Yeah, I get it. You’re deeply devoted to this TV show. You eat, sleep and breathe Game of Thrones. I know, I know, it’s awesomely awesome and makes you want to be a witch, wizard or warrior - like ALL the fucking time. Okay! Stop screaming, already, you psycho-geek.
Based on the alleged novels written by some marketing guru, what we have here is another fancy-dress swords and sandals soap opera for white people who feel powerless in the face of a rapidly changing world that is leaving white Western culture behind. This childish obsession with quasi-medieval nonsense is pretty indicative of how the white middle class is feeling marginalized, with no real sense of meaning or purpose. So Hollywood cranks out these simplistic TV shows about the good old days that never were, watched by people who wouldn’t know history from a hysterectomy.
If the show’s producers got a bit more realistic then it might be interesting. But that would mean including the kind of shit that made the Dark Ages pretty fucking dark. For example, why not get all CSI and do some of those super bio-closeups of things like oh... the horrible agony of rotting teeth and gums, follicular fungal growth, skin lesions and the pus and maggot-filled infections that were all too common back then.
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And let’s not forget that anyone who could manage it would shave off all body hair so they weren’t eaten alive by lice and ticks, then wear some stupid wig if they could afford one. Then there’s the fact nobody ever bathed – like not at all. Talk about your epic crotch rot. Add the fact none of the men were circumcised and I guess 69ers were not at the top of anyone’s list.
That's just for starters. A woman dying in childbirth was common as dirt. Mortality rates for your average early medieval peasant were about 50 percent, half of all children died at or shortly after birth. Since religious leaders back then had gone to great lengths to destroy all Greek and Roman knowledge, include that stuff about basic hygiene and medicine, the slightest wound usually meant horrible infections, gangrene and amputations. A bad zit could end up killing you. And if you didn’t have dysentery, intestinal parasites like tapeworms and a variety of gruesome, untreated STDs, you could count yourself among about 5% of the population.
Crops failed regularly due to a wide variety of pests and plant diseases, leading to frequent bouts of starvation, famines and when all else failed – which it often did – folks would resort to good ol’ cannibalism. Since war was far more common than peace, a regular feature of life back then was marauding gangs of horse-riding maniacs. They would appear without any warning and made their living by looting, murdering and raping their way through the countryside. Chances were very good you and your spouse would be impaled and left to die a slow horrible death while your children, if remotely healthy, would be gang-raped then sold into slavery. Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? Yeah, kinda sucks. Better let’s watch some fantasy wank on TV. Grab me a beer, will ya?
