Shadow of the Conqueror is the infamous novel written by Shadiversity, a once well-respected sword youtuber turned grifter. His novel is an assortment of self-indulgent world-building, gratuitous violence, and unsurprising politics.

Measured response to Shad

I have no idea how anyone can talk this much shit about actual artists while using stolen assets to make stuff that still looks bad.

Also thankyou whoever compared Shad to Don Quixote last time.

It inspired me.

Ok, so this is regarding this exchange that @blumineck literally just had so he might do his own explanation, but here's a brief rant about Shadiversity from someone who used to be a fan then got away before most people realized how awful he is.

I should clarify before I begin that this is mostly my opinion, and I'm not gonna bother to double check any of what I remember cause he's not worth the brainpower.

Also, trigger warning: discussion of child abuse and extremist ideologies (this TW also functions as a very basic TL;DR! Neat!)

Shadiversity is an Australian youtuber who started out in the HEMA/Medieval European history space, similar content to the likes of Skallagrim, Metatron, and more relevantly here, Blumineck or Sellsword Arts. I personally remember his castle architecture videos the best, but he covered a lot of related things and often touched on how fantasy books or movies handled or compared to real world historical stuff. I've heard some complaints about the accuracy of his information and supposed experience with HEMA, but I'm not educated enough in that space to really make a call either way.

But still, so far, so good, right? Well... not for much longer. See, Shad wrote a fantasy book, called Shadow of the Conqueror, citing among others Brandon Sanderson as a major influence (Shad is also a Mormon. No hate to Mormons, but this is not a good sign). I to this day love Brandon, but I was a big enough fan of Shad's that I actually got my library to buy a copy when it released.

And. It. Sucked.

I'm theoretically a writer, so I have a lot of thoughts about the quality of his writing and Worldbuilding, but I'll avoid getting into that and just focus on the problematic elements. Long story short, his main character was the leader of a rebellion in the style of fantasy communism or maybe the French revolution, became a bloodthirsty mass-murdering tyrant (I do not have a problem with any of that), and then once he became ruler or whatever, began sleeping with 14 year old girls who his advisors kidnapped at swordpoint.

The book REPEATEDLY says that the age of consent was 14, and he was having mental issues and maybe drinking or doing drugs and his advisors were manipulating them so really it's not that bad. Like seriously, despite the guy being supposedly suicidal with guilt over all this, any time it's actually discussed (which is almost constantly), all these supposedly mitigating factors are reiterated by the text, clearly trying to make us the readers THINK HE'S OVERREACTING AND FEEL SORRY FOR HIM.

Did I mention one of the other main characters is one of his victims? How about that she's explicitly horribly traumatized, but the book treats this as somewhere between her being a bitch and being weak? Or that she's forced to forgive him (after travelling with her abuser for idk how long without knowing) because he just apologized so hard and so well you guys, plus he's somehow the most powerful/dangerous person in the world and if she doesn't say it's ok that he raped her then he won't be able to save the day, because he's just sooooo depressed.

So yeah, that turned my stomach and I unsubscribed immediately lol.

Now this happened ages ago, Shadow was published in 2019, so imagine my surprise when I randomly remember all this, look online wanting to make sure other people were as squicked out as I was, and find out he's apparently gone fullll right wing grifter.

He's pro Trump (Again, Shad is an AUSSIE), he made a huge fuss about Peach wearing pants in the first Super Mario movie, he's extremely pro AI (his brother is Jazza, a pretty popular online artist so... yikes), and in general he's just devolved into right wing stupidity, trying to start beef for a little attention, collabing with extremist influencers, attacking his viewers if they don't agree with him, all the good shit.

It's a mess, and he's an asshole

Actual TL;DR: Shad is Shadiversity, a right wing Mormon creator who at least nominally makes similar content to Blumineck, and who has written a mid fantasy novel that's mostly child predator apologia, is pro AI, anti-vax, extremely misogynistic, and basically all the usual things you expect from right wing online personalities.

Blumineck in no way deserves the comparison, he's a good and cool person, Shad is an evil pile of roughly person shaped offal with an overinflated ego.

Fin.

Thinks that Dragon running the guild is an attempt to oppress male superheroes and keeps talking about Narwhals unicorn horn in the same way he talks about women with blue hair.

Thinks Legend, Stonewall, and Switch Hitter are psy-ops to attack traditional family values.

Let me today talk about something that I have been tempted to talk about for more than a month now. Because I realized that this is a thing that a lot of people do not realize.

A lot of people do know by now that Shadiversity is a right wing grifter, who mainly uses his second channel to whine about the evil wokeness of modern media. However, a lot of people within the fantasy space have watched his content for a long time for the medieval stuff. I had this conversation recently both with colleagues at work - and with fellow students at the university. Because here is the thing: Shadiversity never actually made good content. He - and many others like him - mainly have always leaned on the romanticized fantasy of the middle ages, rather than on actual medieval research. Or maybe to put it differently: Whenever he actually leaned on actual medievalist research (something he often did not do), it was research that was outdated by half a century, when he referenced it.

Sure, I am not saying all of what he has done is completely without merit. He did a couple of videos of "why this fantasy game weapon is actually a design that does not work", which, yes, is fair content. Though he never got to the moment to reflect about the thing he plays still into the same tropes.

Let me give you some context here: When I was a teenager I did a lot of HEMA, mainly with people I knew from LARP. And because a lot of us were dumb teenagers and folks in their early twenties with not fully developed frontal lobes, we did a lot of dumb stuff. What kind of dumb stuff? Well, playing out some adventure scenarios with actual sharpened weapons in the middle of the forest (because it is actually illegal in Germany) and going wild on it. Good news: Nobody died. Bad news: Two people ended up in hospital with definitely preventable injuries.

