A huge revolution happened in history some time in the last few decades. Back in the 1950s, Yore was shiny, bright and technicolour, with vivid clothes and clean floors and lit with glaring light. Sometimes the happy, brightly-clad inhabitants even burst into song. At some point (perhaps the 70s or 80s) darkness suddenly fell upon Yore - all Yore before c. 1500, anyway - and it became a place of drab clothing, mannerless people going "raarrr!" and mud everywhere, and it's all lit with one flickering rushlight, so you can hardly see the mud-splatted, sack-wearing kings and emperors, anyway. Which is probably just as well, because at the same time, they suddenly forgot their table manners.

It's all quite annoying. I've seen loads of documentaries in which various TV historians try to show us that pre-Renaissance people were far more "advanced" that the stereotype, and dazzle us with the Bling of Yore. But whenever the same TV channels do dramas set in those periods, it's all drab colours and mud and gloom.

"I think there was more bling in Arthur of the Britons than in the Last Kingdom, although admittedly that was very 70's bling."

What you're saying is "If only the Last Kingdom Saxons had worn more sheepskin..."*


* For those readers not familiar with 'Arthur of the Britons' the key visual way to distinguish Britons from Saxons is that the Saxons all (without fail) wear lots of sheepskin.

Edited at 2015-10-23 08:28 (UTC)

I think that was Cei the Saxon. He doesn't always wear sheepskin in AotB because he was adopted by Celts. I don't know what it says about his attitude to Bagpi.

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