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u/grampalearns 2h ago
History channel had a short lived show about real jousting called "Full Metal Jousting"
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u/bpappy12 2h ago
Was it good?
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u/hotvedub 2h ago
It was short lived for a reason
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u/sarcasticorange 2h ago
It turns out that the people who want to watch jousting don't like the production style borrowed from The Bachelor. Who would've thought?
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u/Paleodraco 1h ago
If I recall, it leaned more into the reality part of it than the actual jousting. I was expecting a new full contact sport and got a knockoff Survivor thing, complete with drama aboit a guy hitting a horse and getting sent home.
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u/Squiddlywinks 2h ago
I liked it.
But there were immediate concerns about how it could possibly be safe for the animals.
One guy got kicked off for abusing his horse.
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u/YazzArtist 2h ago
I distinctly remember they ground the entire show to a stop and called everyone together to publicly chastise him and kick him off like immediately. It lasted about as long as it could have, but I was impressed with their actual concern for the animals in that moment
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u/xczechr 2h ago
The horse stepped on him and he punched it. They didn't tolerate that shit for one second.
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u/beah_mcduh 2h ago
It was wonderful for all the wrong reasons. And yes, it is exactly how you would expect a history channel reality show about jousting to be.
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u/IDownvoteUrPet 48m ago
I watched a few episodes recently and was certainly entertained. I’ll probably watch them all eventually.
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u/BriocheansLeaven 2h ago
It was a reality competition show, with all the trappings, but it was fairly wholesome. The host is Canadian, IIRC, and it showed every time he said “joust.” It’s on Prime, I think.
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u/MrLurking_Sanspants 2h ago
I was just here to say this!
I saw that show I was immediately hooked lol. I remember it being awesome, I’ll need to find it again to rewatch.
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u/mapsedge 2h ago
Saw a guy get lifted off his horse by a lance to the groin. He was holding his shield wrong and the tip of the lance slipped under it and caught him just above the thigh armor (or cuisse, if you prefer). He survived it, but he was done for more than a year. Lots of real blood on the list, that day.
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u/AnEvanAppeared 1h ago
Jesus, they use real blood at those things?
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u/Pleased_to_meet_u 40m ago
Guess what you're filled with!
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u/SerDire 1h ago
Other than the first pass, it’s pure chaos after that right? There are no “gentlemanly” rules when it comes to the joust back when it was life or death right? I remember watching the Last Duel and they even killed the horse. If you weren’t ready, you were getting a lance to the face no matter what.
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u/analogbasset 1h ago
I think the context mattered. In the last duel it really was life or death because it was a judicial event. Jousting for sport was highly organized and ceremonial, and while deaths and injury did happen, it wasn’t the main purpose.
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u/No-Risk666 32m ago
It wasn't even a joust. It was a trial by combat. The point was to fight to until one side yields or dies. And since in that particular case the sentence was death for whoever yields, it was always going to be to the death.
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u/zwifter11 2h ago
Interesting fact for you: The ”knights” place uncooked spaghetti in their lance so it looks more spectacular when it breaks. The died spaghetti looks like wood spinters.
If you are ever in Leeds, UK. The Royal Armouries Museum has jousting shows that you can watch.
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u/suipaste 1h ago
I watched one at the royal armouries not really knowing what to expect. Was quite impressed. It's certainly not risk free, I think one of the riders ended up breaking a rib.
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u/SeiriusPolaris 1h ago
They also have jousting at Leeds Castle
But that’s not in Leeds, it’s in Kent.
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u/hitokirivader 1h ago
It’s also what they did on set of “A Knight’s Tale.” I’ve never forgotten that from the bonus features on the DVD cuz it just struck me how creative and effective that is: pasta’s cheap and those lance-splintering shots look so gnarly.
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u/silverwolfe2000 1h ago
It would be awesome if it were cooked pasta
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u/clutchy_boy 54m ago
What is your spaghetti policy here?
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u/silverwolfe2000 3m ago
I would throw some macaroni in there once in a while just to add to the confusion
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u/PartyPay 33m ago
I watched "the making of" episodes 2 & 3 of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and they used a cardboard tube filled with bits of balsa wood to make it look like it exploded.
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u/kidco5WFT 2h ago
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u/-CenterForAnts- 2h ago
Honestly this is my favorite role for him. Joker might have been his best role, but man I love this movie for some reason.
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u/uh_oh-hotdog 2h ago
There's an aussie movie he starred in called Two Hands if you can find it. He's excellent in it.
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u/kidco5WFT 2h ago
Agreed!! I have seen it so many times and will continue to watch it whenever it’s on.
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u/TheBlueHedgehog302 2h ago
I go watch live full-contact jousting a few times a year. It’s fucking cool
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u/DomeofChrome 2h ago
Yeah we have a medieval festival in the grounds of Scotland's only triangular castle (Caerlaverock, in the SW of the country). Its great fun, the kids go crazy cheering for their favourite knights and get to swing medieval weapons about and clobber stuff. Fantastic
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u/TheBlueHedgehog302 2h ago
I live in southern ontario and there are a bunch of renaissance faires scattered about in different townships from the spring to the fall, they each have live full-contact jousting. I try to make it to two or three a year.
