Medieval recs?

[bagheera_san]

Next week, I'm going to start my first Ars Magica campaign as a game master/storyguide. I've played Ars Magica before, and many other roleplaying games, but this is only the second time I'm mastering a campaign, so it is a bit like tightrope walking. Ars Magica isn't a simple game, in part because it has extensive rules, in part because it requires each player to handle several characters, but also because the setting, Europa Mythica, is very historical - being a medievalist would be handy. Well, I actually study Germanistik, so I can read Middle High German and Old High German, and I've read some texts from the era, so I'm not completely lost, but I'd still like to get myself more immersed in the period. Medieval (13th century is ideal) recs, anyone? It doesn't have to be *from* the period.

At the moment I'm reading the Nibelungenlied, which is pretty much the archetypical fantasy saga - with a knight and a dragon and a dwarf and a magic sword, an Islandic amazon and some evil guys. My heart broke a little at the bit where the male "heroes" basically rape and de-power Brunhilde, the warrior queen, because she was simply awesome beforehand. The scene where she ties up her amorous husband with her belt and hangs him on the wall by a hook for the whole night while she sleeps in the bed is priceless, as is the bit where her husband-to-be says, "Leave your money and stuff at home, I'm rich!" and she basically says, "No way, I'm going to keep my stuff and my people and by the way, your guys are squandering my goods so I'm just going to oversee this myself!"

I don't quite find the story to be misogynistic - the narrator actually is actually doing a good job portraying the female characters, which is a rarity in medieval texts (where characterisation is... well, not very evolved). The male characters judge Brunhilde, but the narrator doesn't. Gunther, her husband, is portrayed as a cheater who constantly needs the hero Siegfried's help to do anything at all, and Siegfried would do *anything* to get his chosen bride, Kriemhild. Siegfried, I find, is part straightforward fighter, and part trickster-hero, which I didn't expect. I'm also amused at the narrator's preoccupation with their clothes and pretty armour (then men constantly go to the women and demand to be given pretty clothes so their allies will be impressed). I wonder if there are any theories that the Nibelungenlied was written by a woman, since we don't know the author? Whoever they were, I'm impressed.

Comments

[blindmapmaker.livejournal.com]

If you're interested in the story of Brunichild and the other characters from the Nibelungenlied you should try either Gregory of Tours' Decem libri historiarum (Zehn Bücher Geschichte, available in the UB) or The Liber Historiae Francorum (unfortunately only available in the original Latin in the History Department). Both are decidedly non-13th century, though.

Don't know whether you play during the reign of the Staufer or not, but if you do Odilo Engels: Die Staufer is pretty good background reading. Good for the more chaotic time (read: adventure fodder) of the Interregnum is Martin Kaufhold: Interregnum.

Wikimedia Commons has also some pretty nice pictures about Frederick the Great's De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (a falconry handbook).

There is also a TV documentary series called "Die Deutschen" by the ZDF, which is a lot better than it sounds. They intersperse (decently historical) re-enactments with historical commentaries. I watched the first episode and it was pretty good (not to mention it had one of my professors in it). You might want to try episode 2 or 3. They're free to view at diedeutschen.zdf.de, but the viewer might be a bit wonky.

That's pretty much all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm really more of a pre-1100 kind of person ^^ (I do have some nice source materials for that time, if you are interested)