The Troubling Meaning of Pop Culture’s Weird Obsession with Medieval Europe
Did internet-era popular culture foreshadow America’s anti-democratic turn?
Some time ago, while browsing the Fantasy aisle of a downtown bookstore — dragons to the left of me, sword-wielding heroes to the right — it struck me that something strange is going on in modern pop culture. Why, I thought, in an era that prides itself on social and technological progress, do record-setting blockbuster entertainment franchises (and countless books, video games, and anime) immerse us in fantasy worlds that are inspired by an era sorely lacking in both equality and technology — the European Middle Ages?
The Dune universe, home to a futuristic-but-feudal interplanetary civilization that’s ruled by warring hereditary lords, is only the latest example of a hugely popular medieval-flavored fictional world. We also have the Star Wars universe, led by Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, the Harry Potter universe, set in the medieval magic academy Hogwarts, the Arthurian-inspired Lord of the Rings universe, created by medieval lit professor J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Game of Thrones universe, inspired by the medieval Wars of the Roses.
Even the most iconic fictional heroes of our time — superheroes — are nothing more than modern incarnations of the Middle Ages’ quintessential heroic protectors in full-body armor — the brave avenging knights of myth and legend. The DC superhero universe is headed by the vengeful “Dark Knight” Batman, who lives in a medieval-style manorial estate — Wayne Manor — complete with a trusty butler. Meanwhile, the competing Marvel superhero universe is anchored by “Iron Man” Tony Stark, who became a superhero — and a protective Avenger alongside the medieval hero Thor — by inventing a high-tech suit of knight-like iron armor.
Over the past 25 years, medieval settings and knight-inspired heroes have dominated popular culture to an extent not seen since the actual Middle Ages, raising an unavoidable question: is there something about the internet era that explains the strangely powerful appeal of the medieval in the here and now?
Do you believe in magic?
Perhaps there’s a simple explanation. Maybe we’re like those 19th-century artists and writers who, in response to the Industrial Revolution, romanticized the Middle Ages as an idyllic past that was filled with magic, heroism, and rolling green pastures — and blissfully free of polluting factories and materialistic values. Are we, like the Romantics, reacting to the stresses of living through the Digital Revolution by seeking a mental escape to a simpler, screen-free time?
Unlikely, especially given that far from being technology-free pastoral havens, the superhero, Dune, and Star Wars universes in fact contain technology more advanced — and dangerous — than our own. But even in fictions that are pure medieval fantasy like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, magic simply doesn’t mean what it used to.
Sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and in our era of spaceflight, genetic manipulation, and artificial intelligence, technology has certainly advanced to the point where it almost seems like magic. As a result of scientific progress, magic is not the antithesis of technology it was in the 19th-century era of cumbersome early machinery. Now, magic is an allegory for technology itself, the way that Dany’s magical fire-breathing dragons in Game of Thrones are obvious stand-ins for modern weapons of mass destruction.
It’s likely then that while they contain medieval elements, the fictional universes and stories that dominated pop culture over the past 25 years don’t represent an attempt to escape from the age of advanced digital technology, but an attempt to reckon with it.
And reckoning with the impact of modern tech involves reckoning with the awesome powers that flow to those who own and control these magic-grade technologies. It’s critical, the stories tell us, for that power to be in the hands of knight-like benevolent heroes who would use it for the benefit of humanity, and not in the hands of dark lords like Sauron, Darth Vader, or Voldemort who would only use it to dominate and control.
But instead of telling us that extraordinary technological power should be in the hands of the rightful heroic elites, why don’t these stories question why this power should be in the hands of a tiny, all-powerful elite at all? And why do modern fictions repeatedly depict elites who possess superior technology or some other fantastical ability as heroes from the deep feudal past like knights, lords, and wizards?
These themes, repeated over and over across popular entertainment, must point to some deeper — and potentially darker — message about society in the era of digital technology. Is it possible that, alongside magic-like capabilities, advanced technology has also introduced some backward element into society that can only be described as “feudal”?
The knightly hero’s unexpected origin story
About a thousand years ago, the mythical noble knight emerged out of the massively popular King Arthur fictional universe to become the mold of the Western hero for centuries to come. Like Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, he was a spiritually disciplined warrior-monk in the tradition of the medieval order of the Knights Templar. Like Quidditch champion Harry Potter, he distinguished himself on the field of the medieval tournament. Like Iron Man and the Avengers, he used more-than-human abilities to protect humanity from preternatural, otherworldly threats. Like Frodo and his fellowship, he embarked on epic adventure quests that tested his moral fiber time and again.
But why did the knight become the mold of the Western hero in the first place? He certainly was an unlikely candidate given that before the 12th century, there was little about knights that anyone considered heroic or noble.