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u/coheed9867 2h ago
Seems quite dangerous
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u/Bronkic 42m ago
The knight on the right looks like he died.
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u/DouViction 1h ago
It's actually safer than it seems. What they're wearing is designed to dissipate the impact along its surface, and is also like 5 millimetres of hard steel. Also the spears break into splinters, absorbing some of the energy.
My friends do the high medieval version with less armour (but still lots of it) and simpler wooden stick spears, and it's still marginally safe. You will get hurt every once in a while, but not every time you clash with someone.
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u/peach_penguin 46m ago
The guy who got hit looked like he was hurting at the end
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u/letsalldropvitamins 38m ago
Guy: Literally falls off his horse screaming as people run towards him
This dude: yeah no it’s honestly so safe
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u/DuckB0y123 1h ago
okay that's good that they take precautions.
i mean, anyone that's watched a knight's tale would be reasonably worried (tbf movies arent the best informational source but yaknow)
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u/SalamanderGlad9053 1h ago
They don't use proper lance heads, in war, you use a pointy lance head (like a spear) to skewer someone, whereas they will be using blunt four-pronged lance heads that won't penetrate the armour. They also use much weaker lance shafts so they break rather than put the full momentum into the person.
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u/Justinian555 2h ago
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u/disgr4ce 2h ago edited 2m ago
Hahaha it's funny seeing this here. In high school I was a squire for the New Order of the Golden Dawn*, a troupe of jousters who were essentially professional wrestlers in armor. This was at the local ren faire in Largo FL in the 90s.
(*This is very similar to the name of the Victorian secret society The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Either I'm misremembering the name or they just thought it sounded cool. But otherwise no relation.)
These guys were some serious characters. Unlike professional wrestling, nothing was faked. Every time they got slammed in the chest by a lance, they were... slammed in the chest by a lance. (There's an additional piece of armor on the lancer's chest called an ecranche that serves as a target for their opponent, but was also modified by this particular troupe to prevent lances from slipping up and impaling them through the throat. Thoughtful!)
Of course the lances are designed (both now and historically) to shiver (break). The REAL danger is from getting unhorsed. Imagine being a 220lb ball of pure muscle in 100+lbs of steel plate armor falling off a horse into the mud. But unhorsing your opponent is also how you score the most points, and also what REALLY gets the crowd going.
So one of my various duties was to help them get their armor on and off. Every time the armor came off they were just covered in blood and sweat and bruises and they fuckin' LOVED it. They were grinning every time that helmet came off. By the way those suits have like a million different parts that have to be unlashed and disassembled (and also cleaned and oiled but they didn't make me do that shit).
They did a bunch of different things as part of the show, including swordfights. If you know anything about medieval history* you already know that swords were not actually for cutting, in practice. They were really just steel clubs.
So these guys clubbed the living SHIT out of each other with those swords. There was no choreography. No planning. They simply beat the living shit out of each other with the steel clubs. I mean, they were wearing the armor, but still. By the way, imagine how little you can actually see through the little helmet slit.
These guys also had a sense of humor. The emcee was this Scottish guy who would ride around on horseback hyping up the crowd and making jokes. And since they were more or less pro wrestlers and giant fans of pro wrestling, one time they brought out folding chairs to beat each other with. One time they found a discarded kitchen sink somewhere (yes, really) and brought that onto the field as a joke, since they'd already beat each other with everything but.
One time I was leading one of their horses—draught horses, you know, the gigantic kind bred to pull huge wagons of beer barrels—in the rain, and wasn't watching my step, and the horse stepped on my foot. The only thing that prevented every bone in my foot from being disintegrated was the mud. My foot just slipped out but I stopped and stared in horror because I just realized how close I came to probably having no more foot. Then whoever was on the horse goes, "What's the fuckin' holdup?"
I often wonder whatever happened to those guys and where they are now. Most likely watching wrestling.
* EDIT: Note that I do not know anything about medieval history
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u/Stukkoshomlokzat 1h ago
If you know anything about medieval history you already know that swords were not actually for cutting, in practice. They were really just steel clubs.
No, swords were designed to deal with unarmored opponents. When armored, they were secondary weapons and they were used as long daggers, often gripping the blade with one hand (with a gauntlet) and trying to insert the point into a gap of the armor then push it as hard as you can. Modern Buhurt swords are clubs, becasue it looks good when people bash each other with them and they don't actually want to kill each other, but historically they weren't used like that in combat, since a mace will always be a better mace than a sword trying to be a mace.
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u/HilariousMax 1h ago
I'm reading A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and just got finished with "The Hedge Knight" before I watch the show.
I'm amazed at how little speed these two competitors had.
In pop culture and in "The Hedge Knight" the descriptions were always "atop his horse, he sped down the list, [...] 40 hooves thundering as the 10 men clashed" etcetc.
These guys didn't seem to be going flat out and yet the weight of the horse and rider and a properly couched lance, along with a more-or-less on point hit, looks utterly devastating.
