treefey

Oh no, you won't regret it. I unironically adore this movie and should in fact rewatch it. More medieval films should be like it; as you say, it's not trying in any sense of the word to evoke a painstaking (and inaccurate anyway) aura of Gritty Grey Medieval Realism. It actually has COLOR (zomgz) and jokes and Paul Bettany as Chaucer, who is of course the best. It evokes the sporting-event-spectacle of a tournament with "We Are The Champions"; none of Shannyn Sossamon's costumes make any sense; Heath Ledger is at his rumpled blond peasant-boy peak; Rufus Sewell both smolders and slimes; it is in general an absolutely perfect piece of medieval media. 10/10.

this is in spite of the fact that black people were a lot more common in medieval europe than potatoes.

Heath Ledger in promo for A Knight’s Tale (2001)

Oh, you mean you want 100% white people. Even in crowd scenes in port cities. There's a different word for that.

Also: overly diverse casting is an inaccuracy, yes, but I guess my counterpoint is that it's the kind of inaccuracy that bothers me the least? Like, if the rest of the movie or TV show is inaccurate, then there are usually bigger issues to talk about, and if the work is relatively accurate except for some improbable black people, well you just got served a relatively accurate period drama, what are you complaining about girl, you know how rare that shit is nowadays??? The only exception I make are real historical figures in period drama that at least gesture at saying something about the real person - basically, the Bridgerton queen Charlotte gets a pass, because Bridgerton, that stupid 2021 Anne Boleyn miniseries doesn't, although even then it has much more WTF moments, like the fucking wannabe edgy yuri bait. Neither, for that matter, do the white Severans in Gladiator 2, lest we forget that was a thing - like, Ridley Scott literally did whitewashing of historical figures in the year of our lord 2024 and the only reason he got away with it was that the general public still kinda assumes the Romans were "white".

4) This is based on more than just the response, but: we are in a time where white only cities are being built in the US. My city remains de facto segregated in 2026, letting policy slowly cripple and kill black people. These are US issues, but racism and colorism are not just relegated to the US. Stories don't live in a vacuum; our rhetoric around them helps structure how people think. And people are already prone to thinking an absurdly small number of black people in any given irl space is "taking over." With this context, it gets into really racist territory really quickly when we try to evaluate every black character as "probable" or "improbable" and demand an explanation for every single one. Who gets to make the determination about what ratio is acceptable? Is the ratio just 1 Morgan Freeman? Or is even that too much now? And why is it always black characters who have to be justified? Why are the "correct" sources always popular misconceptions of history and not medieval lit or primary sources or anthropology studies or accessible historical research books like Black Tudors? Why does everyone understand that the Roman empire went into Africa but never consider that boats also went the other way? These aren't questions to be answered necessarily, but things I wish everyone was thinking about and unpacking.

No headcanons, no ‘coding’, only CANONICALLY Indigenous characters. You have unlimited time. Go.