Knights were a feudal lord’s muscle, the violent enforcers of his rule, and they were largely feared and hated for abusing their power to extort the common people. “When the wretched people gape with hunger,” wrote Bishop Stephen de Fougères in the 12th century, “knights rob them and tax them, they oppress them, they work them over.”
But the knight’s public image was about to take a sharp turn toward the heroic, and, as medieval historian David Crouch argues in the 2019 book The Chivalric Turn, the knight’s transformation was inextricably linked to the rise of a new elite — Europe’s hereditary noble class.
Before the 13th century, explains Crouch, the nobles of a medieval realm were “not necessarily intended as a caste of its ‘nobles’ as the modern meaning would have it, but its leading and wealthier inhabitants, and not every one of them was necessarily going to be particularly ‘noble’ in blood.” But by the 13th century, membership in the noble class was strictly a matter of bloodlines.
And for some mysterious reason, the low-born masses not only accepted this inherently unjust system but, aside from some rebellious intellectuals who questioned the concept of a “nobility” defined solely by birth and bloodlines, venerated nobles as superior-grade humans who were born to lead.
Nobles, Crouch argues, achieved this coup by using their considerable influence and resources to spread a cultural narrative that encouraged the belief in their inborn superiority — a narrative he calls “the origin myth of nobility.”
According to the origin myth of nobility, all humans are not and never were created equal, which is actually a great thing for everyone. When God created humans, goes the myth, a select few possessed innate qualities that made them more fit to rule, and that’s why they “were awarded a hereditary social distinction and leadership by the rest of human society in return for their protection against the wicked.” Noblemen, instructs the origin myth, are not undeserving nepo babies, but God-approved upholders of justice.
The nobility’s desire to be viewed as righteous saviors is easy to understand, but far harder to swallow is why anyone outside their class would buy into their self-serving origin story. And perhaps the origin myth would have been a tougher sell, if nobles hadn’t used popular culture to bring the public to their side.
To capture the public’s imagination, humanity’s supposedly heroic “noble” protectors needed an appropriately heroic public image, and they soon found it in the freshly made-over figure of the knight.
Thanks to the Crusades, which transformed knights from greedy violent thugs into symbols of divine justice, and to the explosive popularity of tournaments, which transformed knights into the star pro athletes of their day, knights became the undisputed idols of 12th-century medieval culture. Their domination of popular culture was further and forever cemented when hugely popular new stories from the King Arthur universe sidelined the king and made his knights the main characters instead.
In line with the origin myth of nobility, these blockbuster tales of adventure and romance — written to please noble patrons — portrayed fictional knights as noble-born heroic upholders of justice who use their superior (and at times more-than-human) skills, powers, and abilities to protect the common people. “When the weak could no longer resist or stand up to the strong, knights were set up henceforth as protectors and defenders to safeguard the weak,” the Lady of the Lake explains the origin myth of nobility to young Lancelot in a popular epic.
Sounds innocent enough, until one realizes that “the weak” here refers to everyone who isn’t a member of the noble class. The massive popularity of fictional noble knights like Lancelot, Percival, and Gawain served not only to spread heroic values, but to entrench the origin myth’s claim that there are two kinds of humans in the world — ones who were innately superior by virtue of the special blood flowing in their veins, and the weak ordinary folks who needed their protection.
And perhaps most important from the nobility’s perspective, the stories strongly message that inborn noble privilege isn’t in any way unjust because knightly noblemen “existed to support the common good of human society,” Crouch summarizes the medieval view, and therefore “deserved the best the world could offer in repayment.”
Back to the future
As cool as knights were, it’s still hard to believe how easily medieval people fell for the nobility’s self-serving narratives. Surely, there’s no way elites could pull off a trick like that on the modern, overeducated minds of today — or could they?
Because if we are indeed so much more sophisticated than our medieval counterparts of a thousand years ago, why is it that our popular entertainment is, like theirs, dominated by heroes who have special blood flowing in their veins?
The Star Wars universe draws a distinction between those, like members of the Skywalker lineage, who possess special powers by virtue of having “force-sensitive” blood and the ordinary folks who do not. The Harry Potter universe is similarly divided between special individuals with inborn magical abilities and ordinary “muggles” whose blood is sadly unmagical. In the Lord of the Rings universe, Aragorn is the rightful king because of his illustrious noble lineage. And noble bloodlines, our blockbuster stories tell us, are important because those who have them — like Aragorn — possess more-than-human abilities. Noble bloodlines, after all, are responsible for Daenerys of House Targaryen’s ability to hatch dragons and for the ability of Duke’s son Paul Atreides to see the future.
