Oh, good on you for doing this! I'd noticed the oddly high mortality rate for non-white men but it's good to have it confirmed & makes me wonder if we should write to the Beeb about that (especially in the context of news media which racialise contemporary violent crimes). Ditto the under-representation of women - isn't it odd how Morgana, Arthur & Gwen all lack mothers and yet they only feel the need to explain it in Arthur's case? Do the mothers simply evaporate from the story lest the TV producers have to deal with the terrifying issue of putting middle-aged women on screen?
In terms of the validity of the 'white' v 'nonwhite' division that some commenters raise, I don't know anything about constructions of race in Europe during the Medieval Era - most of the historical analysis I've read doesn't go back nearly that far - but I'm presuming the people making Merlin don't have that information either. Absent any evidence that they're striving for historical accuracy (and there's a good deal of evidence to the contrary there, not least the absurd inconsistency of the weaponry & armour) I think it's reasonable to discuss it in terms of how we understand race now, in which case the white v nonwhite distinction seems reasonable to me.
I'm amazed that a commenter above suggested there wouldn't have been any nonwhite people in the UK at that point - had they missed the documented pre-Medieval history of international trade including many spices, dyes and gemstones coming from Africa and Asia? And the dynamics with the Byzantine Empire (which would have been linked to the UK via major shipping routes through Venice, and a central part of the scholarly and religious community in Europe)? As far as I can tell, there's far more reason to believe that there were (what we would call) nonwhite people in the UK during the Medieval period than that King Arthur ever existed, but I guess some people will do their damnedest to whitewash history. Or is it the status of myth that peturbs them so very much - that the founding myth must be whitewashed regardless of the historical record?
no subject
In terms of the validity of the 'white' v 'nonwhite' division that some commenters raise, I don't know anything about constructions of race in Europe during the Medieval Era - most of the historical analysis I've read doesn't go back nearly that far - but I'm presuming the people making Merlin don't have that information either. Absent any evidence that they're striving for historical accuracy (and there's a good deal of evidence to the contrary there, not least the absurd inconsistency of the weaponry & armour) I think it's reasonable to discuss it in terms of how we understand race now, in which case the white v nonwhite distinction seems reasonable to me.
I'm amazed that a commenter above suggested there wouldn't have been any nonwhite people in the UK at that point - had they missed the documented pre-Medieval history of international trade including many spices, dyes and gemstones coming from Africa and Asia? And the dynamics with the Byzantine Empire (which would have been linked to the UK via major shipping routes through Venice, and a central part of the scholarly and religious community in Europe)? As far as I can tell, there's far more reason to believe that there were (what we would call) nonwhite people in the UK during the Medieval period than that King Arthur ever existed, but I guess some people will do their damnedest to whitewash history. Or is it the status of myth that peturbs them so very much - that the founding myth must be whitewashed regardless of the historical record?