By this point, most of my readers are probably aware that movies and television shows aren’t a very good place to get your historical information from. These works are made purely for entertainment purposes by people who generally aren’t historical experts. Consequently, they are inevitably full of inaccuracies. Even films that are supposedly based on historical events often greatly distort the history to suit their own ends. (Think, for instance, of the movie 300, which I debunked in this article from November 2019.)
In this article, I want to debunk a few common inaccuracies I have noticed seem to recur in swordfight scenes from films and television shows set in medievalesque worlds. Cinematic fight scenes are always extremely unrealistic and governed solely by the “Rule of Cool” rather than by what is actually realistically possible in a combat situation. Here are a few major inaccuracies I have noticed:
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