Playing with Medieval(ist?) Religion in Forum-Based Play-by-Post Roleplaying Games: A Case Study

What appears below is the text of a paper delivered in the Society's session at the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Minimal editing, other than that needed to suit online presentation and the insertion of illustrative images, has been applied to the text of the paper as given. Owing to some of the limitations of this webspace, notes in the paper are presented as unlinked endnotes, with apologies.

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𝔒ne of the means through which people begin to engage with the medieval most directly is roleplaying games. Described as collaborative extemporaneous rules-assisted storytelling,¹ the roleplaying game (RPG) can be viewed as a formalization of childhood games of pretend. The most popularly known such game is Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), which Lawrence Schick notes emerged in the mid-1970s from a combination of drunkenness, historical miniatures wargaming, and “rules for monsters and nonhuman races drawn mainly from Tolkien,”² so that it looks to interpretations of the medieval for its materials, just as other RPGs look to D&D. Given such origins, interpretations of the medieval can be expected to appear even in game-narrative genres that would normally be expected to foreclose such things. Many RPGs, however, overtly and explicitly engage in presenting the medieval--or visions and interpretations thereof. One such is Pendragon, which normally takes place within an amorphously Arthurian milieu, but which can be repurposed to treat more general ideas of what has often been called high medieval Europe.

An iteration of the Pendragon RPG which moved toward a more "historical" medieval appeared as a play-by-post forum-based (PBP) event hosted on the FallenAsh servers. A long-standing online gaming community, FallenAsh permits new and established players to participate in asynchronous collaborative rules-assisted storytelling in a variety of milieux and genres, primarily via PBPs. As of the beginning of February 2023, there were between 130 and 140 members of the community.³ An informal survey of the community conducted in January 2023⁴ noted that a majority of respondents were based in the United States, with some in Brazil, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom; community members have also noted living in Canada, as well as in Nordic and Eastern European countries, although they were not among respondents. English is the primary language of the games and their players, although speakers of many different languages and people of divergent backgrounds and positions in life are present and active in the community. Many have extensive experience playing RPGs in tabletop and online venues--decades of it, in no few cases--with some having been involved in developing and playtesting such games. They also tend to be among the more highly-educated. Their treatment of religion in the game can therefore be examined as a useful example of how gaming might understand and make use of religious ideas prevalent in the better-known parts of the European Middle Ages.

About the Pendragon RPG

As I had the privilege to note in previous work, from which the current project derives,⁵ the fifth edition of Greg Stafford’s Pendragon RPG was published in 2005 by Arthaus, a subsidiary of White Wolf Games⁶--a publisher most notable for Vampire: The Masquerade and the related World of Darkness games.⁷ While RPGs are generally neomedievalist (that is, looking back to post-medieval interpretations of the medieval), Pendragon is more avowedly directly medievalist, purporting to look back to “Facts (or at least what are widely considered facts) drawn from [chronicles such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s]” and “parts from all literary versions” of Arthuriana⁸--or, at least English / Malorian, French, Welsh, and more modern and radical takes, notably eschewing German, Spenserian, and other visions of Arthur.

The cover of the
game-book

Even in that grounding, though, the game begins to run into commonplaces of treatments of the premodern: a focus on upper social strata and time-compression.⁹ The game flatly announces itself as focusing on knights, describing them as the chosen elite.¹⁰ While it makes some sense to do so--as I’ve noted elsewhere, “Peasant life is unattractive, particularly to those whom depictions of it might point up their own equivalent status,”¹¹ and many others have attested far more eloquently to the same--to set as of little importance the deeds and doings of a majority of people is no boon to understanding or getting things right. For a game that purports to encapsulate “brutal reality,”¹² it is hardly a commendation. Nor yet is the collapsing of the Middle Ages into a short span--“fifteen years of game time approximate a hundred years of real-world medieval history,” so that the noted game-span of 485-565 CE subsumes the late fifth through late fifteenth centuries,¹³ roughly Gildas to Malory.

