Dark Age Europe: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
A time of anarchy and chaos (roughly 400-
This period heralded the [[After the End|fall]] and [[Balkanize Me|splitting]] of Rome, and the rise of Monasticism in Europe. Most Hollywood monks are pious men clad in long brown robes, with rosaries and tonsure haircuts. They frequently spend all their day dipping feathered pens into inkwells and scribbling strange script into large books by candlelight. (This, when they're not out chasing lusty, busty tavern wenches. Hollywood Monks don't tend to take that whole "celibacy" thing all that seriously, though historically celibacy was not a standard part of the clerical life until later in the Middle Ages. Some clerics even considered prostitution to be a necessary evil. It was, however, mandated in nearly every set of monastic rules, including those of Benedict.)
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But it is also a time of interesting contrasts, during this period Christian and Pagan beliefs and their traditions were syncretized, which gave origin to some of the most famous mythologies and legends of the middle ages, like Beowulf, Siegfried and the aforementioned King Arthur among many others.
The term "Dark Ages" only really makes sense if you know the technical definition of the word "history", which is, "The study of the things people wrote about themselves back in the day." As such, the Dark Ages are dark not because it was [[Darker and Edgier]] and there was very little lighting but because very little was written at the time, leaving History in the dark (ha-ha) about what things were like. The other reason historians view the time as 'dark' is that of those writings that were produced, few survive to the modern day. We cannot tell you definitively that The Dark Ages were more dark and edgy than the eras that came before and after; in fact, depending on your perspective, in some places the lack of Roman overlords breathing down your neck could be seen as an improvement. [http://listverse.com/2008/06/09/top-10-reasons-the-dark-ages-were-not-dark/ In fact, there are plenty of reasons to suppose the Early Medieval era was vastly superior to antiquity in terms of quality-of-life.] Due to the misleading nature of the name, and that modern archaeology and research has uncovered more information about this period than its coiners had access to, modern historians tend to eschew the term "Dark Age(s)" in favor of terms like "Early Middle Ages" or "Early Medieval".
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{{tropelist|Popular tropes for works set in this time period are:}}
* [[An Axe to Grind]]: Axes were probably the most frequent non-spear weapon of the era, as an axe is fairly easy for a relatively unskilled smith to make, and peasants tended to have these around anyway for firewood (though battle axes generally differed from wood axes).
* [[Ancestral Weapon]]: Often [[Truth in Television]], as the difficulties of making steel and pattern welding made high-quality blades expensive,not to mention the shortage of metals, and they tended to get passed down, some eventually receiving [[I Call It Vera|a name]] and a legendary [[Backstory]].
* [[Barbarian Hero]]
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