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akitku — Brothers' Keepers - Chapter 2 _Page 18
#comic #fantasy #historicalfiction #hospitaller #knight #medieval #comiccomics
Published: 2019-10-27 11:47:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 767; Favourites: 38; Downloads: 0
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Medieval underwear was pretty ridiculous...which you can appreciate in the second panel.
As for the Children's Crusade - it's not clear if a singular event like this ever actually happened. Instead records indicate various groups of 'crusaders' who would set out from France and Germany, usually composed of children, the poor, beggars etc. Some scholars refer to this as mythistory - that is history which was getting mythologized already when it was happening. The children's crusades left us with fairy-tales like that of the Pied Piper and that's partly why I was so interested into weaving this into this story - it just seems like such a rich field for blending history and fantasy.
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Comments: 39
How convenient for the Janissary, slaves and potential “recruits”, just marching right into their shackles.🤦🏻♂️😢
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Yes! And unarmed too because they believe they have to go peacefully!
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There’s this fantastic artist who has an obsession with eunuchs. You might have heard of him. I used to follow that person until I criticized the ethical contradictions inherent in his romantic idealism regarding Sultan Ahmed 2nd and Dracula’s little brother. The more I learn about the Janissary, especially from the Orthodox perspective, the more the Turkish recruitment and slave trade seem no different to me than modern human traffickers. He BLOCKED me over saying that. Maybe it’s my autistic simplicity, but I have trouble comprehending romantic idealism totally devoid of mutual consent. Do traffickers occasionally fall in love with their victims and vice versa? Sure, I’d call that a much more tragic sort of “Stockholm Syndrome”. Slaves and hostages have often formed deep, sincere bonds with their captors. That’s not romantic, it’s a TRAGEDY. That’s all I was trying to say.
He also seems to be trying, overall across several paintings, to cheer for BOTH enemies, Byzantium and Ottoman. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that. 🤷🏻♂️
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Ah, I know what you mean! And I agree with you completely! I finds romanticisng slave/oppressor relations deeply disturbing and I don't understand how it is possible that some people find such thins romantic.
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Sometimes dumb things that we do without much thinking cause us to regret and think back later.
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Very much so! And these sort of things keep happening to poor Folquet!
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I've always wondered about the Children's Crusade.
Of all things the first time I ever heard of it was Clive Barker's Jericho where it was talked about as some grand suicide mission where the innocence of Christian children would keep them safe from the weapons of the infidel.
Went about as well as you'd expect of course.
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Yeah, it's such a bizarre story, but so perfect for fantasy settings. Interestingly, even people back then weren't sure what to think about it and most were skeptical.
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I don't blame them, even for that time period filled with superstition and religious fervor the idea sounds ludicrous.
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I actually DO know about the Children's Crusade. One of those things that's tragic....but also kind of sad. I like the scars on this dude's face, they look really cool.
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Definitely!
I'm glad you like his look! It's the fresh wounds he got in the forest. THey will heal! 
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Technically the Children's Crusade happened 21 years before the start of this story. However, the idea that there was a specific event in 1212 like this is questioned by scholars. Instead they suggest that a number of smaller 'crusades' of children and the poor happened all over the 13th century with perhaps the biggest happening in 1212 (there are two events in that year which could be interpreted as this). Brothers' Keepers will follow that second interpretation.
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Well let's just say that gloriously unflattering underwear is better than none!
Such great dramatic angles to fit the divulging of a tale. Wait, imagine if whatever he writes in song comes true!
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Haha, well when they took of the hose it wasn't so bad. The idea of the hose is just ridiculous and must have been so uncomfortable...
He would be too powerful! Luckily he mostly writes love songs...wait does that make it better?
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I imagine the middle ages to be ass-freezingly cold (to borrow my mum's terminology) - so woollen hosiery might have been appreciated (if not awfully itchy and lousy)
Also, I expect there's something to do with modesty there, but honestly, I fail to view the middle ages as particularly modest...when everyone shares living quarters.
Very true, he could write a song about being rich and loved with no enemies and wonderful health, and he'd be the happiest man around - or just write a song about getting rid of his cursed lute...
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Actually strangely enough the Middle Ages were rather warm! In pop culture we often see it presented as cold because it fits the aesthetic. But the period between 800-1300 is often referred to as the 'Medieval Warm Period' and it had the highest temperatures in this region until modernity! We can tell by plant remains and things like that. Of course, that is still colder than today because right now temperatures are skyrocketing because of global warming. But in the context of European history it was actually the warmest period! The early-modern period was the one that really got cold - the so called 'Little Ice Age' had the lowest temperatures in Europe since the ice age itself. The weather was so cold that the Baltic sea would regularly freeze over!
That's a very good point. The whole concept of modesty was completely different in the period - on one hand it was obsessed about modesty - there were extremely harsh penalties for things like pulling up a lady's skirt for example. But on the other hand, as you say, people lived in close proximity and the ideas of privacy were not as they are now. So in some sense it was much less modest. Not just the middle ages either. If you think that in the Roman period people would use toilets together and treated it as a time to talk about stuff...well that's just weird and totally immodest to a modern mind. I think it's because of the notions of privacy individualism that have developed with modernity.