Many or most of the sources upon which the game as a whole relies make much of religion, mostly Catholicism, as a prevailing backdrop against which the events of the narratives stand in sharp relief. Prevailing Arthuriana--exemplified in English by Malory--features the knights routinely hearing Mass, recoursing to hermits, and involving the Pope in their familial strifes, and the literary tradition of which Malory is the linchpin extends back to its beginnings through the writings of churchmen such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Nennius, and Gildas.¹⁴ It follows, then, that Pendragon, for all its compressions and simplifications, would do the same--as is the case.

The game as a whole remarks at great length about religion in its primary setting; comments laying out the treatment of religion in the game take up almost as much of the text as explanations of the combats that typify both Pendragon and the RPG in general.¹⁵ Publication constraints suggest that space is only given to what is considered important for play. Many RPGs, including D&D, focus heavily on combat, in large part because the rules for combat occupy large parts, if not the majority, of the overall rules-sets. For Pendragon thus to accord religion nearly as much space to religion as to combat bespeaks the relative importance of religion to the game.

As might be expected and as is mentioned above, the focus of Pendragon’s religious discussion is on the shape of Catholic Christianity in Britain during the decades and centuries covered by the game, offering a gloss of history and chronicle, presenting some information on schisms, heterodoxies, and heresies at work, and providing what amount to character blurbs regarding historical religious figures such as the aforementioned Gildas. It must be noted, though, that the game treats a putative paganism still lingering from pre-Christian Britain in its rules. It must also be noted that the discussion of religion in the main game betrays some cynicism: “judgment is consistent--whatever most benefits the Church is upheld by its court.”¹⁶ And it further must be noted that, despite the attention given to religion in the main game rules--to the extent that “Knights who follow a strict religious way of life get an advantage in game”¹⁷--play-groups are advised against engaging overly much with religious conflict in the game.¹⁸

What becomes clear with Pendragon, generally, is that the game simultaneously acknowledges two things: the importance of religion to its venue and, at least obliquely, to the cultures in which its expected player-base exists; and the tensions that necessarily arise when treating such matters in what is an ostensibly fun activity.

About Lionheart

Lionheart is the title of a specific game of Pendragon played by post on the FallenAsh servers in September and October 2021.¹⁹ That is, the game was played asynchronously, with players posting in threads gathered into layered forums instead of in real time. Participants were encouraged to secure copies of the Pendragon rules for themselves, and the game, throughout, made ample use of the basic rules-set Stafford had laid out. Rather than taking the standard compressed Arthurian setting assumed by Pendragon, however, Lionheart focused on the coronation of Richard I of England, the eponymous Lionheart, and the short time thereafter that he remained in England before heading off to the Crusades--namely 3 through 12 September 1189.²⁰

The landing page of the game, in all its glory.

While the game swiftly departed from attested history, with players’ characters--PCs--emerging from the players’ imaginations to take up great offices of state, for example, the game made a point of grounding itself in reported events and people. For one example, an option for character creation was to take historical personages as characters; players could have as their characters Henry of Brunswick or Marie de France,²¹ for instance, and Margaret de Beaumont and William de Warenne were PCs.²² For other examples, discussions of expected conduct were digested from known sources such as the Urbanus Magnus,²³ and framing of relative social powers drew from such sources as the Domesday Book.²⁴ Further, much was done to offer broad socio-historical context to the players, with a number of threads laying out general histories from 1066 forward and concerns known to have been current to the coronation.²⁵ As such, Lionheart made a commendable, sustained effort to work within the confines of attested history.