Now, back in the day I had not as ready access to actual books on medievalism as I had later. (Look, folks, back then the internet was slow, SciHub did not exist and I was not at university yet, so had no access to university libraries.) But I still learned a couple of things that a lot of the dudes playing out their knight fantasies do somehow not realize - despite running around with their weapons and faux armor half the day apparently: pole weapons are way more awesome than swords. Because swords for the main part demand you to get into close quarters combat - and if you are using actual sharp weapons.

Back in the day, we had one rule: No stabbing. Because while the type of leather armor and ringmail we used were pretty good in negating slashing damage, we knew they would at times be less effective against stabbing. As such, obviously, spears were not good weapons. So I very quickly used just a fighting staff, which was always my main weapon. Because it is a nice and long weapon, keeping your opponent nice and away. And yes, there are long swords that can accomplish the same, but personally I always preferred staffs and pole weapons, and fairly early on developed a lot of annoyance at everyone being so in love with swords.

Because here is the thing: A good - or even just an okay sword is a lot harder to make, than an okay or even a good spear. Like, let's face it. A spear does not necessarily mean a metal tip. In worst case scenarios a pointy stick will do. Not to mention, that while few people had swords lying around, pretty much everyone who was working a farm had a couple of things in their arsenal, that could absolutely qualify as a pole arm. Still like a pitchfork, or a scythe. And all of them with the bonus of being able to keep your distance to the enemy, which - for someone who is not primarily a soldier - is an immense advantage.

And that is the other thing: Medieval armies had only a very people in them, who were trained soldiers. Because outside of Hungary's Black Army, there was not a single standing army in all of medieval Europe. Pretty much every war was fought with armed peasants and some mercenaries.

Which... kinda comes back to the knights. Because... Well, how do I most elegantly put this? There were no knights in medieval Europe - at least not in the way you imagine them.

Let me explain. Knight was a word for mainly male noble off-spring, who had no chance to inherit. That usually was any male off-spring past the second one that made it to their teenage years (where the child-mortality usually fell sharply off) and of course all those off-spring that were born out of wedlock, and hence could not inherit either way.

Usually it was a formal thing that those would at least get some basic military training, just so that you could eventually call them in for military stuff - but obviously this did not turn out quite as well, because a lot of them ended up becoming highway men. After all, what else are you gonna do when you are fairly poor, but have good fighting training?

And we do not actually know how it happen, but over the course of the medieval period, those noble-off-spring started to closely work together with the merchant class, who on one hand could pay them well, and on the other hand, had at times chances to indeed become nobles through marriage or by the right of being fucking loaded lol And in those cases, they at times would just make a knight their heir.

Still, all those tales of knightly chivalry is actually stuff that mainly originates with fictional tales, that have about as much bearing on the reality of the middle ages, as the MCU has on our reality. And the people reading them at the time very well understood that - as do actual scholastic and academic medievalists...

But not people like Shadiversity, who very much base a lot of their understanding on those more fictional texts und a more fictional understanding of what it is.

And mind you, of course there is the issue. Shadiversity (and many other channels like them) are not wrong all the time. Just scrolling to some video in an incognito window (just so that my Youtube algorithm does not think that I want to actually watch that shite) there is absolutely some stuff in there, on which he is right. He calls out several time, that medieval illiteracy is usually exaggerated, and that a lot of people - even peasants - had basic skills when it came to reading and writing. Which yes, it very much right, and people completely exaggerate this. (Yes, there were percentually a lot more illiterate people living in medieval times, than modern times. But a lot of media makes it seem as if 80% of people were completely unable to read and write, while most people at least had some very basic skills, like penning down an overview of harvest results, and such.)

But there is also just a lot of stuff, that shows that a lot of his research is based on more pop-science books, rather than scientific medievalist writing (and even if that was considered, it is often outdated stuff), and... Well, being Australian, he also is someone who is obviously not surrounded by a lot of primary stuff from medieval times. Which gives you some results of: "I visited a couple of castles while I vacationed in Europe, and they did not have this thing that some stuff made me expect they'd have, hence I am now assuming no castle ever had this feature." While I, a German, who literally grew up living to a castle ruin, and had visited like 12 different castles before the age of 10 (quick explanation for the Americans: yes, there are a LOT of castles in Germany - like A LOT) am sitting there: "Actually, I can name you like at least eight castles that have this feature. Yes, it was actually common in certain periods and places."

Which kinda brings us back to the core of the issue. Correct me if I am wrong, but from all I can find, this guy - and those making similar content - actually does not have any academic degree for the stuff he is talking about.

And don't get me wrong: There are people out there, who do not have any academic degree for stuff they are talking about, but that are just as, if not more educated than some professors in that field of study. But generally speaking, there is simply the fact that an academic education will teach you how to read and sort through sources - and that is something he is clearly really bad at.

This brings us to the main issue on Shadiversity specifically: He likes the medieval times, because he idealizes them as this mythological time period in which things were just "right" from his far-right point of view. To him it is the time in which women did still know their place (which does not gel with the fact that actually especially in late medieval times there were a lot female rulers around), in which the races were still seperated (ignoring all the sources that show, that this was not the case - like the fact that even in the obviously fictional tale of King Arthur there is a Black knight among the main characters!), and in which those dirty homosexuals were properly punished (to which, like... if you read any primary sources for medieval times, you will quickly learn how much more chill medieval people were about queerness in general).