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Get Medieval is a Webcomic about a group of Human Aliens - anthropology student Asher Hane, his former mob boss father, Torquel Hane, Torquel's current wife Iroth Rousel, his accountant Neithe Wen, and Iroth's bodyguard, Oneder - landing on Earth in 14th century France for what should've been a quick refueling stop. When their ship is attacked by natives (in this case French knights and soldiers) who seemingly take down Oneder, Torquel panics and takes off in their ship (only to make a forced landing and be captured by Muslim holy warriors), leaving the others stranded and forced to make their own way. Most of the comic focuses on Asher and Neithe, with Neithe trying to make the best of the situation and Asher determined to find a way off this "backwater planet", eventually settling with Sir Gerard, a French nobleman, and his family.

After concluding the story, the artist, Irony-Chan, added a commentary rerun, eventually going through the entire series again. For those who need yet more of a fix after that, Irony had two false starts on a new webcomic (Dumnestor's Heroes and Knowledge Is Power) but has settled into a consistent pace with the ongoing Interstellar Tea House.


Get Medieval provides examples of:

  • Affably Evil: Gesh was Santa Claus at Torquel's company parties, and he really does seem like he tries to be a nice guy, for a murderous thug.
  • All Periods Are PMS: Celeste knows how to get her father to leave her be.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Torquel & Iroth are pretty much the Power Couple at first, and that turns out to be their biggest draw for one another: if they didn't have something to fight about, they'd just get bored.
  • Bee-Bee Gun: Asher is rather annoyed by the idea that a siege should take so long, and decides to short-circuit a several months-long wait, by requisitioning a nearby monastery's beehives and just flinging them into the castle via trebuchet.
  • Berserk Button: Never tell Asher he's just like his father.
  • Best Her to Bed Her: Rylede is an inversion, in that she beat her love interest in combat, causing him to fall for her. They seem quite happy together.
  • Big Bad: While there's no real 'big bad' in the comic (outside of the universe itself), Broat starts out as the main antagonist (who caused Torquel to run for the hills) and finally takes a personal hand in the climax.
  • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Celeste hits all the buttons, up to and including looking for all manner of suitors who would piss off her father.
  • Brick Joke: Neithe bets Asher that his girlfriend won't even remember him once they get off the planet. Although Neithe forgot she made it.
  • Buffy Speak: There's a certain thing in the caravan. It's described in exactly this way.
  • Carnival of Killers: The "Extraterrestrial Mob Assassins" part shows off the thug, the Cloud Cuckoolander, and the everyman — and to draw the 'carnival' part into the limelight, the linguist dresses them all up in costumes which are sublimely ridiculous, even by the standards of the day.
  • Cassandra Truth: "We went to the moon." Gerard can't even believe he's saying that to her, as he knows full well how ridiculous it sounds.
  • Dysfunctional Family: Asher is pissed off at Torquel just leaving him on the planet, and Iroth and Torquel are the kind of married couple who get more enjoyment over pissing each other off (and then indulging in fantastic makeups) than they ever would by just being Happily Married. In the end they all mostly make up, though Asher and Iroth remain somewhat strained.
  • Emo Teen: Celeste. She considers becoming a nun out of spite, but as the abbess put it, "One should take vows because one wishes to serve God, not because one is going through puberty and hates His creation."
  • Establishing Character Moment: Each character gets one of these, though Neithe and Asher get this one to differentiate the two on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
    Neithe: You could think of it as "quality time" if you're an optimist.
    Asher: I'm not.
  • Evil Lawyer Joke: Two different characters used to be lawyers and ended up in the clergy. Whenever one of them mentions their former profession, someone will ask if they decided they'd rather go to Heaven. It's happened to one of them so many times a fellow priest has offered to recommend him for the papacy if this fails to happen.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Asher's various attempts to build a signal device wind up helping the villains more than him. Amongst other things, it causes Jacques to build a similar device, leading to the intrepid vulcanologist assuming that he's just a crazy person experimenting with radio waves centuries ahead of time.
  • Fantastic Anthropologist: Asher was studying to become one for less advanced planets. Thus he's well-prepared to provide a reasonable outsider's perspective on 14th century Earth culture. And hey, at least he's getting a lot of field-work experience, right?
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In strip #731, Sir Gerard gives a very good one: "I'd return via the Moon if that could avoid it." Guess what, 70 strips later and he's on the Moon.
    • Even better: strip 380 foreshadows strip 798, well over a year later.
  • Freakier Than Fiction: When the team meet a certain short writer, he asks for some of their stories — and absolutely refuses to believe Asher's ludicrous tale of capturing a castle with a beehive.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: Torquel slips his cuffs and points at the other side of the room to distract a guard, before clocking him into unconsciousness.
  • Happily Married: Sir Gerard & Lady Eleanor turn out to be happily married in the end — with plenty of kids. So do Celeste and Joshua. Eventually Torquel and Iroth wind up somewhat like this, though they're more likely to have lots of fun tweaking each others' noses and then making up on a regular basis.
  • Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Belle, and in fact all the girls at that particular house, are genuinely nice folks, if a bit mercenary.