I have to note that, while respondents from the FallenAsh community skew toward the highly educated and tend slightly towards humanistic and literary study, they are not, by and large, specialists in medieval European or medieval English history, broadly defined. Given that and the expected compression and elision of any simulation, any errors in interpretation and representation cannot be said to be made in bad faith. Rather the reverse is true; participants in the game worked to be as close as possible, given constraints of the gaming context, to the best possible understandings of the medieval available to them and to the most sensitive approaches to them circumstances would permit. None of what is noted in this paper should be taken as a condemnation; instead, the majority of participants in the game should be lauded for the effort to get things right.²⁶

What Lionheart Gets Right about Medieval Religion

Participants’ efforts did lead to a number of things coming off as accurate or authentic. For one thing, the relative centrality of organized religion is emphasized in the design of the game itself. As a PBP game, Lionheart required an informational setting in which to exist; for PBPs on FallenAsh, this is almost always in the form of location-based higher-level fora. That is, before play begins, the game’s administrator--the GM, Cearnacht--sets up overarching places for discussion. Some will be for out-of-character talk, but most will be locations in the game where PCs can act and interact. Lionheart featured four general areas--Westminster Abbey, Westminster Palace, Westminster, and London--divided into a total of 19 sub-locations. Westminster Abbey, the first of the general areas, had eight of them, as many as any two of the others. It is a minor thing, perhaps, something that might well be called paratext, but still one that accurately underscores the importance of religion in the life of medieval England.

As noted.

Further, Lionheart openly acknowledged and faced both the presence of Others--and the postcolonial capitalization is apt--in England and the poor treatment of the same by official structures. One of the earliest topics developed by the GM is, in fact, “A Word about Otherness in the Middle Ages,” and it does not shy away from acknowledging that minority populations--including religious minority populations--existed in the England of the time and that they were mistreated by the majority and those in power.²⁷ That alone marks the game off as distinct from many others, which often shy away from such topics by way of romanticizing them, if not flatly ignoring them.²⁸ That is, RPGs, both in their basic settings and in their specific iterations, will frequently gloss over the social problems found in their settings’ sources. Lionheart did not, but very nearly opened with a direct engagement with the known challenges presented by the selected setting.

Lionheart also gets right another key point in its discussion of religion, namely “the Church’s role in adjudicating the acceptability of marriages.”²⁹ Sandra Masters expounds upon that role and its development at some length,³⁰ as do Ryan Patrick Crisp³¹ and Richard J. Warren.³² It must be noted, too, that the ultimate undoing of Arthur’s kingship lies in his (admittedly unwitting, in Malory) incestuous union with his sister.³³ Clearly, incest is a problem, and consanguinity is a concern. Clearly, too, both are involved in concerns of religion in the “real” medieval, both its attested history and its “popular” culture. That the game makes note of such--especially given how infrequently other RPGs do the same--is a particular bit of accuracy.

Lionheart also makes explicit that religion is not a monolithic, all-or-nothing thing, adopting a nuanced view of the rules-set’s presentation of “good” and “bad” visions of the church. Preliminary materials for the game remark that “Most of the things described in the ‘good church’ section are true, or are at least aspired to by this very human institution. Many of the things described in the ‘bad church’ section are also true, at least of some church leaders.”³⁴ The binary view espoused by the rules-set is fairly typical of RPGs. One common plot is for a pious character to become disillusioned by the corruption of an organized religion, and another is for a similarly pious character to be led into that corruption from a belief in the infallibility of such an organization; both require that the church, whatever church it is, be one or the other. In adopting a more nuanced view, Lionheart accords more fully with attested regard for organized religion in medieval Europe, specifically in England; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales offers perhaps the best-known English example thereof, but traces of the same can be found even in Malory, where the Archbishop of Canterbury is complicit in Merlin’s maneuverings.³⁵ More, it accords with the recognition by a number of scholars--Eleanor Janega³⁶ and Elijah King’ore³⁷ are accessible examples, but not the only ones--of the centralized church acting in ways both helpful and harmful. So Lionheart gets a fair bit about medieval religion right.

