Are there any TV shows based on the Middle Ages you would recommend?

BBC’s Hollow Crowns adaptations of Shakespeare’s history plays.
Starz’ Pillars of the Earth.
BBC’s The Last Kingdom and Tom Fontana’s Borgia Faith and Fear come respectively before and after the Middle Ages, but they’re both good.
Tudors is campy as hell, but quite watchable.
BBC/Masterpiece’s Cadfael is excellent.
If you can stand the subtitles, there’s some good French adaptation of Maurice Druon’s Rois Maudits.

Oh not you too! The Marvel brand isnt doing cinema any favors. These trite morality plays arent helping superhero movies either. Arent you exhausted by Marvel’s aesthetic? I hear the defense that it’s a genre, but the problem is that it’s a brand. These are shot like car commercials, no real direction. You want actual cinematic superhero films? Try Shyamalan’s Unbreakable; PWSA’s Res Evil 4&5. Cinema isn’t supposed to be a poly-sci essay or a polemic, told in clunky close-ups, bland action, etc

**poli-sci… and you know what’s infinitely better than any Marvel movie? Jupiter fucking Ascending. Hell, any Wachowski film. Or Edgar Wright’s. Sorry for rant but you were praising CA like it’s a goddamn Edward Yang movie. It’s all shouted worldviews, heinous action coverage, grimdark fetishism, horrible use of lighting, no sense of even competent cross-cutting. Meta diologue analysis of American exceptionalism? No thanks.

I think you and I have fundamentally different aesthetics, Anon.

1. Marvel’s films can be incredibly stylistically different from one another – Joe Johnston, Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branaugh, James Gunn, the Russo brothers, are quite distinctive in their styles and interests, and indeed have produced movies that belong to different genres that all happen to be superhero movies.

2. Captain America: First Avengers is not grimdark fetishism. (If it’s grimdark fetishism you’re looking for, Batman v. Superman is over yonder) It’s 40s camp, and it’s absolutely expressive of Joe Johnston’s aesthetic. Seriously, go watch Rocketeer and then watch Captain America and tell me that you can’t see the visual and thematic similarities. And yeah, I like some ideas in my super hero movies; better that than Zack Snyder.

3. I don’t find your alternatives appealing in the slightest. Unbreakable is over-praised and incredibly self-serious from one of the biggest flash in the pans in cinema history. PWSA’s movies are video game movies rather than super-hero movies and they’re frankly unwatchable. Jupiter Ascending is ridiculously overstuffed, badly acted, poorly plotted, and strangely pro-bestiality, and if you don’t like cinema as polemic, how can you enjoy Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolutions?

But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion about my aesthetic preferences. You don’t have to like what I like or vice versa.

What do you think about Marvel’s Captain America movies? To be honest, I’m not really into comic book films (or comic books, for that matter; I’ve only read Watchmen, the wonderful Eternauta and a few others), but your People’s History of the Marvel Universe posts on the Cap’n have really intrigued me. Would you recommend the movies? Or, if not, where could I begin with the Captain?

I absolutely adore the Marvel Captain America movies. They certainly have some shortcomings – there’s not enough about Cap having domestic politics as well as opinions on foreign policy and civil liberties – but they really capture the essence of Steve Rogers.

Captain America: First Avenger isn’t a perfect film, but Joe Johnston gets Steve Rogers at a bone-deep level and understands how to make American pop culture of the 1930s and 1940s sing like no one else. (Seriously, everyone should watch the Rocketeer) The Cap origin story is rendered perfectly – skinny Steve standing up to bullies, Erskine and Steve’s discourse (”The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so…a strong man, who has known power all his life, they lose respect for that power. But a weak man, who values strength, and love, and compassion?… Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing. That you must stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.”), the wonderful camp sequence of “Star-Studded Man With a Plan” wonderfully evokes both the good and bad of 40s Captain America and WWII patriotism. The rest of it is a fairly decent action movie and love story, even it it’s not spectacular.

Captain America: Winter Soldier is one of the best Marvel movies, and the Russo brothers being at the helm of Civil War and the next Avengers movies gives me a lot of hope. And they absolutely nail Steve Rogers and Cap America – both the good and bad sides of him being a man out of time, the way that someone who really believes in America as an ideal not as its institutions is not a boring or conservative person but a genuine rebel, his secret super-power being weaponized ideology, using Operation Paperclip and HYDRA to reflect on the moral compromises that came out of WWII, all of it. A perfect adaptation of the 1970s Captain America comics.

Is there a realistic historical comparison to the Bravos/Water Dancers? I mean, how did people way back when setup/organize dueling where a bunch of guys stabbing swords at one another in the streets didn’t get out of hand and instead became a mainstay of their culture? And what do they sustain themselves on financially outside of dueling since there’s only one full time job occupation for them in the First Sword that we know of?

Bam.

Historically, stuff did get out of hand, hence Romeo and Juliet and “civil blood makes civil hand unclean.”

If the Braavosi bravos follow the same trajectory as the Italian bravos, they are hired on a short-term basis by noblemen/wealthy folks who need bodyguards or who want to fight with their rivals. And when they’re not doing that, they run protection rackets.

Do you have an image of what a practical version of Robert Baratheon’s Antler Helmet looks like, seeing as even though it (depicted in the World of Ice and Fire) looks pretty damn cool, the antlered helmet would be impractical and potentially life threatening for the wearer to use in an actual combat situation?

Is Dorne still paying taxes to the Iron Throne, and if not, when did they stop?

Yes.

Regarding your suggestions for a Crownlands development plan, what would a new order of knights look like? What kind of service would they be required to provide, in return for what kind of compensation? Thank you!

So the thing about a good order of knighthood is that you don’t give people money, you give them access, privilege, and pageantry. To give some historical examples – the Order of the Garter in the U.K was so prized because it was a personal gift from the monarch, it meant you were in the inner circle with the king, the crown prince, and only 24 others, and you get to wear a fancy garter proclaiming you’re one of the cool kids. Membership in the Order of the Golden Fleece of the Hapsburgs meant that you got to vote on whether to go to war, and you got a bunch of judicial privileges.

So, taking Robert I as our monarch, you could have the Order of the Stag be the King’s personal command in all battles (so there’s your access and your service). They’d have the exclusive right to wear golden antlers on their helms and on their livery (there’s your pageantry). And maybe they’d swear loyalty only to the king.

Do you think it was Joffrey’s treatment of Sansa that was what finally turned the Hound against him?

I don’t think the Hound ever particularly liked Joffrey.

Was, to pick a famous example, Henry VIII’s seemingly-psychopathic willingness to execute wives and long-time friends/councilors seen as such by contemporaries? I’m just wondering why Joffrey’s evident sadism receives such an apathetic reception from the courtiers.

It was certainly seen as capricious. Kings were supposed to execute people, but the rapid shifts back and forth made for a very nervous politics where partisans strove mightily to change the world and paid the price with their heads, and the survivors were those who were best able to turn their coats on a moment’s notice.

So I think the apathy you perceive is most likely a cover for a good deal of terror, and the majority were trying to keep their heads down and avoid his attentions.

Simon Rumble Asks: Cheesemonger

How rich is Illyrio? Where does it all come from?

Extremely rich, although less rich than Xaro Xhoan Daxos. But enough to become a Magister of Pentos and marry the sister of the cousin of the Prince of Pentos. So he’s definitely in the top 1% if not the .1%.

In terms of where the money comes from, he took the nest egg he and Varys built from their various schemes and invested it into “spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things.”