  • Human Aliens: With a Lampshade Hanging here. After Neithe cuts the knot by explaining about other worlds ('You'd have used much longer words'), Gerard just decides that it makes sense that God would have created other worlds in their own image, too.
  • If You Ever Hurt Her: By a little boy in the paper-copy-only story "Milady's Contract," with regard to his sister. "You break her heart, I'm gonna break your fuckin' knees! Pardon my English."
  • In the Name of the Moon: Kaguya apparently pioneered this as well as You Gotta Have Blue Hair (see below), according to a side-story in the print version. One of the pirates she threatened with "In the Name of the Moon, I shall punish you!" called it a dumb line, but another said, "I dunno, it's kinda catchy."
  • It's What I Do: Spot has a very specific skillset. Sabotage, that is to say.
  • Karma Houdini: Even the mob boss winds up in a trusted position of power, with an implied harem. As the author puts it: happy endings all around!
  • Like Brother and Sister: Asher & Neithe. Notably, they're never even mistaken for a couple; All in all they're more Platonic Life-Partners, but it's noted the monks who took them in immediately assumed they were brother and sister (because of the way Neithe would regularly kick Asher's arse).
  • The Mafia: The strip opens with Torquel running from the mob, because he somehow managed to piss them off. Probably by deciding that he didn't want anything more to do with them. They eventually hire a number of patsies to hunt him down.
  • Mama Bear: Lady Eleanor eventually nuts Broat in an excellent example of how to get around a language barrier.
  • The Middle Ages: A huge amount of the Historical In-Joke comedy comes from the fact that Torquel landed their ship on a 'steel-age planet', e.g. Earth in the 14th century, and the cast have to deal with this fact.
  • Need a Hand, or a Handjob?: Asher's first encounter with Belle leads to the former — he certainly gets a warm room and a pleasant bed. His innocent diatribe in that circumstance leads to a second encounter, where everyone in the brothel greets him warmly for putting Belle on a rather... virtuous path.
  • Never Heard That One Before: The Evil Lawyer Joke is so common that at one point, a character claims that he'd give up his faith if it weren't immediately stated.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: A side-story included in the print version has Kaguya witness the teaming up of a band each of ninja, pirates, and samurai — last seen confronting "a forty storey firebreathing lizard ... heading for Edo!" "You goin' down, lizard!"
  • Noodle Incident: Torquel seems to have a knack for these, if he's so skilled that even The Mafia shudder to think about what he's up to.
    Broat: Do you remember the last time we thought Torquel Hane was dead?
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Kaguya. Broat addressed her as "Miss Freitnor" (twice). An FAQ in the dead-tree version states that her name, presumably her given name, is Breony. Oh, and Professor Daren referred to her as Breony once. However, she told Torquel that Kaguya-hime was the only name she'd give to criminal masterminds.
  • Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Subverted very sweetly in the dead-tree-only side-story "Milady's Contract." Eleanor was arranged to marry Gerard's Jerkass older brother Armandnote , but then Gerard managed to lawyer a way she could marry him instead. Adds a touch of Hypocritical Humor to Sir Gerard's insistence that Celeste had to marry someone he chose for her.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: Asher & Neithe genuinely care for one another despite everything, and everyone either assumes that they're either siblings or lovers. Typically, after Neithe starts bullying Asher, they assume that she's the older sister.
  • Platonic Prostitution: Asher's first night with Belle. She charges him by the hour so he can rant about his family. Then she starts ranting about her own family...and he turns around and charges her the exact same rate.
  • Psycho for Hire: Gesh, Rylede and Spot are a trio of mercenaries, whom Broat hires — along with a hapless linguist — to hunt down Torquel and Iroth. Gesh seems to be MUCH saner than the other two, but that's not much of a reference next to a bomb-throwing dawg and a Blood Knight.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Spot and Rylede don't seem to care much about getting the job done. The former is happy so long as he gets a good supply of saltpeter and charcoal, and the latter just wants to stab people in impressive ways.
  • Rock Beats Laser: A VTOL aircraft armed with Frickin' Laser Beams doesn't really do too well when people are throwing large metal shafts aimed directly at the turbines. No matter what magic you might have in that 'dragon', a 10-foot iron spear will seriously crimp your style.
  • Sarcastic Confession: Broat seems to live for this sort of thing. ("Excuse me, I have to go interview some mob assassins.") Better yet, evidently he's pulled it off so many times that his wife's sick of the Running Gag.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sweet Polly Oliver: Belle, to build a good and independent life despite the culture of the time, and thanks to inspiration from Asher. This works so well that in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, we learn that eventually, she became the Pope. Though the author won't tell us which one, historically speaking (or she'd no longer be able to blackmail the Vatican...)
  • Took a Level in Badass: Somehow, Sir Gerard's training of Asher did lead to him becoming not just fit and capable, but capable of taking down a mafia don, even if by the standards of the planet he's on he's still just a weak scholar.
    Asher: What? I did tell him I could kick his ass.
  • Unsound Effect: Irony is fond of these. *LOOM* is, according to one of the commentaries, her favorite.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Every character gets a happy ending, even the villains. Except for Irony-chan, who went on to write other things.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Oneder is infamously missing from the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, but it's implied that he simply returned to the Middle East and done well for himself. As Irony put it, 'happy endings for everyone!'


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