What Lionheart Gets Wrong about Medieval Religion

Participants’ efforts did not prevent all inaccuracies, however. Some of them are openly acknowledged. The GM noted, for instance, that the Commandments in the game are but one rendering among many,³⁸ and some historical events of no small significance are outright elided.³⁹

The Most Rev. and the Rt Hon.
the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, himself

Not all of the errors are as overtly addressed, however. For one, despite structural indications of the importance of religion in medieval England, only two of the seventeen major non-player characters are noted as clergy.⁴⁰ While one of them is the Archbishop of Canterbury--whose description does offer some of the kind of nuance noted favorably above--that the local priesthood (including the Abbot of Westminster) is not presented in detail seems at odds with that importance. So, too, is the lack of clerical PCs; only one PC is overtly in holy orders, while one other could be assumed to be so.⁴¹

Additionally, there are divergences in the services that are presented in the game. To be fair, the services, especially the depiction of Mass,⁴² hold true to current formal practice. The problem is that that practice, while centuries old, far postdates the times covered in the game. What the game shows is the Tridentine Mass, a standardization promulgated in direct response to the rise of Protestantism and revised repeatedly since, most notably in 1962.⁴³ The form of Mass depicted, therefore, was not current in the 1189 Lionheart purports to reflect. While it may well be the case that the differences to be found are minor, as some older sources hold,⁴⁴ it is also the case that those differences would have been regarded as of importance at the time, with the game itself remarking upon the problems occasioned by similar questions of doctrine.⁴⁵ For the game to have missed the more likely Sarum Rite, information about which is accessible,⁴⁶ seems an unfortunate oversight.

Why It Matters and What Can We Do

There is always, when discussing games, the opportunity for comment against looking too closely into things. A variation on Belisario’s Maxim⁴⁷--in this case, “It’s just a game”--is usually trotted out, and the case can be made easily that “doing homework” gets in the way of “having fun.” It is true that more information than was deployed in Lionheart is readily accessible, but parsing that information for good and useful material is time-consuming, and serving as a GM is not often compensated labor.

Too, it is to be expected that RPGs like Pendragon, as simulations, will necessarily reduce and compress their sources in the interests of treating them conveniently and in allowing players, most often not specialists in the source materials despite prevailingly high levels of formal education,⁴⁸ entry into the interactive narrative milieux in which RPGs operate. Making a game accessible, and therefore playable and more likely to be fun, usually means going with what players can find if they do decide to look. While there is substantial overlap between RPG players and people with institutional access (and the time to enjoy it!), the two groups are far from congruent. Many players, perhaps even most, cannot get into the deeper details of setting that breed more accuracy and richness. In effect, they have to take what they can get. What they can get, then, becomes all the more important to prevailing understandings, as such scholars as Sturtevant and Young assert.⁴⁹

Regarding religion specifically, there may be an additional factor playing into such inaccuracies as are present. RPGs generally have difficulty with real-world religion, owing to several factors, including borderline persecution by organized religious groups.⁵⁰ Pendragon directly speaks to additional concerns, noting that “Constant argument and bigotry [arising from theological disagreement] is almost sure to destroy a game, and players and Gamemasters alike are advised to use religious conflict in a campaign only with great care,”⁵¹ if they treat it at all. Concerns of access to the game may well prompt some elision of religious matters even in contexts where their presence is eminently sensible--such as a coronation of a sacral king in a major hub of worship in advance of that king’s pursuing holy war. Again, access to the game is cited explicitly in the framing of Otherness in Lionheart, with the GM noting explicitly that some deviation from attested history is in place while noting the fraught nature of making such a change and emphasizing that “We’re a community; let’s keep it a good one.”⁵²

Perhaps that is the most relevant thing. RPGs often tend towards the creation of communities, bringing people together for sometimes intensive, sometimes extended, and sometimes extended and intensive, periods of time to make something together. They are formative, and because they are so, it becomes important to ensure that the information from which they work is as accurate as it can be--while at the same time creating an atmosphere in which community can form. An unfortunate truth is that no few gaming communities form in such ways as permit and encourage hate and any number of execrable behaviors, both through emphasis of certain “facts” and elision of others; what FallenAsh shows, in Lionheart and elsewhere, is that the juxtaposition of getting things right and getting them wrong--unavoidably and with intent--can conduce to better community formation. In effect, Lionheart is an example of things being done right; FallenAsh is a series of examples of things being done right.

