i do think a lot of implausible medieval plot devices make more sense when considering the fact that these people simply did not have glasses
like the king arthur problem of how were these people always accidentally sleeping with the wrong person? well 1) no glasses 2) no lights and candles are so expensive 3) royal couples didn’t even sleep in the same bed a lot of the time anyway 4) arranged marriage how much do you really know your spouse anyway? maybe not very well a lot of the time 5) people are drinking a lot idk. maybe not as absurd as one might think
this post is brought to you by the one time i woke up at a sleepover and realized that without my glasses i could not distinguish one friend from the other. haunting. all of arthurian literature was unlocked to me at that moment
This very much applies to Shakespeare (I think we all underestimate how extremely dark it was in the past)
Only think about how society was made more structurally stable by the convenient potential for "accidental" extramarital shenanigans to occur unnoticed, allowing for hordes of people in arranged, dysfunctional, unhappy, or simply too-restrictive marriages to get their rocks off with their chosen people with SIGNIFICANTLY less risk of being caught and facing consequences, especially when those consequences might involve effects on the shape of the map.
