Recommended resources for fine-tuning historical accuracy in medieval fantasy

Brightdreamer

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Not a deep scholar, nor do I play one on TV, but a few books I've read that might help:

For a very basic gloss-over, The Writer's Complete Fantasy Reference (from Writer's Digest Books) offers a simple overview of pseudo-medieval stuff like clothing, occupations, etc. If you want more details on the era, including some debunking of common misconceptions, look for Terry Jones' Medieval Lives.

Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight (David Edge and John Miles Paddock) gives an overview of weapons and armor development with many pictures, though I don't recall specifics of tactics.

Arms and Armor in the Art Institute of Chicago (Walter J. Karcheski, Jr.) has several decent pictures of the museum's collection, plus info on arms and armor of the period. (I've actually seen this collection myself.)
 

Marlys

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The SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) has a resource page here that's worth checking out.
 

autumnleaf

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You might find some useful links at this thread, although it is more aimed at writers of Historical Fiction: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?89500-Resources-by-Era

For information on weaponry and fighting, you could try the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) Alliance: https://www.hemaalliance.com/ Even if you decide not to invest in classes, most HEMA practitioners are all too willing to talk about it.


For meal plans, see the Medieval Cookery site: http://www.medievalcookery.com/
 

Helix

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What country/area are you concentrating on? What was going on in western Europe at that time was different from eastern Africa was different from northern India was different from southern Asia...
 

Kjbartolotta

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For visual reference for armor & weapons, and specifically non-Western, type in 'Dariel Quiogue Pinterest'. His pin boards are just *kisses hand then makes weird Italian chef motion*.
 

Dmbeucler

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I'll second the SCA recommendation. You can probably find some lovely local experts or be pointed at some more distant ones.

I'd recommend narrowing down what specific time period, as Medieval can cover almost a thousand years with some very different styles of dress and technology.

Depending how deep down the research rabbit hole you want to go in the clothing field, you can look for extant clothing of the time, you can look to period paintings, and there is a wonderful community of people recreating period clothing and documenting it. Dress diaries used to be the key word search, although I haven't kept up with it as much as I'd like.
 

Ariella

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Beware! The medieval history rabbit hole runs very deep. I went in there looking for some story research one time, and stumbled out blinking a decade later with a PhD.

I used to keep a blog with links to medieval worldbuilding resources. It has a tag cloud in the right-hand menu that can be used as an index. https://writemedieval.livejournal.com

See also Professor Martha Carlin's excellent collection of links to information about medieval food, cooking and running a household. https://people.uwm.edu/carlin/research-links/
 

snafu1056

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Have you checked out Osprey's illustrated military history books? They have tons of them on various periods and armies and they focus on what you're looking for--battle tactics, armor, weapons, etc. And there are plenty of pictures.

Here's a typical example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1855323478/?tag=absowrit-20
 
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Twick

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I think the main thing is to keep your technology consistent. Most other things can be covered by "it's a fantasy," so if my peasant buttons up his tunic even though buttons are a Renaissance thing, they *could* have existed far earlier. If he puts his rabbit meat in a flaky pastry crust when unsweetened "coffins" were the medieval norm, well, the ingredients like butter and flour existed and could have been used. But if the peasant goes rabbit-hunting with a repeating rifle, only to encounter a knight in armour with a longsword, it's going to come across as odd.
 

Brightdreamer

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But if the peasant goes rabbit-hunting with a repeating rifle, only to encounter a knight in armour with a longsword, it's going to come across as odd.

Though if the knight lifts its visor and turns out to be the rabbit, that might loop right back to cool...

Otherwise, yeah - definitely consider consistency. And, if it is fantasy and not alternate Earth, do not feel strictly bound by how things played out here. As Twick mentions, there must be the ingredients and technology for a thing, but the adoption and spread of the thing can certainly vary significantly from our history.
 

danatcsimpson

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So, this is watching rather than reading, but I've really enjoyed the historian Lucy Worsley's documentaries from the BBC. She does a lot of hands-on re-enactment like sleeping in a Tudor rope bed or trying to climb our of an ice-cold pond in a medieval wool dress. There's a lot of sensory details that come through in her shows (and her writing like If Walls Could Talk) that have really helped me create an immersive fantasy atmosphere.
 