As the printer puts it, “al is wryton for our doctryne, and for to beware that we falle not to vyce ne synne, but t’exersyse and folowe vertu, by whyche we may come and atteyne to good fame and renommé in thys lyf.”⁵³ Let us read well, and deeply, and often.

Appendix: Survey and Results

The informal survey conducted of the FallenAsh community in January 2023 consisted of a Google Form posted to the #general discussion thread on the community’s Discord. Participants were asked to answer a series of short-answer questions, with the explicit and repeated notes that their participation would be voluntary, anonymous, and uncompensated (save with my kind and polite thanks, which were tendered publicly and generally in the discussion thread). The questions asked after assorted demographic data that had at various times been subjects of discussion in the thread and in other associated venues. They were

1. In what country do you live?
2. In what timezone do you live?
3. What is your primary language?
4. What is your age?
5. With what race and/or ethnicity do you identify?
6. With what gender do you identify?
7. How would you describe your sexual orientation?
8. How would you describe your religious outlook / background?
9. Which of the following best describes your socio-economic status?.
10. What is the highest level of formal education you have attained?
11. What was your major / primary field of study, or what is your trained trade?
12. For how many years have you played tabletop roleplaying games?
13. What tabletop roleplaying game do you most commonly play?

The survey received 19 responses, between 13.57% and 14.62% of the FallenAsh community. A larger sample size would, of course, be desirable, but for an informal survey, results should give some impression of the community as a whole. (I will note, however, that I am happy to be corrected in later work, if I am wrong in this.)

A large majority of respondents (13) reported living in the United States or one of its territories. Other respondents noted living in Brazil and Germany (2 each), as well as in Japan and in the United Kingdom (1 each).

Respondents were spread across time zones, with a plurality (5) living in US Pacific Time (UTC - 8). Several others live in each of US Central and US Eastern Time, as well as in UTC + 1 (3 each; UTC - 6, - 5, and +1, respectively). Two live in UTC - 4, and one each live in UTC - 9 and UTC + 9. Consequently, respondents live across 18 hours of the day--which does make for some challenges in coordinating player action in games where they all participate.

English is by far the most common primary language among respondents, with 14 of the 19 reporting it. Two respondents identify each of German and Portuguese as their primary language, and one Spanish; of interest, one German-primary respondent made a point of noting English proficiency, and one Portuguese-primary respondent noted working as a translator.

Ages of respondents ranged from 20 to 47. Mean and median age were both 37. Interestingly, no clear mode emerged; two respondents each reported being ages 36, 37, 40, and 46.

The question of race and ethnicity prompted interesting responses. Fifteen of the respondents replied with “White” or some variation thereof, with one reporting “Asian,” one reporting “African American,” and two others making reports not easily classified to someone perhaps overly accustomed to US Census Bureau rubrics. Two respondents identified as Hispanic, as well, with several others reporting national / regional identities not tracked by US Census data. One respondent offered an extended discussion (for a short-answer response) of ethnicity in their country.

The question of gender identification received a more unified response, with 15 respondents identifying as “male,” or a qualification or variation thereof (e.g., “trans,” “most of the time”). Two respondents reported identifying as female, and one as non-binary.

A large majority of respondents (12) identified as heterosexual or some variation thereof (e.g., “straight,” “for all intents and purposes”). Three identified as bisexual or a variation thereof (“bi-curious,” “homoflexible”), two as homosexual, one as asexual, and one as gynesexual.

