and [[WrestlerInAllOfUs Khutulun]].

* AdultFear: [[spoiler: Kublai's horror to learn that Jingim fell in battle. Fortunately, Jingim turns out to be alive still thanks to Byamba]].

* BadassBeard: Kublai Khan, and many of the Mongols.

* NotSoDifferent: Marco delivers a [[BadassBoast passoniate speech]] about the wrath of the great khan to one of his enemies, the "Old Man" leader of [[spoiler: TheHashshashin]]. After he finishes, the Old Man says Marco is ''exactly'' the type of HotBlooded young man he recruits.

* RecycledInSpace: ''Series/GameOfThrones'' in 13th century East Asia.
** Alternately, ''Series/{{Vikings}}'' but about Mongols. Hilariously, both shows have badass barbarian chieftains who are fascinated by exotic foreigners.

** In season 2, there is a subplot where the Pope launches a secret Crusade against Kublai, using Nayan as his agent. Kublai Khan's empire never came into direct warfare against what was considered Western Christendom at the time, and as mentioned in the ChristianityIsCatholic example Nayan wasn't even a Catholic and would have been unlikely as a papal vassal.

** Though the purpose of such Crusade in the show was to later make an new one towards the Holy Land, there was actually an proposed [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Mongol_alliance Crusader-Mongol alliance against Muslims]] and both sides exchanged ambassadors in an attempt to bring it into fruition, but it never came to being because of religious differences and both sides unable to agree with each other demands - the Crusaders wanted the Mongols to convert to Catholicism, while the Mongols wanted the Crusaders to submit to their control. Pope Gregory did in fact support one, but he most likely would not have sanctioned it against Kublai in specific and Nayan most definitely had nothing to do with it.

Do not confuse this series with the [[Series/MarcoPolo Shaw Brothers movie from 1975]].

* Prolonged Prologue: In season 2, episode 9, the opening credits don't appear until almost halfway through.

** Firstly, Ariq Boke was never Khan of the Golden Horde. That was Berke Khan. Berke did support Ariq's claim to the Mongol throne, however, but was more interested in kicking Hulagu's teeth massacring Muslims during the Sacking of Baghdad - an event that went beyond the pale of Mongol harshness. As a son of Tolui, Ariq would have simply been considered a Yuan prince at this point.

** The Toluid Civil War did not end with personal combat between Kublai and Ariq, Ariq actually surrendered to him in the end and died in imprisonment.

** Karakoram was not the capital of the Golden Horde, but of the Northern Yuan Dynasty. The actual Golden Horde capital is Sarai Batu (''Palace of Batu''). Thought at this time it was called Sarai al-Jadid, since the Golden Horde was an Islamicate and Persiante civilisation.
** Kublai is portrayed as being as Mongolian Pagan, but in real life he had converted to Tibetan Buddhism around this time. Mind you, this was mostly for appearance's sake, but his conversion was cited by Ariq Boke as evidence of the decline in traditional manly values in the empire.
** The after-effects of the Toluid Civil War on the Mongol Empire are glossed over, as a result of Berke and Hulagu's absence from the storyline. In the show, it's just treated as a simple rebellion by Ariq-Boke and is apparently wrapped up in Kublai's favour with a single battle and a few weeks. In reality, the civil war lasted for four full years from 1260 - 1264 AD, involved various ''other'' conflicts such as the Golden Horde-Ilkhanate war, and eventually led to the effective fragmentation of the Mongol Khaganate as a whole. In other words, this was probably the single biggest thing to ever happen in the history of the empire.

** Kublai refers to his Muslim subjects as "Saracens" at one point when in truth that term was never used by the Mongols. Most of the Muslims they tended to encounter were Turks who largely resembled them in culture and habits. In fact, a fair proportion of Mongols in the Golden Horde were already being converted to Islam by the Mameluke Sultan Baybars (himself a Turkic Muslim of the Kypchak tribes and a well-respected figure in the former territories of the Mongol Khaganate to this day) around this time and the Mongol Empire actually had seen a number of Muslim Khaans such as Berke Khaan and Mubarak Shah Khaan. The actual Mongol word for a Muslim at this point would have simply been 'Turk', and vice versa, the Muslim or Turkic word for a Mongol who was still pagan would have been... well, Mongol.
** As far as we know, the Bayan described in Marco Polo's account wasn't a blind Kung-Fu monk, but rather a Mongol general and a Tengriist. His sobriquet, "Hundred Eyes" is also fictitious, and it merely a mistranslation of his name by Marco. What Bayan really means in Mongol is "Wealthy".

** Nayan's Catholicism. While Christian Mongols ''were'' indeed a thing (though a minority and Christianity never achieved the same distinction in the Mongol Empire as Islam did among the Borjigin tribe), with the Naimans and Keraits (the later actually a Turkic tribe which married into Chinggis Khaan's family), their denomination was Nestorian, an off-shoot of the Syriac Orthodox Christianity which was regarded as heresy by the Western Church. Their own particular flavour of Nestorianism was also far more influenced by their Mongol paganism, with Jesus being re-imagined as a Kam, or Shamanic figure.

** The facemasks that the Khesig wear. While such helmets were indeed worn by Mongols, they are actually an adaptation from the Turkic Qipchak and Cuman tribes of the upper Volga and European steppe who later joined the Golden Horde of Batu and Berke. In other words, they wouldn't have been worn in the Yuan Dynasty.
** Khublai Khan didn't actually live in a Chinese palace, rather he lived in the Borjigid Royal Ger like his cousins and later descendants.