Gone Medieval - Medieval Gaming: Crusader Kings III

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

How would you rule an early medieval dynasty? Maybe you'll send your spymaster to dig around for secrets or champion honestly to keep stress levels down. Remembering with every decision made consequences could have a ripple effect on entire medieval worlds; for generations to come. Crusader King III is an immersive grand strategy role-playing game, allowing you to rule from the comfort of your sofa. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt is joined by Alexander Oltner, Game Director at Paradox Games for Crusader King III. With a new extension pack Royal Courts, we explore the unique RPG and its history-driven gameplay.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Gone Medieval newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Gaming has always found a home in the Middle Ages. I'll age myself horrendously here by talking about playing games like Golden Axe and Abar's Tale and that's the old Abar's Tale, not the reboot that came out a few years ago. Fast forward more years than I would care to count and the medieval period still provides fertile ground for gaming. Crusader Kings 3 is a grand strategy game that spans centuries, continents and

generations. It's a broad and deep game with so many facets it will keep you absorbed for dangerously long amounts of time. The studio behind the game Paradox Interactive have just released the newest expansion, Royal Courts, and I thought it would be interesting to investigate how this game was created, what part history has played in its development. And so I'm delighted to be joined by Alex Altner, who's the game director for Crusader Kings 3 at Paradox Interactive. Thanks very much for joining us, Alex. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. I'm happy to be here. It's wonderful to have you. So for those who haven't played a Crusader Kings game yet, can you give us a quick overview of what it is, please? What is Crusader Kings? Of course. So Crusader Kings is a grand strategy game. So it's got this

strategy core component where you play mostly on a map and you have land that you map. But Crusader Kings is unique in that it's got a strong role-playing component, where you guide a lineage, a family, throughout generations and generations, leading them to glory or fame or whatever you like. I like to describe the game as a medieval drama simulator, because it focuses on interpersonal relations in this grand aspect, where even though you see realms on the map, It's all driven by characters and individual motivations.

And the life or death of one insignificant character could have ripple effects on the entire medieval world. And it's fascinating that you can play through your own dynasty as well. So you don't play one character who has a finite lifespan. Once your character dies, you play their air, usually their son. And I mean, the game that I'm currently playing, I was complaining to Alex before we started recording that I've lost. In order to amounts of times to Crusader Kings 3,

the game that I'm playing at the moment, currently my starting character's grandson and have just got control of the kingdom of Ireland. So you play across that whole dynastic element and you can build your dynasty and what your dynasty is known for. So it has this real kind of depth to the role-playing element of it that spans more than one person. Yeah, I feel like this is the biggest difference from traditional role-playing games. If you come from the role-playing sphere, you usually play one character and death means game over, which is not the case here. Death is the beginning of a new story in the same world.

So you play a succession of characters, and it's not always parent to child. Sometimes you get to play as your own devious brother, having murdered your previous character, and it creates this sort of feeling inside of you of, who am I now? What have I done to achieve this power? Sometimes it's elections or other ways of succeeding your previous character,

all with this medieval flair of succession laws and similar restrictions. And each character kind of has a set of traits that drive them and therefore the player is required to sort of take account of who they are. You can't design a character that is necessarily how you would exist in the world. You are to some extent moved around by who your character is at the moment and what motivates them and their character traits, which gives it another element, another dimension that you're always changing the way. where you have to interact with the world around you.

Yeah, and I think that's one of the most exciting parts of Crusader Kings III in particular, compared to its predecessors. You have these traits, they guide your character towards a certain style of play. You might be a sadistic or callous character, which means that just doing compassionate acts, such as releasing someone from prison or taking pity on a prisoner, or anyone else really, cause you stress. While the opposite is naturally true as well, like a compassionate character,

you can't just go and torture people or not help those in need. You, of course, have the choice to play the character however you like, but if you go against your traits too much, you will face mental consequences and your character will have meltdowns and stress breaks that will stack all of these negative things on top of your character. It starts out quite simple, where you might, I don't know, start comfort eating. But if you advance in stress, you constantly go against your character's will. For example, if you're greedy and you keep giving away money, you might reach a point where you go completely insane

and maybe burn down your capital or hurt someone close to you that you really do not want to hurt. The traits really drive the characters, and if you have a vassal that is ambitious, you will notice that that vassal is very likely to be there and form factions against you, while a content vassal will just be content with whatever you give them. Yeah, so it adds this extra dimensions to the way you have to interact with everybody around you who is a vassal or a rival ruler or anything like that at all.