When talking with my grandma for example, I'm always shocked that they could live so many in a room. She told me stories about how her sister, her sister's husband and his mother lived together in a flat composed of one room! The bathroom was in the corridor and was shared by people from all the flats on that level of the building! To me this seems absolutely impossible. But in the 1950 this was still a thing for many people in Eastern Europe! It was considered inconvenient. But not embarrassing.
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This I didn't know. Though yeah it probably was colder than modern days (or at least, had a more regular temperature pattern than now)
I think their term of modesty was probably different or at least, more focussed on a few aspects rather than jumping them all together. So I think bodily functions were regarded as acceptable (although I did watch this video about manners and apparently belching was rude if done in the direction of someone, so if anyone had to at say, a noble feast (not sure it applied to peasantry) they'd direct their face upwards lol.
Yeah lol the roman shared toilets... Thankfully they are no longer a thing. However our public toilets are similar if you think about it, some people like talking between stalls... Which is really uncomfortable.
Yeah we're not as closely knit as people back then, and the fact that most of can afford our own things like rooms and toilets make up picky, if we had no other choice it would be a different story.
That's horrible to imagine but as you say, it was normal, especially in the cities. I mean, to some extent dorm houses are kind of still like that lol.
I would hate to share a toilet with the neighbours. I don't even like using the toilets at work because some people are filthy animals
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Ooh! That's awesome! The little bits of real history sprinkled in make it seem so authentic!
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You mean the underwear? 
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Uh, I meant the children's crusade, but now I'm DOUBLY impressed!
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Ah, it probably does! Never thought about it...but ouch!
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So glad for modern underwear.
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I think that Peter Raedts argued that the idea of a "children's" crusade was partly a mistranslation of “pueri”, which referred to poor agricultural labourers rather than children, and that is was disorganised and driven as much by poverty and unemployment as religious zeal, although I suppose it's a bias of the secular, modern mindset to imagine that the two can be so easily separated.
I try to be respectful of genuine history while keeping in mind that a story setting which includes vampires and mages is ahistorical by definition. That allows me to use historical myths - Peter des Roches conjuring magical butterflies, the death of King William Rufus being a magical rite, perhaps the Spear of Destiny conjuring an army of ghosts during the First Crusade - which would set serious professional historians like BricksAndStones hyperventilating and issuing seal-all-exits security alerts.
So we start to see where the Children's Crusade ties into the story. Fascinating!
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Yes exactly! The 'pueri' can be understood in many ways, for example as 'the poor' in general. But if I remember right, the few recorded 'preachers' were indeed children, and they did preach that where the knights have failed the 'innocent' will succeed (children being of course, usually seen as innocent). And I think you're absolutely right that trying to pull apart religious zeal of such people away from their economic situation is pretty difficult. People then, as now, live in a world of value, and what they believe about value shapes every other aspect of their experience.
In that light, have you heard about the 'shepherd's crusades'? I read about them recently when doing research for this and found it quite fascinating.
I did decide to be rather free-handed with the Children's crusade, it's just too appealing a story, in a supernatural way, not to use. Also, it's fairly minor event - so playing around does no harm, in my mind.
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It rang a vague bell but I had to look it up. The Master of Hungary sounds like a mystery that you could hang a story on
As for the values, I try to remember that for medieval Europeans, Christianity was as fundamental to their world-view as science is for us. I don't think of them as having "faith" in it any more than we have "faith" in germ theory or electricity. I don't have "faith" that the kettle's going to boil the water for my tea; I just know it'll work. That was why Marc, a ruthlessly pragmatic assassin, was terrified of his excommunication; in the modern era someone like him would never have been worried about something like that, but to him, the threat was as real as an MRI scan revealing a cancer, because his world-view is totally different from a modern character's.
I actually used the Children's Crusade as a background for one of my characters who ended up being published in a White Wolf supplement. My version was influenced by Raedts' work. I was quite excited when I saw you were using it in the Outremer comics. I really love this series. It's given me hours of pleasure and I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going next.
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Interesting that he asks about the lute and not about what happened to the poor guy and who beat him so badly? I guess we will find out in time - either way, the story of the lute seems more mysterious.... Great page as always - there is a lot of dialogue but it is all well written and informative. The mention of the childrens' crusade links with children portrayed in the first few pages here - great work, I cant wait for more!
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I assumed that was a man-bites-dog thing. I don't need to tell you how common violence was in the middle ages. That wouldn't have come as a surprise or shock to Sebastian. A cursed lute, though... not something you see every day, even in the middle ages. No great surprise that it would be the first thing he paid attention to
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Heh, true! Maybe Seb is hoping the things are connected and getting the story of the lute will also lead him to info on who attacked Folquet.
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I was about to say - I thought the Children's Crusade never actually happened.
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Well, there are mixed views. In the 13th century there are a number of mentions of such bands of unarmed people going on 'crusades' and of preachers telling that it is the innocent and poor who can recapture Jersusalem, without the use of weapons, not the knights. These bands would usually roam the countryside, get bored and return home, often becoming victims of bandits and slave traders while at it. Whether that specific event took place is not clear. For the sake of the story I assume that they happened, in some form, and kept happening from time to time.
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You're always welcome, friend.
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