Gillian

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I've been off AW for a while, so I didn't see your query. I teach history for writers these days, because it turned out that simply finding suitable information didn't work for many novelists. One of the reasons I've been away from the Cooler is research into the relationship between what fiction writers need and what historians do. Also, due to pressure from writers, I co-wrote a book which is pretty much an English Middle Ages for writers. Ignore the bits by me and find something else for the military side of things (for neither of us are military historians - we do send readers to good work on the subject, however), but the clothing section of The Middle Ages Unlocked was written by Katrin Kania, who is a leading textile archaeologist and works with museums and living history people. She also has a blog where she talks about her work. http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2017/08/18/some-ideas-echo/
 

Smiling Ted

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Starting in the 1300s in the West, there are manuals of fencing with arming sword, buckler, bastard sword, and so on. This is one of the earliest known.
The major manual of strategy for Western Medieval Europe was De Re Militari (Concerning Military Matters) by Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. However, it was written in the 4th Century, so it's unclear how much real-world effect it had 1,000 years later. On the other hand, the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Europe) was so prolific in producing manuals of military strategy that there's a Wikipedia category of them. You could start there with some English translations.
For a firsthand knightly account, you could try The Book of Chivalry by Geoffroi de Charny (Livre de Chevalerie).
There's also The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry, by Christine de Pizan, a remarkable figure in her own right.
 

Kithica

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So, this is watching rather than reading, but I've really enjoyed the historian Lucy Worsley's documentaries from the BBC. She does a lot of hands-on re-enactment like sleeping in a Tudor rope bed or trying to climb our of an ice-cold pond in a medieval wool dress. There's a lot of sensory details that come through in her shows (and her writing like If Walls Could Talk) that have really helped me create an immersive fantasy atmosphere.

To this I would add Tudor Monastery Farm, also by the BBC where a historian and two archaeologists live as Tudors for a year and filmed their experience. I believe the whole thing is available on YouTube. (There are several Farm series - Victorian, Edwardian, Wartime - and they are all WONDERFUL, I will watch Ruth Goodman (the historian) do absolutely anything).

Ruth also wrote a book about the experience - what it felt like to live as a Tudor for a year (How to be a Tudor: a Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life). I haven't read that one yet, but her Victorian one was amazing, and included details about food, clothing, diapers, menstrual pads, work, sports, pubs, etc. etc. - all the tiny details of day-to-day life. Now, the Tudor stuff is all very specifically 1500s, and also very British, but it does fall within your stated range, so... *shrug*

There was another BBC series you might be interested in called Secrets of the Castle where the same group of three went to France and lived on the site where a crew is reconstructing a medieval castle using the technology of the time (this one is 1200s). So you get detailed information about how a blacksmith worked, for example. And a local water mill, a trebuchet, etc. Ruth also talks about how the home would have been kept on a castle building site, and a bit about life inside the castle. This one is also all on YouTube.

I'm a giant dork, I love all this stuff. And the hosts are great. Very knowledgeable, and so excited about getting to try for real all the things they've read about in their studies.
 

benbenberi

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There's a new book "Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts" by Alexander Langlands, an archaeologist & historian who has worked on a lot of the same BBC re-creationist series as Ruth Goodman & has a deep knowledge of how the physical environment & handiworks were made. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but the previewed bits on Amazon look amazing.(Though densely written - I think this is a book to sink into, not to skim.)
 

SimaLongfei

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Youtube is a greatly undervalued resource. All sorts of hobbiest and experts give free opinions, research and advice on just such a subject. Though, it'll be easiest to find arms and armor enthusiast than like ... way-of-life. So here are my favorites

1. Scholagladiatoria. Tends to have better pacing than the others, and goes by historical sources more than personal speculation. Fantastic swords and sword fighting resource.

2.Shadiversity. He tends to be a bit too long in his videos, but he's damn thorough. He covers a wider range of topics, like how to build castles, but tends to also focus on arms and armor. Bonus for speculative videos on what fantasy species (dwarves, elves, minotaurs) would prefer what weapons and why, in a realistic sense.

3. Lindybeige. He covers whatever topics interest him, but a lot of ancient world or medieval subjects. Interesting guy, and I enjoy his videos.

4. Metatron. Focuses on Roman and Japanese arms and armor, but also Japanese culture, especially of the medieval period.

I'd avoid Skallimgrin's channel as he tends to be too speculative and arm-chair-quarterback for my tastes on learning historical accuracy in arms and armor.
 

Roxxsmom

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Lots of great stuff out there. Beware sites that perpetuate misconceptions or myths about pre-industrial times, like the notion that no one ever bathed in medieval Europe (false) or had any leisure time, or that girls always were normally married off in their early teens at all times and places in the middle ages (they weren't).

Europe is a continent, and the so-called middle ages lasted over a thousand years, so there is no one sweeping definition of medieval in terms of customs, culture or technology.

Also consider whether or not you are writing a strictly historical fantasy, set in the real world with relatively slight fantasy elements that don't change or defy actual history, or in an alternative history where the speculative elements change things (such as Jacqueline Cary's Kushiel's Dart books), or in a secondary world that roughly parallels our own, or in a completely made-up secondary world that is at roughly a medieval technology level but which lacks many of the institutions (such as the Church etc) that drove medieval society in Europe.

There are many things, like pockets sewn into clothing that didn't exist in medieval Europe, but there's no reason they couldn't have. There are also a ton of misconceptions about medieval society, not to mention some disagreements between scholars.