A plurality of respondents explicitly identified as agnostic, with some addenda amid the responses (e.g., “appreciate many things in Buddhism”). Seven responded with some variation of Christian (three Catholic, two Protestant, and two without other description), and three explicitly identified as atheist. Three other responses were recorded, as well: “spiritual but not religious,” “Satanist,” and “nothing.”

In terms of socioeconomic status, reports from respondents were largely consistent. Sixteen of the 19 reported being among the middle class, with one in the upper and eight in the lower reaches of that group (one of whom noted precarity in that position); the remaining seven added no description. The other three respondents reported being in lower socioeconomic classes.

Respondents appear to be relatively highly educated; all but two reported having some higher education. Ten report having completed degrees, seven of them graduate degrees or the equivalent.

Respondents’ fields of study and training show some bias towards English and literary study, with four respondents indicating as much. Three also comment explicitly on work as teachers. No other clear curricular pattern emerges.

Reported length of experience playing tabletop roleplaying games among respondents ran high, ranging from five to 40 years. On average, respondents report having played for just over 21 years, with a median of 22 years and a mode of 25.

Regarding preferred games, respondents returned multiple answers; most gave more than one response. As might be expected from a long-standing gaming community, a majority of respondents (10) expressed a preference for playing Dungeons & Dragons. Owing to the origins of the community as an extension of a Legend of the Five Rings online game, it was similarly expected that a majority (10) expressed a preference for that game. Pathfinder, something of a spin-off of Dungeons & Dragons, was noted as a preferred game by four respondents, and a smattering of other gaming systems received mention.

As noted above, how representative the respondents are of the overall FallenAsh community is an open question. How representative they are of the overall gaming community is even more open. The responses, however, do seem to offer some indication of where at least a portion of the community falls, some idea what a gamer might actually look like, which is certain to be of some help.

