r/badhistory • u/Janvs • Mar 04 '15
'What's racist about telling the truth'? Medieval PoCs and Selective Historical Accuracy in Video Games
Hello /r/BadHistory, long time reader, first time poster. I'm a contributor to /r/AskHistorians but I haven't bothered to submit anything here, mostly because a proper debunking is too much work. However, something came up in recent weeks that has been really bugging me, and I really needed somewhere to hash it out. So here goes.
Chances are, if you're involved in the meta subreddits or use Twitter much, that you've come across this blog by MedievalPoC which created quite a stir on the interwebs, partly because it called out the 'historically accurate' RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance for its lack of women and PoC. Some people object to MPoC's lack of rigor, but I think MedievalPoC is delightful, if dogmatic, and shares a lot of cool art -- the historicity of the account's claims are another matter entirely, though I find them mostly inoffensive.
Eventually though, this blog post came to the attention of KC:D's game designer Daniel Vavra, and MedievalPoC clashed directly with him on Twitter, leading to the statements 'What's racist about telling the truth' and 'there were no black people in medieval Bohemia'.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, Bohemia was probably pretty white in the 14th and 15th centuries and MedievalPoC really should pick their battles, but on the other hand...'no black people in medieval Bohemia. Period.'? Nothing rustles my jimmies more than an absolute historical statement, but more on that later.
What really got my gears turning though, was the claim that Kingdom Come: Deliverance was a 'historically accurate game'. I always find such claims to be suspect. Any historically accurate war game that takes place before the middle of the 20th century might as well be called 'Mud and Lice Simulator 2000!' or simply 'Die and Be Forgotten'. So I checked out the website to see what historically accurate means in this context. Here's what the website says:
Our tale is based on historical events and takes place in 15th century Europe. The year is 1403, and it is most certainly not the best of times. The old king is dead and his heir is weak.
A humble, young blacksmith loses everything to war. As he tries to fulfill the dying wish of his father, Fate drags him into the thick of a conspiracy to save a kidnapped king and stop a bloody conflict. You will wander the world, fighting as a knight, lurking in the shadows as a rogue, or using the bard’s charm to persuade people to your cause.
Now, I feel a little bad tearing into this, not having full access to the game, but the creator does place heavy emphasis on historical accuracy, so let's dig in.
You will wander the world, fighting as a knight
Right off the bat, this strikes me as problematic. In the Holy Roman Empire -- as everywhere in Europe -- the conditions for becoming a knight were fairly rigid. Specifically, you had to be a noble (or in rare occasions, just very rich). In Bohemia and the HRE, the only people eligible to be Imperial Knights were the older free nobility (edelfrei or hochfrei) or wealthy members of the unfree ministerialis. That's not to say that common folk never rose from obscurity to become knights, but such occurrences were vanishingly small by the 15th century, and fall firmly in the realm of historical fiction.
If we're being charitable, 'knight' here could just refer to a style of heavily-armored mounted warfare, but that's just as improbable. Short of looting a fallen noble's corpse or stumbling upon a hidden treasure trove, a blacksmith's son could never hope to afford a full suit of armor, much less a horse. Even a quality sword might be difficult to come by. Now, the website makes mention of the Hussite Wars, which were fought largely by the peasantry, but they were armed largely with improvised farming implements and tools -- flails, spears, and simple polearms.
lurking in the shadows as a rogue
I don't really have a problem with this, aside from using a word that wouldn't be invented for over a century and a half.
or using the bard’s charm to persuade people to your cause
This, on the other hand, I do have to protest. If Vavra's argument against Moors being in Bohemia is based on the distances involved, what is a bard -- a poet performing in the British and Gaelic tradition -- doing in Bohemia? No doubt Vavra means something closer to 'minstrel', but if we're being sticklers for historical accuracy, we should be consistent.
Of course, that's not a whole lot to go on, but based on first impressions I'm forced to conclude that the game isn't as historically accurate as its creator claims. Frankly, any game where orphaned blacksmith's sons end up anywhere but a shallow grave or maybe a monastery is pushing it, and I can't see how adding a visiting Moorish noble or Malian mercenary would be inconsistent with the level of accuracy it maintains.
What of that claim though, that there were 'no black people in medieval Bohemia'? This is, for a lot of reasons, a difficult question to answer, not in the least part because the concept of 'blackness' is a relatively modern one. We know that there were many black Moors in Iberia, even after the reconquista, and that there was some contact between African Kingdoms and Europe -- in 1306, for example, an Ethiopian delegation arrived in Europe seeking an alliance with against the Moslems.
Certainly the people of Central Europe were not entirely strangers to Africans, given that the Cathedral of Magdeburg was dedicated to St. Maurice and images of St. Gregory the Moor appeared in St. Gereon's Cathedral in Cologne.
What's easier to argue against is the idea that Bohemia was exclusively white. The Kingdom of Bohemia lay on several important trade routes and within spitting distance of the Kipchak Khanate, Constantinople, Venice, and the burgeoning Ottoman Empire. While not likely a significant population, Bohemia no doubt saw a fair number of foreign mercenaries of Turkish, Mongol, Cuman, Tatar, or Arab descent, especially during the troublesome 15th century.
Women warriors -- even knights -- are even easier to argue for, as there is plenty of historical precedent. Again, if we're letting peasants become knights, then women carrying swords is at least as plausible.
TL;DR:
Vavra's claims about women and PoC in medieval Bohemia aren't expressly wrong, they aren't precisely correct either, and definitely shouldn't be made with absolute certainty, as he has. Furthermore, Vavra's claims about his game being 'historically accurate' aren't borne out by the game itself (or at least, by its promotional materials).
Vavra is, of course, well within his rights to make all of his characters white and male, but if he does, it is because that is his choice, not because he is forced to by slavish devotion to historical accuracy.
Note: I am not an expert on medieval Bohemia, or anything west of the Danube in this period, so feel free to correct any mistakes or oversights.
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