The Medieval Mindset (2017)
Much of the mindset(s) of the 14th century make a LOT more sense when you realize two things.<p>1. 19 year olds were routinely making critical military decisions.  Remember how friggin&#x27; twitchy you were at 19 about big capitalized ideas like Honor and Purity and Romance?  Yeah, now be that guy but in charge of a thousand lances.   A reasonable modern equivalent to 14th century france is 21st century afghanistan.  A few old survivors trying to keep the peace, and teenagers flipping out on blood vendettas keeping everyone on their toes.<p>2.  Basically everyone had PTSD and most of the warrior class had semi-permanent concussions. This explains most if not all of the weird contradictions between battlefield brutality and the extremes of social politesse off it.  Froissart and other chroniclers of the age have plenty of examples of knights who would shit themselves in terror before making themselves fight, or have screaming nightmares for days, or any of a long list of things that are pretty obvious signals of severe psychological distress.   They would also do things like bawl their eyes out at music or at the death of a pet or other seemingly small things -- and flip into murderous rage when social conventions were violated.  This is entirely coherent with, for example, things we see retired NFL players do.  I suspect it&#x27;s for a lot of the same reasons.