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Most people do not have a deep understanding of historical events or how people used to live, including me of course. Which is why often certain myths and misinformation tends to stick around. So lets get get some rules up: 1. Should you debunk a myth give either a brief explanation for why it is a myth or provide a link where someone could find the necessary information within a reasonable amount of time. 2. If its not obvious explain where the myth is portrayed. 3. Debates will happen because people disagree about certain points, so try to point out the more obvious myths if you can. 4. If a debate happens use sources, but be charitable and explain what the source says and make it easy for others to use your sources. The myth that usually annoys me is the idea that using a bow, and particularly a long bow requires little strength, which is why it is reserved for skinny ladies in RPGs and in some historical movies. This is usually contrasted with how melee combatants would supposedly be the strong ones., which is an advantage, but which is not ultimately necessary. Where as with a longbow you had to be pretty strong. This passage from wikipedia on English longbows tells us this: quote:"Training[edit] Also, this is my first post so i apologize in advance if this is bad, i just hoped this would be a safe place to err a bit and test the waters. Midig has a new favorite as of 05:16 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 05:04
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 17:00 |
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One of my favourite common historical inaccuracies is the idea that the fourth wife of Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves, was horrendously ugly. The rumour: After Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour died of a fever after giving birth, Thomas Cromwell advised Henry to marry a woman known as Anne of Cleves. The marriage would help further Cromwell's Protestant agenda, not to mention build a much needed alliance for England at the time with the Germans. For a myriad of reasons, Henry and Anne could not meet, and so a portrait of Anne was painted and sent to Henry, who was so smitten with her that he agreed to marry her despite having never met. However, once they were wedded, their marriage was never consummated because Anne repulsed Henry so much with her ugly horse face that he wound up getting a divorce and then beheading Cromwell for "I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse."  So here's what really happened. Henry VIII was a hopeless romantic. He wanted to surprise his queen-to-be by dressing in disguise and kissing her unexpectedly because to him, true love would mean that they would recognize each other despite not ever having met. Of course Anne did not respond so well to being kissed by a complete stranger, you know, especially when she's betrothed to the King of England, the same king who divorced his first wife because he believed her to not be a virgin when they had married and for having the second beheaded for her supposed licentiousness. Anyway, Henry was not pleased with Anne's unromantic response, and became especially bitter towards her. So much that he a fuss of not wanting to marry her. On their wedding night he decided he liked her even less than he did before, and started going on about how ugly she was, how she smelled bad, and how her sagging breasts were proof that she wasn't a virgin. The reports and evidence about Anne suggest that whatever disgruntled Henry was simply not true, and that he was just acting in a rather spiteful manner. Anne of Cleves had an incredibly sheltered life and was so naive of what takes place in the marriage bed that she was blissfully unaware that anything was amiss. She dutifully allowed her husband to kiss her every night and she was shocked to later learn that these nightly duties involved a bit more than that and became quite distressed as a result of learning about the birds and the bees. After all, this was a king who had already rid himself of two queens who had displeased him. So much for sagging breasts indicating sexual experience, she certainly had a complete lack thereof. Anne's portrait shows a moderately pretty and slender woman with full breasts, and on the side she was reported to be tall. In all fairness, Henry VIII seemed to have a thing for smaller and more petite women, as was the case with the three former queens so perhaps Anne really just not his type. If he were in the itty bitty titty committee, then it's unlikely he would have liked Anne's "sagging" breasts. As for having "evil smells" about her, this is literally a case of pot kettle black because Henry had some especially noisome ulcers on his leg that were often infected and leaked pus everywhere. So was Anne of Cleves actually super fugly? Probably not. Most reports suggest that she was of "middling beauty" and Henry was certainly known for throwing hissy fits. Sounds just like the sort of thing that happens today when a dude says or does something inappropriate via some lame dating site, gets a mild rejection from a girl, and then starts calling her a fat ugly bitch that he never wanted to have sex with in the first place. Anne held her head up all throughout the insults and the divorce and ended up an independent woman with a rather comfortable income in the end, a true rarity in the mid 1500's. Not a bad trade-off for going down in history as being the ugly queen. Sources: Anne of Cleves – Flanders Mare? Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII contains much of what I have already said as well.
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Apr 6, 2016 08:05
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There's a myth that the Irish famine was caused by a lack of food. But at the time crops, livestock and food products were being exported in vast quantities. The potato blight affected many European countries around that time but didn't cause devastation anywhere but Ireland. The massive exports was said to be necessary as any export ban would be interfering the in the free-market. However high-tariffs made importing grains prohibitively expensive and also undercut the idea that it was pure free-market liberalism behind the British governments inaction. There are some who believe the British response was their solution to the "Irish question".
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Apr 7, 2016 18:36
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Marenghi posted:There's a myth that the Irish famine was caused by a lack of food. But at the time crops, livestock and food products were being exported in vast quantities. The potato blight affected many European countries around that time but didn't cause devastation anywhere but Ireland. The gist of this is correct but the economic reality is a little more complicated than that. It had been illegal for Catholics to own land up until a couple generations previous; unsurprisingly land ownership was not widespread, leaving most Irish Catholics to work as tenant farmers. There were virtually no protections for tenants and as Irishmen and Catholics they were legally second-class citizens to begin with, so they were largely helpless to do anything about landlords' attempts to extract as much rent as possible. If a tenant didn't like their terms they could be unceremoniously evicted from their homes, because there were no shortage of starving Irish peasants willing to work under predatory conditions if it meant a chance at food and a roof. Because rents were so oppressive, an Irish tenant's only real hope of being able to meet their obligations was to devote the majority of their time and land to growing cash crops to make rent. Potatoes were the staple crop of choice for the tiny portion of their land they could afford to devote to their own sustenance, because they took so little space and effort to raise. I say "choice", but in reality there was no other feasible option: any time tenants started raising more than the bare minimum food for themselves, landlords would notice and decide this meant they could squeeze more profit out of them, so they'd jack up rents until their tenants were forced back to potato farming out of sheer efficiency. This brutal system is what made the famine so particularly tragic: even as the food they depended on failed, Irish farmers would still be at work harvesting grain to sell to pay the rent. If they sold their cash crops, they'd keep their home but have nothing to eat; if they ate it, they'd be evicted for nonpayment of rent and lose their only means of supporting themselves (and probably wind up in debtor's prison, to boot.)
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Apr 7, 2016 19:34
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