The video today is for the soap poera fans!
Debuted last week the 7 pm soap opera 'God save the King',
a soap opera that, to me, is fantasy and fairy tale,
and has no obligations in being faithful to medieval habits, traditions or facts.
Also the time the show is broadcast, and 21st century aesthetics
some changes need to be made and many things can't be shown.
Can you imagine in a 7 pm soap opera, a battle as fierce as the ones in the series 'The Last Kingdom's'?
It won't work, right?
I think this soap opera resembles a nice show in 'TV Cultura', called 'Tales of Grimm and Andersen', I think.
And this one is fantasy, fairy tales, romance,
And the fist question is:
Which century is pictured? Well...
I heard 11th, 12th or 14th century...
My conclusion is 14th century with 'poetic license'.
Although there is no obligation to what really happened during Middle Ages,
I want to bring here some curious facts and information
about people's everyday during Middle Ages.
As I said,
many aesthetics changes were made, so the soap opera could look a bit modern, and a bit more
acceptable to the 21st century public.
Like actress Bruna Marquezine's cleavage...
Speaking of Marquezine, in the first episode,
she's inside her luxurious chambers, she plays a princess,
and she gets out of a wonderful and big bathtub made out of stone,
and then you'll say to me that people during Middle Ages didn't take baths...
Yes they did!
'Incrediseem as it may ble', they did!
Baths were so important that is wasn't only a matter of hygiene and health, but also, ostentation.
BECAUSE I'M RICH!
Charlemagne used to invite his family, and court members to bathe with him,
like he was in a modern jacuzzi.
Flowers and aromatic herbs could be added to the bath to make it even more pleasant.
The tubs were made out of wood and had had a tent-like cloth on top of it.
Okay, the nobility had riches enough to pay for this wonderful baths,
But how about the peasants? The lowest stratum of society? What would they do
since they had no access to private baths?
Just like in Rome, there were bathhouses in Europe.
Even the smaller cities had those bathhouses.
Along with the bath, people could have a meal, and play games.
By the way, there's a famous medieval work of literature and health called 'Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum',
a piece of work that gives advice on food, and health for people, and one of the things written there
is that the best morning ritual after getting up every morning is
to wash face and hand with cold water,
comb the hair, brush the teeth, and keep warm after a bath, avoiding a cold.
But in the other hand, it says that baths during spring and the winter were highly recommended,
but not during summer...
So of course, medieval hygiene had some things to improve.
And which were the stratum that bathe less? The clergy.
Westminster Abbey, in London, had since that time piped water. A real luxury.
They had even a employee to help the monks with their baths. Helping whenever they needed.
They had to take four bath per year,
but you know how it is. Close to the day they forgot, had more important things to do
So who will say they took any bath even with piped water, right?
The prominence of the public bathhouse went into fast decline during the sixteenth-century
thanks to the more puritanical religious people,
capable of imposing their moral values on the community,
and that refuted the idea of many people, men and women, bathing in the same place.
Also the many diseases that struck Europe, and could be proliferated inside bathhouses,
extinguishing its operations, could have been responsible.
People could be cleaner than previously thought, not having that crust of dirt as shown in movies and series,
but streets and cities were really dirty.
Because cities were small, animals circulated, that were no piped water or sewer, the most important thing...
So much is, that the term 'ripshit', possibly came from it.
Just imagine living in a medieval city, there was no proper place to put away organic material,
including the citizens'. So what they used to do?
They used to relieve themselves in a bucket, and threw it through a window down the street,
sometimes hitting an unfortunate soul that was walking down the street.
So much is that in the cities, the black plague has proliferated.
Taken to Europe by travelers from Asia.
The disease was transmitted by fleas. What killed big part of Europe's population.
Now let's talk about the heroine, actress Marina Ruy Barbosa.
She plays a beautiful peasant.
But in reality, would she be as courted as in the novel?
At one side, a prince, at another, a charming peasant?
Well, I think not. To begin with,
the fact that she would probably have some rotten teeth.
since dental prophylaxis existed at the time,
but it wasn't practiced by everyone, including peasants.
Secondly: a very curious fact. She's a ginger.
Just like actress Rosamaria Murtinho, that became ginger for this soap opera,
And also Ed Sheeran, that appeared in Game of Thrones, and in a series called The Bastard Executioner.
A short show that was briefly cancelled.
People with red hair were totally chased.
Because they were, at first place, linked to Jewish people.
They were frowned upon during the Middle Ages, because Christianity was the main religion,
and anyone who wasn't a Christian was considered heretic.
And the color red was attributed to them.
So much is that Judas is depicted as a ginger in many pieces of work.
Red haired people at this time were considered fake, dangerous, liars, treacherous,
fools, and many other negative adjectives. It was believed that a ginger in the room would bring bad luck.
So I don't think that Marina Ruy Barbosa would be so desired even her hair color being marvelous.
Speaking of her, she owns a tent and sells soup.
How was the food at that time?
For people who could afford it, it was delicious, plentiful and complete,
There were many options of seafood, red meat, birds, cereals, spices brought from distant lands, and breads.
It was a full table.
The problem with the Middle Ages is that many times during the period, they had to face times of hunger.
So for peasants, obtaining food wasn't that easy. So what did they do?
There was a kind of porridge recipe that took anything eatable you could find in your house,
and then put everything in a cauldron to cook for two hours,
because a lot of 'fertilizer' was used to grow the ingredients,
In Rothenburg, for example, wonderful city in Germany,
they have a very famous sweet called 'schneeball',
This delicious little ball, that I certainly recommend for those who want to go there,
was created during the Middle Ages exactly because of the lack of food.
The ingredients are very basic. Flour, sugar, and water.
So they made a little ball, fried it, and that was what they could eat.
Obviously, today the recipe was improved, and there are many flavours in amazing displays.
But at that time, it was the only thing they had to eat.
Water wasn't good for consumption, so peasants and monarchs drank lots of wine.
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