Notes

1. Daniel Mackay, The Fantasy Role-playing Game: A New Performing Art (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2001), 4-5.
2. Lawrence Schick, Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-playing Games (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1991), 18-19.
3. A quick check of the number of participants on the FallenAsh Discord returned 131 people, and a handful of members do not participate on Discord.
4. See Appendix: Survey and Results.
5. The work in question was originally a short talk given as part of a summative event at a National Endowment for the Humanities institute on law and culture in medieval England hosted by Western Michigan University in 2021. It was subsequently developed into the roundtable presentation “Laying Down the Law in the Pendragon RPG,” given at the 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies. The present project both shifts and narrows focus from the earlier work, although it makes free use of the earlier materials without much comment.
6. “Arthaus Publishing, Inc.” White Wolf Wiki, accessed 15 July 2021, https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Arthaus_Publishing,_Inc.
7. “World of Darkness,” Paradox Interactive, accessed 15 July 2021, https://www.worldofdarkness.com/.
8. Greg Stafford, King Arthur Pendragon, 5th ed. (Arthaus, 2005), 6.
9. Geoffrey B. Elliott, “Some Notes about the Kerrville Renaissance Festival,” Travels in Genre and Medievalism, Tales after Tolkien Society, 4 February 2019, https://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2019/02/some-notes-about-kerrville-renaissance.html.
10. Stafford 15.
11. Geoffrey B. Elliott, “About Oklahoma ScotFest,” Travels in Genre and Medievalism, Tales after Tolkien Society, 23 September 2015, https://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2015/09/about-oklahoma-scotfest.html.
12. Stafford 4.
13. Stafford 5-6.
14. Geoffrey B. Elliott, “The Establishment of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur as the Standard Text of English-Language Arthurian Legend” (doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2012), 1-6.
15. Chapter 6: Combat spans pages 112 to 131, 19 pages in total. Chapter 7: Ambition and Faith spans 132 to 155; explicit discussion of religion begins on page 138 and ends on page 153, taking up some 15 pages.
16. Stafford 149.
17. Stafford 69.
18. Stafford 138.
19. It is of interest that the game took place just after the aforementioned National Endowment for the Humanities institute. Character development occurred while that institute was in progress, a happy coincidence that influenced at least some aspects of play.
20. “Lionheart,” FallenAsh, accessed 6 April 2023, https://pendragon.fallenash.com; please note that following references to the site and its pages will be by URL rather than more formal citation.
21. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=83.
22. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=150.
23. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=122.
24. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=33.
25. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4, https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5, https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6, https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7, https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8, https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16.
26. “Majority” because I was a participant in the game, and if others were not specialists and trained as medievalists, I (ostensibly) am; I worked to do better, but I am not certain I succeeded.
27. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2.
28. Helen Young, “Racist Discourses in Fantasy Fiction,” Diverse Fictions, 28 May 2013, http://diversefictions.blogspot.com/2013/05/racist-discourses-in-fantasy-fandom.html.
29. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3.
30. Sandra Masters, “Consanguinitas Et Ius Sanguinis: Kinship Calculation and Medieval Marriage” (master’s thesis, Western Michigan University, 1994), https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/3956.
31. Ryan Patrick Crisp, “Genealogy, Consanguinity, and the Counts of Anjou in the Eleventh Century” (master’s thesis, The Ohio State University, 1999), https://tinyurl.com/2p82jf3z.
32. Richard J. Warren, "Consanguinity Protocols, Kinship and Incest in Literature of the Anglo-Saxon through Early Renaissance Periods" (master’s thesis, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/9112206.
33. Thomas Malory, Malory: Complete Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed. (Oxford UP, 1971), 27-28.
34. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3.
35. Malory 7-10.
36. Eleanor Janega, “JFC, Calm down about the Medieval Church,” Going Medieval, 7 August 2020, https://going-medieval.com/2019/11/05/jfc-calm-down-about-the-medieval-church/.
37. Elijah Nderitu King’ori, “Fight against Corruption: A Christian Medieval Historical Period Approach,” European Journal of Philosophy, Culture and Religion 5, no. 1 (2021): 38–57, https://doi.org/10.47672/ejpcr.800.
38. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=122.
39. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2.
40. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=18.
41. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=150.
42. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=304.
43. Paul Halsall, “Medieval Sourcebook: Mass of the Roman Rite,” Fordham University, May 2023, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/latinmass.asp.
44. Adrian Fortescue, "Liturgy," The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910), vol. 9, accessed 10 May 2023, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09306a.htm.
45. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7.
46. Frederick Thomas Bergh, “Sarum Rite,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), vol. 13, accessed 10 May 2023, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13479a.htm; William Renwick, “About,” The Sarum Rite, accessed 10 May 2023, https://hmcwordpress.humanities.mcmaster.ca/renwick/about/.
47. “Bellisario’s Maxim,” TV Tropes, accessed 11 April 2023, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BellisariosMaxim.
48. Note, however, that there are no few people who get into their areas of study in part because they started studying to be able to play their RPGs better.
49. Paul B. Sturtevant, The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film, and Medievalism (IB Tauris, 2018); Helen Young, “Who Cares if Game of Thrones Is Authentically Medieval?” Travels in Genre and Medievalism, Tales after Tolkien Society, 12 June 2014, https://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2014/06/who-cares-if-game-of-thrones-is_12.html; Helen Young, “Who Cares About Historical Authenticity? I Do,” Travels in Genre and Medievalism, Tales after Tolkien Society, 16 June 2014, https://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2014/06/who-cares-about-historical-authenticity.html.
50. Geoffrey B. Elliott, “Unchurched: On the Relative Lack of Religion in Tolkienian-Tradition Fantasy Literature” (presentation, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2014); Mackay 4.
51. Stafford 138.
52. https://pendragon.fallenash.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2.
53. William Caxton, preface to Malory: Complete Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed. (Oxford UP, 1971), xv.