![]() The work itself is a collection of 12 short, fantastical stories threaded together (loosely) by Marie herself. Superficially, the poem seems like a good guys versus bad guys story, but it’s also about politics, nostalgia, and tragic flaws.Īlthough Marie de France is the protagonist of Lauen Groff’s new novel Matrix, there’s still so much more to discover about this shadowy figure and her lovely Lais. Like Game of Thrones’ “ The Mountain and the Viper,” it looks bad for the good guys until the very end. But then the traitor must be punished, his fate determined in a trial by combat. But the death turns defeat for the emperor’s army into victory, as Charlemagne charges back to vanquish his enemies and conquer the peninsula. At the climax of the story, Roland, Charlemagne’s greatest knight, dies in battle after being betrayed by his own stepfather. The epic centers on a fictionalized account of a Christian campaign against the Islamic rulers of Iberia. This one is cheating a little bit, because there is a 1978 movie based on the 12th-century Song of Roland, but the film’s flaws are exactly why it needs to come back. This is an adventure story, but one that breaks with simplistic preconceptions about medieval gender and gender norms, allowing us moderns to imagine a medieval trans or non-binary experience, but located authentically in a medieval fantasy landscape. The queen and her lover-as it happens a man dressed as a nun-are executed, and Silence, taking up female clothing and identity, marries the king. But surprise! She captures Merlin, who comes to court and reveals the whole thing. At the end, the king orders Silence to capture Merlin, who can only be caught by “the trick of a woman,” thinking it an impossible task. The queen tries to seduce Silence but fails, accuses her of rape, and various adventures ensue. She’s beautiful, talented, learns to fight, runs away with minstrels, and ends up at the court of the king of England. ![]() ![]() Le Roman de Silence from the 13th century tells the story of a girl named Silence, raised as a boy in order to make her eligible to inherit. They’re all diverse, complex stories that are just a very small part of what we call The Bright Ages, a millennium that stretches before us like a vast ocean, terrifying and dangerous, yet wondrous and alive. ![]() We picked these five but could’ve picked many others. Here are just five stories taken from medieval texts of a variety of genres that we would love to see cast with an axe-wielding Charlize Theron, a stately-bearded Oscar Isaac on a throne, or a Dev Patel looking like he needs a hug. Here we find tales of Arthur and his knights but also of monsters and romance, excursions in fairyland, werewolves and nose-biting, betrayals and factions, steamy seductions, and lots of women with swords. As this summer’s strange smash hit The Green Knight showed, there’s a hunger for the paradoxical weirdness and familiarity of the European Middle Ages that is just waiting to be unpacked. But medieval European sources contain countless stories just begging to be broadcast on the big screen or dramatized in a prestige TV series. It’s a setting and atmosphere for fantasy epics, but not historical epics ( Ridley Scott’s latest excepted). For the most part, medieval Europe seems to be mined for its aesthetics and not its stories.
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