Why do you think the medieval period is a good place to base a game? There are lots of games that are based in the medieval world. What appeals about that period? Is it the elements of we all love a knight in armour waving a sword around? Is it the kind of strategy that you can play in the medieval world? I mean, there's even the sense of detachment, I guess, from the modern world, particularly at the moment. Or is there something else that drives the interest in medieval gameplay, do you think?

I think there's many answers to this question. And what you mentioned is more than true. Because the medieval age is distant enough for people to not feel like this is here and now. but it's familiar enough for people to feel connected. It's this breeding ground for drama, and something like familial intrigue or conflicts between rivals is as timeless as anything. And then the medieval age specifically is so attractive as a setting

because of what it contains. When I was young, I loved the standard castles and knights and playfighting and such, But it's got so much more to it as well. It's the formative stages for a lot of what we know today. Like, how do you rule a realm? How are laws formed? And so on and so on.

What does family mean? It's intriguing as a setting. It's a long period as well. So a lot of things changed over time. There's too much to talk about almost. Endless scope. I constantly say on this podcast that everything is medieval, and medieval is the best place for everything.

How do you go about creating a game like Crusader Kings 3? What's the process that goes into this game? So this is a development of Crusader Kings 2 in this instance. How do you decide what stays and what gets reworked and what gets added? That's a very interesting question and one I could probably talk about at length. So I'm going to try and keep it somewhat brief. When you start making a sequel, you of course look at the current game and what works and what doesn't work. This is a complicated and tricky process, especially in a game like a grand strategy game

where every system is interconnected. And removing something means you have other systems no longer working or perhaps you need to replace it with something else. What we did was we took a look at what people like the most and also what we consider to be the core of the game. What is absolutely the most important? What is the core? and how can we expand the core to be even better in a sequel?

As I mentioned before with the traits, for example, and stress, that was one of the things we added on in K3 compared to K2 because characters had personalities and they acted on them, but not enough for personalities to truly matter. Most people, they played politics as objectively as you could, pretty much, which meant that it wasn't very useful to, take a look and see, is this a greedy character, is this a generous character? They would act the same, more or less. So that's why we decided to add the stress element onto characters,

acting or not acting, according to their personality. But of course, there's a lot more going on, a lot more. And the overarching design philosophy of CK3 was to focus even more on the characters, because that's what makes it unique. Everything, if it can be character-driven, should be character-driven. We added in characters that fought in battles. We added in powerful vassals and counselors as a default core part of the game. And so on, and so on.

You need agents for your schemes, and you need to bribe and use hooks. All of that, we made very central to the core to increase the drama potential. In the end, that's what we wanted to reach, very living and vivid, dramatic, medieval world. Yeah, you mentioned there that there are recognisable characters and for those who like

their history, the game sort of nominally starts in 1066. There are expansions that move that backwards towards the Viking era and you can move it slightly forwards. But in 1066, you know, you have Harald Godwinson, you have Duke William of Normandy, you have all of these names that you will absolutely recognise as being present. So it has that element of historical reality to it. When you start developing Crusader Kings, which came first, I guess, a chicken and egg question for you. Did you want to make a medieval game, or did you want to make a grand strategy game and the medieval era was the place that you settled on to make it? Oh, that's an interesting question. It's hard to answer, because I feel like we wanted to make

a medieval game, but we didn't just want to make a medieval game, if that makes sense. We wanted to make a medieval game that felt truly medieval, and there's nothing more medieval than personal relations and, you know, the kings on the thrones. interacting with their councils and family and ruling. It's before the era of absolute rulerships. You have these characters with their agendas, and they're pushing them left and right. As you mentioned with historical characters,

I feel like for me, especially, and for many of our players, the fact that it is based in real history, to a degree, at least not everything can be 100% accurate, but it is as accurate as we can get it. It gives so much to the simulation that comes afterwards. Even though the game is what history is not going to follow recorded history as soon as you hit that unpause button, it still starts at a place where you can, after playing 200 years, track your dynasty back in time and see that, yes, you married the House of Habsburg and you married the Normandy family. And you can see how their various fates ended up.

