[PaulHoule]

He has "history" in the name of his blog and he thinks that knights expected to fight dragons? I mean, it is like that in a manga but not in real life.

Quite a few knights in the day were nobles who had large landed estates to manage but were expected to impress their peasants in time of war. They were lucky enough to go to war with heavy armor and mounted on a horse whereas the peasants might get some weapon that is easy to handle without a lot of training like a spear.

[jaredhallen]

Maybe I'm being too generous, but I didn't take that to be meant in a literal, historical sense. I mean for the purpose of metaphor, a literary trope is just as good as factually accurate history. The point is that people can relate.

[digging]

> He has "history" in the name of his blog and he thinks that knights expected to fight dragons? I mean, it is like that in a manga but not in real life.

I mean, "experimental history", so I don't expect real, academic history... that said, yeah, that was an insane analogy to make. Knights weren't, as a rule, wandering monster-slayers - anywhere or ever, as far as I know.

Knights' bravery was tested on the battlefield, where they would have a very good expectation of survival until approximately post-Agincourt (where it became more socially acceptable to execute wealthy enemies instead of capturing and ransoming them). But that's also an extremely high-level description which may be so generalized as to be inaccurate.

[Apocryphon]

> Medieval knights used to wander around hoping for honorable adventures to pop up so that they could demonstrate their bravery.

That is a loose pop historical way of describing the chivalric tradition, but it did exist in some fashion. The dragon reference also exists in a passage that is being airily allegorical, you're all being overly anal about accuracy.