Women in the Crusades

Phyrebrat

Phyrebrat

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Hello,

I've been reading up on the Crusades - and just downloaded a 4 hour History Channel Doc on the entire crusades; The Crusades: The Cross and the Crescent.

Whilst playing around with research, it occurred to me I would quite like to have a female 'crusader' from England or France. This wiki page suggests their involvement was limited to illicit or domestic duties but I would like to stretch that.

It's backstory, so it won't feature in the novel, but I'm wondering where this would fit on your level of credibility for an historical supernatural horror tale.

Any comments?

Thanks

pH
 
Just off the top of my head, wasn't there a famous queen that went a-crusading with her hubby king? Well she didn't do any fighting (but then did the king?)

I assume you mean some sort of fighting woman though.

There is a fascinating history of women impersonating men in the British army/navy (incredibly it seems in the Navy's case - where said women would have been in a ship with virtually no privacy - yet apparently it did happen.) And in the crusades, especially the first, people of all classes joined up. Who's to say a low-born woman didn't slip in, looking and fighting like a man? I would say there definitely would have been a lot of women travelling with the armies as followers anyway.

---

This is not really relevant, but talking about women and crusades reminds me of the story of when Saladin was besieging a crusader castle and he found out that one of the nobles inside the castle was getting married - so he sent an envoy in to ask which tower/part of the castle the wedding festivities were taking place and said he wouldn't target that with his siege engines.
 
I'd certainly suspend disbelief for that, pH. Have you ever read Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History ? The protagonist is a female soldier round about that time and while it may have been a stretch of historical fact, I found the book to be brilliant fiction. If it can work having a female soldier in that era as the MC, then I certainly wouldn't have a problem with something similar as part of the backstory.
 
Its not too difficult to find examples of noblewomen getting openly very close to the action from around this period. Nor examples of wives accompanying their husbands on crusade. I don't know what exactly you want to do, but yes, its probably credible.
 
Eleanor of Aquitaine went on the Second Crusade, but she went as Queen of France, with her then husband, Louis.

I would never say it couldn't have happened that a woman took the cross, but any woman fighting is likely to have come from the lower classes. You're not going to get women of wealth actually as a crusader, fighting. So for me this would be at the limit of believability.
 
The Judge said:
Eleanor of Aquitaine went on the Second Crusade, but she went as Queen of France, with her then husband, Louis.

I would never say it couldn't have happened that a woman took the cross, but any woman fighting is likely to have come from the lower classes. You're not going to get women of wealth actually as a crusader, fighting. So for me this would be at the limit of believability.
Click to expand...

I thought you were offline this weekend? I'd've personally hassled you had I known. :p

So you think I should keep the crusader male?

pH
 
Instinctively, I would say no, purely because it's backstory and not at the centre of the novel. If someone wrote about a female knight in a realistic/real world setting, I would assume that they were doing so because they wanted to talk about that quite specifically. This may be one of those instances where the stereotype of the middle ages (all soldiers are men, all cathedrals are grey etc) is worth sticking to just because it doesn't throw the reader.

On the other hand, if you can make it instrinsically part of the setting, fine. In the fantasy novel I've been chipping away at, their equivalent of Joan of Arc formed an order and prophesied that a woman would follow her: hence anyone crazy enough to want to join is welcomed.
 
Phyrebrat said:
where this would fit on your level of credibility
Click to expand...

There were plenty of women present in the crusades, of various positions and social standing - so a woman taking part in one wouldn't be a problem.

What would challenge credibility is if you decided on her being a knight. While it's true there are examples of woman taking up martial roles in Europe (for example, organising the defences of their husband's castle while under siege), the role of knight was specifically reserved for upper class men.

There are rare examples of this not being the case, but are usually very notable precisely because they are unusual.

So if the role is nothing more than part of a backstory detail, I'd keep it simple and uncomplicated. Being part of a crusade is fine, going on a pilgrimage would be ordinary. Being a Joan of Arc figure that no one has heard of would be troublesome.

But ... during your research, you may find that one or more historical characters or roles jump out to you as being exactly what you need.
 
Phyrebrat said:
I thought you were offline this weekend? I'd've personally hassled you had I known. :p
Click to expand...
I sneaked in while niece was otherwise occupied! (Ditto now.)

So you think I should keep the crusader male?
Click to expand...
It depends on what you were planning to do with her and why you think it's a good idea to make her female. She could easily be the widow of a crusader knight, but:
(a) it creates problems for the issues of ownership of land and the trust if you go along with that -- none that couldn't be resolved with a bit of thought and effort, but it's adding further complications to an already complex issue
(b) it creates a potential sexual dimension to the relationship with AAA -- even if only in other characters' minds -- which again might complicate matters
(c) this is meant to be background to Gilbert's story, and as Toby says, you don't want background to be highly coloured and possibly controversial, taking attention away from the foreground​

If there are good thematic reasons for wanting a woman in this role, and you can see a real advantage to the story by making her female, then fair enough, but if there's no reason for the change, save beyond perhaps making an honourable counterpoint to the abbess, I don't think that outweighs the potential problems.
 
Gonk the Insane said:
I'd certainly suspend disbelief for that, pH. Have you ever read Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History ?
Click to expand...

Phyrebrat, the question you should maybe be asking yourself is, How can I make it work for my readers? That's an issue of writerly skill, not suspension of disbelief.
 
Joan of Arc; Ripley (alien); Red Sonja; Disney's Mulan; Discworlds Monstrous Regiment - I think there's ample proof that not only are people willing to accept the role of a woman in combat or one who has disguised herself as a man to get into combat; but that they readily like that kind of content and are willing to believe it without a great effort to suspend disbelief.