So there's this element of recognizability that lends credibility to the simulation. Yeah, and that divergence is interesting. I'm about 50 years after 1066 in my current game, and the Godwinsons are still on the throne of England. So the Norman conquest kind of didn't happen in the world I'm in now. Exactly. That's one of the things that my fantastic co-workers keep telling me when I say, I want William to win. And they are so much smarter than me when it comes to historical details. and they insist on the fact that William winning was a bit of a fluke

and that Harold was actually the most likely winner in this scenario. So when you play a game, there's a chance of William winning, there's a chance of Harold winning, there's a chance of Norway winning as well, and all of them have very different and interesting outcomes, I feel, and you never really know what you're going to get. Yeah, absolutely. And if you like your what-ifs of history, it's a great game to watch play out around you as you're playing as well. How long does it take to build a game like Crusader Kings 3?

How long is it in development and what kind of milestones do you have as you develop these games? Another really good question. So it takes year upon year, upon year, upon year. I think more than five years or so, definitely. It's a very big project, especially when you have to live up to such a legacy as Crusader Kings 2, then you don't want the sequel to be lesser. So we spent a lot of time, a lot and lot and lot of time on the development process. I can't remember the exact details. Maybe I'm off by a little bit, but time has become very relative as of late. And it's also not like we ever really stop developing.

We keep developing. That's sort of a hallmark of paradox, I suppose. We support our games for very long. Siki2 was supported for over seven years, I believe, and we have lots of games that we're supporting constantly. Milestones that we look at, I think there are many milestones, they're more or less interesting, but the more interesting for you to know about, I would believe, is the, is it fun milestone? It's a very difficult milestone for grand strategy games, because all the systems play in with each other, you, for a very long time, have to trust that it will work out in the end,

right now nothing makes sense. All of these systems are disjointed and do not work together. And then all of it clicks and suddenly it becomes fun. And that happens fairly late in development comparatively. But then when you finally pass the milestone of, is this fun? And it is, you're so relieved and then you can start making it even more fun and even better. I guess the danger then is when do you stop? And I suppose the benefit is that you carry on supporting these games and releasing DLC so it can keep developing. But there must be a danger of mission creep on all of these things where you think, I'll just add this and I'll just add that. It'll be ready soon. Absolutely. And it happens. But we live and we learn and we try to focus our

efforts where it matters the most and avoid going on two wild tangents when we develop, especially during the base game. How much historical input do you look for as well when you're developing a game like this? So does it affect things like the costumes that we'll see, the weapons, the battles that are fought, the strategies that are employed, particularly by the AI? Do you try to make it as authentic as you possibly can in historical terms? We strive towards authenticity, definitely. I have to admit that first and foremost, it's supposed to be a game. It's supposed to be fun. The thing is, if you put a lot of research into something that no one wants to play, then that research is wasted. So while certain areas of the game are more of a game than others, we do pride ourselves on trying to make it as authentic as possible.

You have some examples there, for example, in the clothes. We have some fantastically talented character artists, and they do such in-depth research. They're not just going to Wikipedia and checking what do people dress like. they have libraries of books and references and people they talk to I do not know much about the clothes myself but I like to go by and check how they are working and all the references they're putting up and finding they can find some fascinating stuff

that is historically accurate for the period stuff you've never seen in your life it's absolutely mind-boggling sometimes what works and it's not usually what you believe it to be like the stereotypical look of the Middle Ages is by and large Hollywood, right? But reality is so much more fascinating than anything Hollywood can cook up.

And of course it's not only in the clothes research. We do this. We have people doing research for almost everything we do. Anything that touches upon something historical, we order books and we do research, and we try to find people that are very knowledgeable or interested in an area, and we consult them to try and make it as accurate as possible

because we want to avoid this heavily tropeed version of the Middle Ages, even if it's sometimes what people expect. The Ides of March, the 15th of March, it's perhaps the most famous, or shall we say, infamous day in the ancient history world because it was on that day in 44 BC that Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, was assassinated in a Senate meeting. But what do we know about the... events of the Iads of March 44 BC. Did Shakespeare get anything right? And what happened next?

