25: Iconic Bastards and Bastardised Icons: Plebby Quest’s Neomedievalist Crusades

25: Iconic Bastards and Bastardised Icons: Plebby Quest’s Neomedievalist Crusades

Mike Horswell, @mjhorswell

I’m a historian who works on modern uses of the crusades. I’m going to talk about the game Plebby Quest: The Crusades as an example of ‘neomedievalism’ – an image of the Middle Ages reflecting an imagined medieval past.

Figure 25.1: Plebby Quest (Neowiz, 2021) Medievalism, and medieval digital games in particular, employ bitesize, self-referential tropes or ‘icons’ to signal and reinforce their ‘medieval’ status in modern culture. I introduced some tropes about the crusades last year: https://twitter.com/mjhorswell/status/1279059823552679937 Plebby Quest: The Crusades (2020) offers a quintessential example. A grand strategy game for mobile gamers that is set in the medieval world PQ reduces historical figures to soft-cornered rectangles& promiscuously mixes in pop culture references. In its irreverent, offbeat scenarios, players encounter a ‘bricolage’ of neomedievalism, where the medieval is bastardised to produce ‘icons’ recognisable in the context of knowing invocations of the pop-historical Middle Ages. The cast includes a jumble of iconic medieval figures: the antagonists of the Third Crusade (1189-92) Saladin, Richard ‘the Lionheart’ and Philip Augustus; as well as Machiavelli, Ibn al-Athir, and Baybars. Richard wears a lion pelt for easy identification.

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But these are bastardised versions filtered through modern lenses. In the game’s promo art Saladin is recognisably that of Kingdom of Heaven, as is Baldwin IV, leprous king of Jerusalem who wears a distinctive metal mask. Indeed, the mask becomes THE identification with the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the game. If, as Saladin, you capture Jerusalem, the defeated state will reappear elsewhere as ‘neoJerusalem’, its characters distinguished by all wearing the same mask. It is with the liberal admixture of fictional medieval & modern characters that the neomedievalism of PQ is most visible, including Ezio (Assassin’s Creed), Adso & William of Baskerville (Eco’s Name of the Rose), Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and… Gaius Baltar (Battle Star Galactica)?! These serve as knowing, playful gestures to both modern fictions of the medieval past and to the confected pastiche the game is creating. Less harmless is the use of Shakespeare’s Jewish character Shylock as a stereotyped avaricious, controlling money-lender. The game’s devs disown notions of historical accuracy with an Assassin’s Creed-style disclaimer & detailed disavowals within. These anticipate ‘historical’ objections but dismiss them on ludic grounds. Similarly, those seeking geographical fidelity should look away.

The effect of this isn’t ‘accuracy’, or even ‘authenticity’ but instead a playground of neomedievalism, heightened by its quirky design, high-contrast juxtaposition of pseudo- & pop-medieval elements & badly-translated dialogue, all emphasising its synthetic nature. Overall, Plebby Quest provokes us to think about the selective nature and use of the medieval past today, and what that consists of.

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