They just had to do it...

Oh, Lord

Anyone who thinks that Camelot is in any way, shape or form "accurate" history is an idiot. Case in point:

Women wore skirts back then. Guess what? So did men. Trousers were considered barbaric and not worn by anyone.

99% of medieval women never fought. But 99% of medieval men never fought, either, and those 99% of men would have been just as useless in battle as any non-fighting woman. This was one of the reasons why chivalry eventually came to include not harming noncombatants, period (not just women). It was because a mounted knight fighting against anyone on the ground who lacked military training was like using artillery to shoot prairie dogs. A young, spry peasant girl would have had a far better chance in battle than a fat, middle-aged Cluniac monk, for example. Medieval swords weren't nearly as heavy as movies make them look. A woman who worked all day on housework and in the fields wouldn't have had a lot of problem handling one.

Women did fight. Most medieval conflicts were either skirmishes or sieges of varying lengths. In sieges, everyone in town, including women and children, was expected to pitch in. Women, in particular, were expected to patrol the walls and pour burning pitch or oil, or drop stones onto the besiegers. It was a very dangerous job because the besiegers' archers (if they had any) would try to pick off anyone on the walls. But it was also very effective. For example, Simon de Montfort, leader of the northern French forces during the Albigensian Crusade, was killed by a woman dropping a large rock on his head from the wall of a city he was besieging.

Medieval women both ruled and led armies. Numerous examples exist of medieval women leading armies successfully into battle and ruling as legitimate queens, empresses, duchesses, countesses, etc. In fact, the show demonstrates an extremely poor knowledge of medieval history in giving us the idea that the grown eldest daughter of the King could be legally usurped by a male teenage bastard with no political base, who had been raised by "peasants". It's right up there with that Prima Nocte bs they were trying to push tonight. In fact, legitimacy almost always trumped gender, especially when all Merlin really "proved" with his story of Arthur's birth was that the King's second wife, Igraine, was an adulterous whore. He couldn't actually prove that Arthur wasn't the son of Igraine's first husband and therefore, not royal blood at all. Not to mention that the whole story threw into question the legitimacy of Uther's marriage to Igraine.

There were far more instances of legitimate daughters ruling and even leading armies into battle than there were of bastard sons of questionable parentage usurping a legitimate heir. It was not considered an especially great problem for the heir to be a woman. Most medieval military leaders were elected in some fashion. The heiress would marry a man with military skill and a power base (as Morgan tried to do with Lot) and everyone was satisfied. It *was* a problem if a rival heir couldn't prove his legitimacy (let alone primogeniture. Morgan is older).

Incidentally, the black-and-white ideas about all "history" being male-dominated stem mostly from the 19th century and reflect Victorian cultural values far more than those of the medieval or any other period.

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