Well, every Sunday, this March on the ancients from history hit, we're going to find out. This is the time for our special mini-series of episodes, all about the aides of March, the events of the day itself, the legacy of this day in ancient history, some of the characters involved, and so much more. So make sure you tune into the ancients from history hit every Sunday for our special Iids of March mini-stitcher. series. It always amazes me how much Hollywood changes to make stories worse. They take out lots of the interesting fantastical detail and replace it with stuff that can sometimes be quite bland. And I don't see the need to make those changes. So it's great that you kind of push that aside

and try to keep historical reality in the game. As we kind of mentioned, Crusader Kings covers all sorts of aspects from international relations to DLC covering Northern Lords that brings a Viking dimension into the game, and the newest expansion, Royal Courts, which allows players to develop a throne room and implement cultural projects that improve the links between rulers and their people, as well as impress and frighten rivals and all that kind of thing. In the medieval world, all of these things were always deeply connected. Are they as connected in the game as well, is part of the idea of the throne room to give players another layer of an idea of how much stuff a medieval ruler had to balance in their minds.

and think about and play with all of the time. Yes, absolutely. So one of our favourite things to do is to take something you believe you are familiar with. Let's say an invading Viking, for example. You've got a picture of that in your head. But then we show how it actually was. It's the same with the throne room, for example. The throne room is essentially where medieval rulers showed their power.

And it might not really make sense to us today, why they spent so much on frivolous things when you play the game you might believe that oh everyone kept a large treasury in case of war and sure many clever rulers did but also you were expected to spend that money to show that you are indeed the ruler of this realm you're not just sitting on a pile of gold

like a dragon that would never fly people would get angry and think you are false king so the royal court itself is there to simulate this keeping up of appearances and what sort of benefits that actually gave you as a ruler. Public opinion and what other rulers think of you, being grand in the sense that you're spending a lot and people think that the expectations you have are met. Another example of this is, as I mentioned with the Vikings, most people think of Vikings as bloodthirsty, plunderers. But they were quite a bit more than that in reality.

they traded, they lived in Scandinavia, and that's not an easy place to live. And just showing some nuance to it all makes us very happy when we can educate a little bit, let's say. Of course they still went overseas, and of course they plundered. But as much as they plundered, they settled and assimilated, which we show. They might invade somewhere like Normandy, but then they will slowly assimilate and become part of the local culture. And speaking of culture, I think, that's one of the more. interesting systems we've added recently from a global simulation perspective where you can see all of the cultures evolve and change and hybridize, which is something that happened constantly. Another preconception people have is that, for example, if you look at the map and you see Irish culture, this is the same Irish culture as today, which couldn't be more incorrect.

It's evolved over time, and this is what we're trying to show. with cultures adopting new traditions or diverging or even hybridising, you can get something like hibernone Norse culture popping up, which might spread and then eventually be completely accepted on the island. And I feel like just the fact that this happens naturally and differently every game shows just how alive the world is and that it's not only war and conflict.

There's a lot of peace understanding and melding of cultures and new things pop up. up that you would never believe possible before you saw it with your own eyes. Yeah, it does really adds to the organic feel of it that you see these cultures, as you say, hybridising, diverging. You can choose to do that to your culture as well, so you can try to make changes deliberately to your culture, which might be about making it more appealing to other cultures that you want to get closer to or take over or anything like that. So you can choose to do this, you can choose to protect your existing culture. And was the feeling behind that

that it deepens gameplay, definitely. It adds lots more dimensions to it. But does it also help to add historical authenticity? As you say, that was happening in the world throughout this period. And so it was the intention for the game to reflect what had happened in real life in the medieval period. Absolutely. One of the things I was never happy with was how static the culture map was. And that the only real change you could impose on the cultural map was to maybe switch over one county to your culture. which is a very odd way of looking at it, because that's sure that happened sometimes, but it was definitely not the norm.

