What I’ve learned about Ye Olden Tymes watching Prestige Television
Every king was either crazy or clearly the product of Appalachian-magnitude inbreeding or, usually, both.
Every queen was supremely wise, supremely sexual and/or both, and always plagued by their dead husband’s mother. They even called the mother-in-law the “Queen Mother,” just to piss off the queen.
Throne room decor was either bright, warm and colorful, or it was dingy, cold stone-walled dungeon-chic where you could see your breath. It was never in-between.
When a boss (whether king, queen, lord, pirate, outlaw, etc.) nods at the guards, they know exactly, without a word, whether the boss is saying “Leave us so I can speak privately with this person” or “Don’t leave me alone with this maniac.”
The best way to determine whether a woman was pregnant prior to the 20th Century was if she threw up once. The second best test was if she put her hand on her suddenly-not-quite-flat-but-still-pretty-flat tummy.
Women’s sex drive is impressive. Until the mid/late-20th Century, sex was a pleasure for men but a 1-in-3 death sentence for women, thanks to the dangers of childbirth. Hell, I don’t leave the house if there’s a 30% chance of rain.
The best/worst job in the kingdom was the queen’s body guard. Great benefits, limited life expectancy.
Body odor did not become a sexual turn-off until the 20th Century.
Acne didn’t occur until the 20th Century, and even then just for bad guys.
People of color did not exist in the British Isles until the 20th Century, except in Bridgerton, wherever that is.
Parody / irony was invented by Royal Courts, in the form of dance styles.
The Seventeenth Century was the high-water mark for dentistry. Everyone has all their teeth, and all their teeth are straight. This was accomplished, somehow, without teenagers having to wear braces. My son Daniel once said, and I agree, that people will look back on 21st Century orthodontia the way we now do for drilling holes in the skull to relieve headaches. Oh if we could only return to the halcyon days of 1726, and its straight teeth without Torquimada-level torture.
In Ye Olden Tymes, animals apparently just fell from heaven ready to pluck or butcher by three women without speaking roles.
The leading cause of death prior to the 20th Century was throat slitting (it continued as the leading cause of death into the 1950s in whatever town those Peaky guys live in). The second leading cause of death was coughing a little blood into your hankerchief.
Despite the fact that just rolling out of your dirt-and-straw bed in the morning was likely to completely muddy your clothes, doing the laundry back then involved occasionally hanging three shirts on a line. That’s it. Daily work involved clay farming and slicing open (others’) arteries with swords, but somehow three shirts hung out every other episode kept the entire household’s wardrobe clean. Today, in (checks notes) 2025, it takes me all of Sunday to clean a week’s worth of just my laundry, and I’m using modern tools like washers, dryers and that little brush on top of the Spray ‘n Wash.