As a core story or even as a back story I think you'd have no trouble including such a character.
I think you might have had more trouble in more conservative times in history, but in today's world I'd say it a non-issue at least for most "western" reading audiences (some other cultures might be less accepting of the concept but shouldn't reject it out a sense of it not being realistic).
 
Sorry for the delay in replying; am at the old homestead in Bournemouth so have been indulging my parents all weekend. :)

I appreciated that there were - historically - female leaders and warriors, but I wondered how commonplace the actual involvement was. I'd not necessarily decided she should battle like Brienne, but that she should have been proactive in more than a husband's 'chattel' kind of way.

I think on a balance, and from TJ's reply (as she has a broad knowledge of this wip) it would be right to say I'd overcomplicate things. My initial thought was it would be handy to introduce a romantic element between the crusader and the moor 'she' befriends. But I didn't factor in the land ownership claim.

Essentially I have a narrative where a deceased crusader responsible for a line of moors being present in Dorset. It need not have been because they had a child together, but I thougt it would be easier. The important thing is, the story set in the 1100s is about a generation later. TJ and I had discussed my probably needing to know the backstory between the crusader and the moor and so this is just background world building purely for my convenience (and eyes). I know the rough story of their friendship, and wondered if that might be easier served if they were lovers, too.

So, I think I'll have the African character as male after all...

Thank you for all the suggestions and help.

pH
 
If you want AA herself to be of mixed Moor and white blood, then you can still do that, without trying to make the Crusader female or causing too many extra problems for the trust/land ownership. Throwing ideas out at random here:
  • Crusader marries a Moorish woman on the crusade (she would have to convert to Christianity, of course) -- this would be his second marriage if you want there to be a son at home who inherits the bulk of the land (first wife is dead, not bigamy!). If she becomes pregnant by him, the Crusader would definitely want to put trusts in place to protect her and the to-be-born/just-born child, most especially if there is an adolescent/adult son already around. AAA could then be her servant or friend or a complete stranger according to need, and the child could be born over there or here whichever suits best
  • Crusader's wife has accompanied him to the Holy Land, and over there she has a relationship with a Moor (who might or might not be AAA), but it's only when the child is born anyone knows the child isn't the Crusader's -- and that could be over there, after they come back to England, or after his death, whichever makes for the most satisfying plot, but again the Crusader would be the one making the trust in anticipation of the child's birth and he either never realises or doesn't care he's been cuckolded
  • Crusader's wife has accompanied him to the Holy Land, he has died over there, but she is helped to return to England by AAA who owes her/the Crusader his life, and she then has a relationship with AAA -- in this case the trust would have to be brought into being before the Crusader left for the Holy Land originally, which makes it less likely to work as the Abbess would surely have "stolen" the land in the meantime
  • Crusader returns to England with AAA, and his wife (who has remained behind) then has a relationship with AAA, and again the Crusader creates the trust to protect her and/or AAA
I'm sure there are other options you could explore, so don't give up the idea of a mixed race child if you think it would help, but there's no need to bend history at some acute angle to achieve it. However, the problem as I see it is that we need the Crusader to make the trust with the Abbess, but as soon as he pops his clogs she is going to send Gilbert to check out the land, and AA needs to be 14 at the very least at that point if we're not to be getting into murky waters (and even 14 might be pushing it). So you need to think carefully about dates and how everything fits together in the timeline.


NB: Re-reading my other post I realise it's ambiguous where I've said "it creates problems for the issues of ownership of land and the trust if you go along with that" -- by "that" I meant if you made the woman the crusader and want her to have ownership of the land and execute a trust, because Norman law was by no means favourable to women owning property. There's no problem in giving the Crusader's widow a role, as I've suggested here, but it really is best if it's the Crusader who deals with the Abbess re the land.
 
This isn't advice, just my impression:

In the last several decades, the Crusades have increasingly been viewed as the Dark Age Europeans traveling to the Holy Land to rape and pillage civilization. Many modern adaptations of Robin Hood give the distinct impression that Robin returns somewhat disgusted with the whole thing.

At the same time, we tend to treat female characters (especially those bucking societal norms) as the vanguard of humanism.

So the notion of a woman saddling up to go sack Jerusalem sounds off-putting - especially if the female character is supposed to be sympathetic.

I'm sure someone could construct a historical criticism of my impression, but that is my gut reaction.
 
RX that's an interesting assessment of how we perceive the Crusades today and, until you mentioned it, it is a line of thinking that I think has socially crept in without everyone really realising that its happening.

That said I think within the realms of a story it would be easy to construct the Crusade as a good thing from the perception of the characters. You'd simply have to spend an early part of the book essentially building propaganda of your own to justify your characters choices that they make. Many people who read stories lose themselves in that story regardless of reality unless the story is attempting to be an historical work or similarly inspired/retelling real world events.
As this is a supernatural horror story chances are even those with a strong view on the real Crusades could allow characters of the time as presented in the story to have different opinions to themselves so long as those opinions are justified within the story.

Note that the justification does't have to be an all glorious holy good reason; it might be purely because the character is under strict oath; or because they've some crime or cause that justifies why its desirable or inevitable for them to go. You can play with that as a writer as within your story they are "your" crusades.
 
I know this is later, but no it wouldn't stretch the imagination:
James Barry (surgeon) - Wikipedia

Or there is Joan of Arc

And I wouldn't have any problem with a transman running away from his upper class home to live as theirself. There's other cases, Dr James Barry is the one I remembered off the top of my head.

Women have always been more involved in war than history portrays.
 
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