If you were a foreign conqueror, for example, or if you find yourself ruling through inheritance over a kingdom where you have no cultural ties to the people, you would try to strengthen those ties, not replace the people there. I personally love when I end up in a situation where I'm ruling over a kingdom of another culture, and I slowly but surely build up this trust with the local populace

by letting them be self-governing and promoting acceptance with my steward and making sure that the cultures intermingle until I can eventually either just build up acceptance high enough for me to be accepted as a legitimate ruler or I can create a hybrid culture where we can mix our traditions and ideals to create something new and that happened all the time everywhere. And it's fascinating sometimes I think how those connections come and go.

And one generation of your dynasty will have a claim to a throne somewhere else in the world, but that can pass because it was based on their marriage and perhaps isn't continued. And then you can make a connection to another place where you may or may not have a claim that you could press. And that can disappear as well. So it's constantly moving. And I think one of the important things is that you can't just go around randomly declaring war on everybody. You have to have a casas belly. You have to have a reason, a legitimate excuse.

or you can fabricate a legitimate excuse. But you have to have some legal reason to go to war. So it isn't just the case that you can store up money and men and then storm across the map taking over everybody. You can only declare war where you have a legitimate cause and where those legitimate causes are, changes organically around you through the generations and as other things happen around you in the AI as well.

I think it's fascinating and how the culture plays into all of that as well. You mentioned before the stress system that was added into Crusader Kings 3 as well. And that adds another dimension, I think, to the ruling and the decision-making of your character. You can decide to act against your instincts, but it will incur stress. Why do you think that stress element was important? I mean, I guess we've got examples of rulers throughout the medieval period who had problems with their mental health. Did that inspire you to look into that aspect of the game, or was it independent of that? Well, firstly, we wanted to motivate players to follow the traits of their character.

But then again, stress doesn't only come from traits or acting against your personality. We initially envisioned the system as a pure role-playing, focusing tool, but quickly realize that, well, stress is part of everyday life for most people and should be represented as such. Characters will accrue stress when, for example, loved ones die. It makes sense. Or when things are going against them, like when the tide. have turned and things are bad and unrest brewing, it will give you stress and you will have to handle this stress in various ways, either through your outlets, such as being a comfort eater and indulging in food, or being athletic and working out, or even just having a friend that

supports you and reduces your stress that way, or a loving spouse, for example. And of course, you can also play a character that is sadistic and arbitrary, where stress, is a non-factor and you can do pretty much whatever you like. But people will not enjoy you being their king most of the time. And you can always relax by heading down to the dungeon to torture some prisoners. Exactly, which again does not endear you to the people necessarily. But as far as an effective ruling strategy, dread sure beats most things. Yeah, yeah.

It's better to be feared than loved. And the stress system gives you kind of three layers of consequence to your action so you can incur stress at three levels that give you these points of kind of mental breaks and changes that happen. And I guess you have to decide whether you carry on accruing stress or whether you try and do something to relieve that. So you can absolutely take decisions all the way through that incur more and more and more stress until you end up playing as a character who is absolutely out of control of themselves. Yes. There are some fascinating things that can happen if you reach the highest level of stress. Again, this is something most players will want to avoid.

The first one level of stress or even two levels of stress, they are manageable comparatively. But the third level, that's when you, in a fit of rage, accidentally kill your own child, for example. And now the succession is ruined, or any number of other things. And, of course, if you have a rival, you can intentionally do things to them to increase their stress levels. You might not see how much stress they have, but you will notice when they are really statured. stressed out and they are accruing all of these traits that make them less efficient rulers like profligates or contrites or reclusive rulers, for example. So that's another way of using the stress system to your advantage is by, for example, murdering the sun of arrival

to make them have a mental break. Fascinating. What would you say is your favorite aspect of Crusader Kings 3 now? What do you think added most to the experiences of playing the game? that's a very good question. I love the game, right? I love how everything plays together. I'm not sure if there's anything that adds more or less to it for me. I love the game as a whole, the fact that it is character-driven, everything down to the most systemic things like culture

still ties into characters through and through. The faiths, they by themselves, mean nothing. It's in the context of another character following a faith, or not following a faith that it matters to you. And all the interactions you can take, all the scheming you can do. And I'm personally very fond of just diving into the dynasty trees and backtracking and looking at family branches and what happened to that bastard that was born 500 years ago. What happened with them?