What’s going on here? Why would the medieval origin myth of nobility, which draws a distinction between genetically superior noble-born elites and the ordinary nobodies who require their protection, resonate with audiences living in a modern democratic society?
A major clue can be gleaned from the superhero universe, which unlike all the others is set in present-day America rather than in some imagined fictional world.
A milestone moment in the modern superhero era occurred in 2008, the year that saw the release of DC’s The Dark Knight — the first superhero movie to earn more than $1 billion — and Marvel’s Iron Man — the first installment of the unprecedented, record-shattering cultural phenomenon that was the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Like so many of our heroes, both Batman and Iron Man embody the qualities of the mythical noble knight. Both Bruce Wayne, as the heir to the renowned and powerful Wayne lineage, and Tony Stark, as the heir to the renowned and powerful businessman Howard Stark, are blue-blooded heroes. And, in line with the medieval origin myth of nobility, both are dedicated to protecting “the weak” common folk from “the wicked.”
But critically, Batman and Iron Man also embody the qualities of another, newer mythical figure that firmly belongs to the here and now — the genius tech founder. Both Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are billionaires who stand at the head of powerful corporations that specialize in advanced technology. And both use technological genius to obtain the extraordinary abilities that put them on equal footing with metahumans like Superman or actual gods like Thor.
It makes perfect sense for the tech billionaire to have become a mythical cultural figure in 2008, a time when billionaire tech founders like Steve Jobs, who had recently launched the world-altering iPhone, and Mark Zuckerberg, who became the youngest self-made billionaire in history at the age of 23, were idolized as never before.
Harder to explain is why fictional tech whizzes like Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are being outfitted with medieval-style heroic knightly identities. Or is it actually the other way around? Perhaps it’s the stock medieval fantasy characters who are being upgraded with modern, tech whiz identities. The wizard Harry Potter, for example, slays a dragon-like monster with a medieval sword but resembles a young Bill Gates more so than any medieval epic hero. And Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, the future dark lord Darth Vader, started his journey to world domination as no actual knight or lord ever had — as a genius engineer.
Nerdy tech geniuses whose magic-like innovations have changed the world are, unquestionably, the mythical heroes of our time. Is that why they seamlessly integrate into medieval fantasy tales of mythical heroes with special skills, powers, or abilities?
Or, as suggested by the fact that our fictional heroes aren’t “special” solely by virtue of their extraordinary abilities but also by virtue of their “special” bloodlines, is there perhaps a more disturbing side to this pop culture phenomenon?
Our tech geniuses, after all, don’t just possess extraordinary abilities — they also possess extraordinary levels of wealth, power, and influence. And maybe that’s the real reason they seamlessly integrate into the cultural mythology of an ancient past where larger-than-life aristocrats ruled over a deeply unequal society.
Though their legends portray them performing great deeds and defending justice, medieval aristocrats did not rule over an especially happy or just world. Likewise, though they’re filled with fantastical heroes, magic, and superior technology, our modern fictional universes are uniformly dark and dystopian. Like medieval commoners, the common people who inhabit these modern fictional dystopias are powerless and largely insignificant — except as “the weak” masses who need saving.
It’s revealing then that modern audiences not only find such unhappy and unequal worlds relatable, but don’t find the premodern concept of special-born innately superior elite saviors off-putting or at least outdated.
Can this mean that, embedded in our popular entertainment, is a new “origin myth of nobility” that arose in the digital age? Has a new breed of internet-era elites successfully convinced us they are superior-grade humans? If so, it would go a long way toward explaining why, despite the extremely lopsided distribution of wealth in America, tech billionaires are largely revered as rarefied geniuses whose obscene fortunes — while perhaps insufficiently taxed — are nevertheless well-earned and well-deserved.
Even stranger, the mythical lore that surrounds tech billionaires has apparently elevated the public image of all billionaires (and their centimillionaire cousins). No longer a signal of excessive greed, ruthlessness, and exploitation, the rank of “billionaire” has become a dividing line between a class of humans who are somehow special and transcendent and the ordinary “muggles” whose lives are as dominated by economic anxiety as their entertainment is dominated by heroic fantastical elites.
A new “origin myth of nobility” has once again captivated the public, and as usual, no one believes in it more strongly than the nobles themselves. Like all nobles down the ages, today’s ultra-rich believe that they are, by virtue of their proven superiority, the ones who are obviously fit to be in charge. And fortunately for members of the vaunted billionaire class, thanks to their strategically cultivated image as innately gifted super-beings their bedazzled admirers, instead of resisting these new overlords, may well greet them like real-life Jedi, wizards, or superheroes who have at long last come to save the day.
