The Crusades were nothing more than a series of massacres for a land grab and the Crusaders failed the minute they encountered armies who could actually fight back. Knight Wank is fascinating because it’s almost entirely based on fictional portrayals where the Europeans in tin cans won all the time against evil monsters and savages.
The fourth crusade mostly killed Christians. Enrico Dandolo was an impressive charlatan that proved that the catholic church was just a vehicle of approving land grabs and looting.
yeah lol. “huh the holy land is too far away guys… how about Constantinople?” “aight close enough”
Wtf is that shield and that armor? Someone played one too many fantasy games. Not that there is anything wrong with fantasy games but please don’t conflate them with history…
I’m almost certain that character is a mini boss from Assassins Creed
Even if you wanted to larp, the Templars already looked fairly interesting and cool. Why would you want to rep a fantasy souls game boss?
Which Crusades though? The Eastern European and Spanish Crusaders were wildly successful with the crusaders achieving essentially every objective they had. The balkan crusades also had mixed success but were ostensibly a Crusader strategic victory. The genocides and mass conversion were successful.
The Holy Land crusades? Absolute disaster. Failed essentially every objective and lost massive swathes of men for literally nothing in return. A greed motivated land and capital grab.
the only way in which they were successful was the rediscovery of tech and writings that the Arabs had preserved from antiquity which was lost in the european dark ages
I was always convinced that crusades “failed” about as much as American wars - the developments in some third country are irrelevant (and also subject to easy propaganda, since only one side can fud people), where the real money & power comes from is from campaigning, money collection, arms industry, etc. In that was a vast success. People that actually went crusading were just necessary with a secondary (low) possibility of extra payout.
My favorite Crusader story is the one where the Europeans landed and saw a bunch of natives running towards them. The brave invaders slaughtered everyone, and only later found out that they’d killed a local bunch of Christians who thought the knights had come to help them.
