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The Middle Ages - TV Tropes

️Fri May 04 2007

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The Middle Ages designates the time span roughly from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance and Reformation. The adjective "medieval," coined from Latin medium (middle) and aevum (age), refers to whatever was made, written, or thought during the Middle Ages...Medieval authors, of course, did not think of themselves as living in the "middle"; they sometimes expressed the idea that the world was growing old and that theirs was a declining age, close to the end of time.

— The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1, "Introduction: The Middle Ages"

The era of stone castles, The Crusades, Robin Hood, and fat, wine-loving, and lecherous (but good-hearted) friars. Also home to dragons, wizards, knights in shining armour, Courtly Love, beautiful princesses with big headdresses, and tall, spirally gothic architecture. Expect to see a Corrupt Churchman or two wandering the landscape burning witches, heretics, and pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with them. Also expect to see people comically dropping left and right from the Black Death. ("Bring out your deeeeaaaaa——" *Fall* *Splut!*). Hear the Ominous Latin Chanting of monks singing Mass.

If the story does not take place in some unspecified kingdom, the setting is likely to be a mythologized Britain or France, though Jerusalem, which had pretty much been ignored since Bible Times will now also be used as the stage for all sorts of flashy battles involving cutlass-wielding Turks and ruggedly handsome Knights Templar.

The Middle Ages lasted for about a thousand years, and fell into five periods: the ugly Sub-Roman period (the fall of Rome, the barbarian invasions, the rise of Islam, and so on), the pleasant Carolingian Renaissance, the ugly Viking/Hungarian invasions, the pleasant High Middle Ages, and the ugly period of the Black Death and its aftermath. The classic medieval tropes above are exclusively drawn from the High Middle Ages: the period which stretches, approximately, from 1066 to 1348.

The Trope Codifier for the High Middle Ages was the 19th century, when the Middle Ages were celebrated as the embodiment of Romanticism in the Romanticism Versus Enlightenment debate. Ancient Greece, meanwhile, had been cast as the embodiment of Enlightenment in the 18th century. In reality, Ancient Greece and the High Middle Ages were very similar societies: both valued philosophy, science, and engineering, but feared and used magic and loved to fight. Both also had slaves, and a de facto caste system; both had a mix of slave/serf and free farmers as the basis of society. The Greeks valued city living more, though, and were a mix of petty kingdoms, democracies ("democracy" meant "mob rule" for a very long time thanks to their example), and lawless autocracies; but Persia was feudal (and most of medieval material culture — knights, castles, tunics, pointy shoes, roses, rhyming poetry, princesses in towers wearing conical hats with veils, wizards with robes covered in holy symbols — is originally Persian). It's fair to say that the High Middle Ages and classical Greece would've understood each other well, if they'd interacted — while contemporary Romantics and Enlightenment-ists would both have reasons to dislike both societies.

For a version of medieval tropes that casts a wider and more accurate net, check out the constituent periods:

(Although even here, the three initial periods of the Middle Ages are sort of a blur.)

See also Ye Goode Olde Days for the excessively positive version and The Dung Ages for the excessively negative. When history has been abandoned altogether, you have probably made the epic voyage to The Time of Myths.

It became a Cyclic National Fascination during the Romanticism, when people grew disillusioned with technological advances and yearned for "simpler" times.

The Oriental counterpart might be Imperial China and Jidaigeki.

Popular tropes associated with this time period are:

Aristocrats Are Evil
Black Knight
Christianity Is Catholic: Though it would eventually be throughout most of Central and Western Europe, in Eastern Europe and the Near East, Orthodoxy was more prevalent; yet is much less common in fictional works. (And officially, the final split came in 1054, and reunification was seen as a viable possibility until 1204.)
Courtly Love
The Dung Ages
Ermine Cape Effect
Feudal Overlord
Gratuitous Princess: There weren't really many more then than now. Except a lot of small kingdoms have been eaten up since then and a number of states have changed from kingdoms to republics, so there were a lot more reigning princesses. There may be girls today who, if you assumed the continuance of feudal law, would in fact qualify as princesses, but who work as waitresses and don't know they are titular princesses. (To be pedantic, many of the smaller states (especially the ones in the Holy Roman Empire) were neither kingdoms nor principalities, so their "princesses" would technically have been "duchesses," "palatine countesses", "electresses" and possibly "marchionesses." Still, it's close enough for government work.)
Gorgeous Period Dress: Except for (ugh!) Ye Peasants and one or two of the more self-denying Churchmen. Look for puffy, slashed sleeves and trunk-hose among the men, though these were really Renaissance fashions.
Historical Domain Character: Even when they happen to be talking lions.
Horny Vikings
Knight in Shining Armor
Medieval Ballads
Medieval Morons
No Woman's Land: When the setting is The Dung Ages.
Pimped-Out Dress: Lots of fur, silk, and velvet for the nobility (though the last was not actually invented until very late in the period).
The Plague
Renaissance Fair: The Theme Park Version of the Middle Ages in modern times
Stock Medieval Meal
Swashbuckler: One of the two classic periods for the setting.
Vestigial Empire: The Roman Empire was still around, based in Constantinople. In fact, historians often define the Middle Ages as the period from the fall of the Roman Empire in the west (476) to the fall of the Roman Empire in the east (1453). Restoring The Empire is a popular scenario, especially in Strategy Games.
- It also should be noted that it took several centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire for the general population to accept that the Empire was really gone. This applies to both the eastern and western empires.
The Wild Hunt: Deriving from legends of this period.
Ye Goode Olde Days
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Though actually rarer than one might expect in most serious modern works, 'tis more common in older ones. ("'˜By the light of Heaven!' said Prince John to Hubert, 'an thou suffer that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the gallows!'")