f1onagher
Well-known member
I'm playing that game right now and have helped to install two different puppet kings to the thrones of Mercia and East Anglia, supported an anti-Wessex rebellion in western Mercia, punted Lundun into a semi-independent city-state under joint Norse-Saxon control, stopped a Welsh king from retaking lands that his people have a much better claim to than I do, and helped stabilize a Norse controlled regime in Jorvic in Northumbria. Reading between the lines I am pretty clearly conquering England for the Norse, even in this deeply sanitized take on the Viking invasion of England.Every work of fiction set in this era likes to glorify vikings over Anglo-Saxons. We all know it's because a Christian civilization has to be the oppressor somehow.
Huh, that was pretty good, thanks for sharing.Collections: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
Does turning the story of the viking invasion of England into a tale about how colonialism is awesome and the nazis were totally right about the innate superiority of the norse over everyone else count?
As a general note, I'm suspicious of any sort of historical reinterpretation akin to what ubisoft is doing, because departing from the anchor of real history opens the work up to contemporary prejudices seeping in instead, such as the generally anti-christian sentiment in valhalla, and that the cited reasoning of "being more inclusive" has never really held up to scrutiny.
So, the guy that writes the pedantry is actually pretty good at these, but like all writers, his personal beliefs color his worldview. He only once, at the very end touches on the actual problem with the cultural depictions in this game. That as far as 'enlightened' 21st century moralists are concerned white people and Christianity can not be victims of persecution of any kind. He does mention that this creates a rather unfortunate Nazi-esque implication. I would call this irony. That multiculturalism's endpoint is functionally no different than the white supremacist worldview it claims to oppose, just with the victims flipped.
I'm going to go rewatch Vinland Saga now. Apparently, Japanese nerds are better at researching and depicting European history than French-Canadians are.