Oh, they ascended to the throne of Bulgaria or whatever other thing could happen. There's the storytelling potential. just following these stories and putting it together in my head. That's what really makes the game for me. Yeah, and I think it's fascinating how if you're a fairly successful player, you can marry off lots of your children to foreign rulers and all of that kind of thing. And then a couple of generations later, those people could welcome back and bite you. And as you say, you can look at that family tree and you can see,

oh, when I was playing my granddad, I married my kids off to this thinking it was great and it got me lost of prestige. but what I've actually done is set up a rival for future generations and all of those decisions have consequences and it's all interconnected all the way across the map. Yeah, exactly. Maybe you suffered a very minor mental break as a character and you went to the brothel

and you produced a bastard that later left the realm and became a courtier in the Holy Roman Empire and later became rulers of Austria at the same time as you're over here in France, maybe you're ruling Burgundy. And you notice that this other... branch of your family has now ceased the position as the most powerful family member, overthrowing your title as head of the dynasty, for example. It's fascinating. The stories

that happen organically are many and very varied. Yeah, it's brilliant. So Royal Courts has just come out as an addition to Crusader Kings 3. Is there anything that you would like to see coming in future DLC? Oh, there are many, many things. I loved working on seeking back in the day and just seeing it get more and more deep and wide as time went on. I guess what I would like to do is follow the trend of making it deeper and making it wider. I would like to see new ways of playing the game. Something I personally am very interested in is having this living world where not everyone plays the same. Characters are core, but not everyone maybe needs to be a landed noble ruler,

perhaps there are room for other things and also more depth like what were the lives of medieval rulers like sure we have a lot of it but there's more there's a lot more that we do not model for example you were mentioning at the very start of this podcast that one of the pictures people have of the middle ages is a knight in shining armor wielding a sword

it's a reality of the medieval age we haven't done much with so maybe that's a venue to explore and see how was it? it in real life compared to the picture people might have in your heads. There are a lot of things I want to do and I want to keep this project, this game alive for a long time and deepen it and widen it. I would say please don't because I already lose enough time to Crusader Kings. I don't have much more that I can afford to lose and if you keep adding things to it. I feel like I'm going to get sucked into more and more Crusader Kings 3 and I'll be sitting

here in the podcast playing Crusader Kings 3 and just commentating on it. Just to end with, do you think A medieval gaming audience in particular is demanding. Do they care about the authenticity, the accuracy, the size and the scope of the game, that ability to drive and change things and be affected by things that are out of your control? Definitely. I think this rings true for all of the games we make as paradox, that we have very dedicated player bases, and they know a lot, and they have very interesting bits of information to share or opinion.

And of course we try to listen and see what do people expect. For us in Crusader Kings, there are a lot of experts that play our games. That's fascinating to us. Sometimes someone comes in and cites an academic study they have made on a subject. And it fascinates us because, of course, we can't be experts in everything ourselves. But just the fact that we have an audience where such things happen is humbling. Everyone is very unique. There are people that have this expert knowledge

and other people that just enjoy the medieval fantasy and even more people that enjoy the medieval fantasy but love to get lost in how the reality of it was or the authenticity of the setting. It must be very rewarding for you probably to listen to people like me saying I'm completely obsessed with the game and I told you before we started again

I lost last weekend entirely to Crusader Kings 3. That must be quite a rewarding sensation for you to hear people say that they are kind of getting that depth. I mean, it's incredibly rewarding and humbling in a way, because people like you are very, very, very smart. And just the fact that you enjoy the stuff we make so much, it makes both me and my entire team very happy. We sort of live on this energy of people,

enjoying what we do and we want to constantly make it better. And hopefully you will continue supporting Crusader Kings 3 for a long, long time to come. Thank you so much for joining me today, Alex. It's been an absolute pleasure to delve into the world of creating a medieval gaming experience. You can grab a copy of Crusader Kings 3 along with the latest expansion pack Royal Courts, which is out now as well. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode.

Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify now. It really does help signposts new listeners to the podcast. If you're enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then do subscribe to the Medieval Monday's newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I better let you go.

I've just been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.