#my profs are hitting me over the head but it's 11pm and I've been up since 9am doing cover letters French exams and chores

[pfenniged]

What do you think of the concept of chivalry?

Well, from a historical standpoint, I think it’s pretty much common knowledge that it was an ideal, even in its heyday. 

However, I actually read a really interesting concept in a history magazine I received for Easter (my family knows my niche areas of interest), which is the concept that any sort of chivalric valour fell out of practice the more and more the renaissance came about and the more Italian concept of the “gentleman” came forward. 

While chivalry literally has it’s etymology in the word “cheval,” or “horse” in French (for horsemen), its true ideals grew out of a combination of the fact that wooing women back in the day and ladies was literally pretty much the only independent way to move up the ranks socially for many men (ironically), and vice versa. But we tend to forget that literally half of the Medieval era involved men wooing young women (sometimes far too young cough cough Margaret Beaufort), arranging marriages to get more land, and in a world that was so incredibly violent, that these more chivalric virtues ended up being completely endorsed by the church in England and France actually in particular (mostly because it was an excuse to stop bloodshed that didn’t directly benefit them). 

Like most idiots people, traditionally heterosexual men in a supremely heterosexual medieval society would most often listen to something that would win them the affections (and money) of a hot lady, as a well as a title from her father who is happy to have someone take her off his hands and have his legacy continue, rather than a set of ideals enforced by the church (#lame).

But I did like this concept overall, because while it wasn’t meant to necessarily put the power back into the women’s court, in some sense, it highlights that probably ninety percent of chivalric values were men looking for female approval in order to marry rich (and by association, the lady’s family’s approval) that he was meeting some idealistic values, rather than men wooing for the sense of some grand sense of love, as we like to think of chivalry today.

I’m not sure if you meant chivalry in the historical sense, but I’m going to assume you did, since I usually post/create a disturbing amount of War of the Roses material. Like most people, the concept itself I like in theory, but I think in practice, like this article highlighted, it can really be watered down to “Noble women actually had more power than they were ever aware of, in that most of the time they held the financial backing of their family and titles that would be given to who they marry. Ambitious, upwardly mobile men knew this, and flipped the script about chivalry being about women falling for hot chivalric men because #patriarchy. At the same time, however, these same men also recognised they needed these same noble women in order to move upwards. Once the Renaissance occurred, and there were more (albeit limited) means of upward mobility, as well as this more Italian concept of “the gentleman (who didn’t really have to act like the gentleman we think of today), the concept of chivalry puttered out.”

(You’re welcome for that beautiful run-on horrible thesis statement Classics degree).

#my profs are hitting me over the head but it's 11pm and I've been up since 9am doing cover letters French exams and chores #history #anonymous #here you go nonny <3 #chivalry #medieval history #The War of the Roses #any chance I can bring in Margaret Beaufort I will so MARGARET BEAUFORT #personal #answers