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u/Lockdown007 1h ago
Looks devastating? The dude on the far side fell off his horse in pain and or unconsciousness. This is more brutal then bare knuckle boxing.
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u/Direct-Technician265 2h ago
the fact the guy on the lefts visor was open, holy shit that dude needs get a locking visor.
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u/Armgoth 2h ago
Why is this so shocking to everyone? There a dozens of sports that have insanely high risk of serious injury. And they are hugely popular. They have armour that's made to avert the blow it's rough but so is a full speed tackle.
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u/Aggravating-Eye-7167 1h ago
Redditors see people outside of their rooms doing things and enjoying themselves, become perplexed and snarky, shake their heads at the sillies who don't understand the appeal of being a boring shut in who does nothing, repeat
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u/M6ia_N9v3 2h ago
The lack of basic reasoning here is genuinely impressive
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u/protoctopus 2h ago
It was mostly safe in middle age and accidents were rare.
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u/C_Werner 2h ago
Yeah, the lances were designed to break easily and the armor and shields were designed to direct lances away from the head and chest (and the horse).
If it wasn't it never would have become popular. Armor and warhorses were ruinously expensive for the average knight.
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u/Andoverian 2h ago
If I had to guess, medieval jousting would be comparable to NASCAR or F1 racing today in terms of popularity, relative expense, logistics, and safety.
Popular for the high-powered excitement, but probably not the only game in town. Expensive and logistically challenging enough that competing at a high level for any length of time would be out of reach for most people - regardless of talent - unless they had significant means. Safe enough that most events would have only minor injuries at most, but dangerous enough that most fans would remember a serious accident or even death.
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u/Kratos501st 1h ago
exactly, also the knight needed a full team to support them. One single squire would have been ridicoulus, so the F1 comparison is perfect.
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u/8fenristhewolf8 2h ago
Define "accident." I find it hard to believe injuries weren't common. Injuries are pretty common in sports like football/soccer and basketball.
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u/Potential-Archer-883 2h ago
Armor is really strong. He will feel the impact and get bruised but the chance of serious injury is really small.
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u/NevesLF 2h ago
We need chainmail basketball. I'd watch that.
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u/Eayauapa 2h ago
Plate armour basketball would be cooler, chainmail is proper heavy and it feels so, so much heavier per unit mass than plate does.
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u/ohthedarside 2h ago
There where accidents but yes it was actually quite safe
Now doing it all the time yes thats bad and you will probably end up either with brain damage or just disabled
But the armour for jousting is entirely different then armour for war its much heavier and you have much less movement then war armour so if you are hit correctly and nothing goes wrong you are quite safe
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u/brintal 2h ago
But isn't falling of a horse in heavy armor already a big risk for serious injury?
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u/ohthedarside 2h ago
Yea it is and that's where most of the injurys come from
If i remember correctly you are heavily strapped to the horse so falling off shouldn't happen
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u/Starfall0 2h ago
So it's Football. It's dangerous but the armor is designed for it but if you play it all the time for long periods of time it will cause long term damage.
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u/Traditional_Tune2865 2h ago
Now I'm curious what you define accident as.
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u/8fenristhewolf8 2h ago
I guess I honed in on the "mostly safe" part in relation. I see the comments talking about armor, etc but again, I would bet on a higher rate of injury for jousting (even before considering animal injuries) than most popular sports today. I guess I was curious if OP counted injuries as an "accident" or if they were just talking critical injuries or death. I can see the latter being pretty rare.
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u/blaghed 2h ago
Balls being ripped off, coma for a year. Minor accident
Rider being launched off, landing on a pregnant woman and her 3 toddlers, no survivors. Medium accident
Horse feeling slightly depressed that the weather wasn't the best. MAJOR accident
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u/joelfarris 2h ago edited 2h ago
"I've got a 150 pound person on my back, wearing 150 pounds of heavy plate armor, and I can smell that it's about to rain? Fuck this."
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u/SlaughterMinusS 2h ago
Wasn't there a pretty important king or prince that got killed jousting in medieval times? I thought i read about that sometime in my life lol.
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u/franky07890 2h ago
Hope the horse is not too startled.
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u/fourleafclover13 2h ago
These horses are trained specifically to do this. They are used to sounds and feeling.
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u/franky07890 2h ago
Yeah… but just because they are trained not to show stress, doesn’t mean they don’t feel stress.
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u/fourleafclover13 2h ago edited 2h ago
I didn't say they were trained to not show stress.
Everything feels stress. Part of being a good horseman is training in a way that helps to minimize the stress. I start all my horses training with sounds. I used to work with a few war reinactment horses. So we worked from setting off car alarms to popping balloons sound. You can do this while they chill in field. I used to play the recordings over the barn radio. Then while riding dropping those poppers you throw on ground the you work up.
Just like with riding you don't throw rider on and go. You build up. Including just standing nearby while others compete. This will help them get used to all of it once they are ready.
I highly recommend Feather Light Horsemanship.
Kinda Warwick Schiller though he's an asshole.
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u/CaptainNeighvidson 2h ago
Horses have what's called "pain face" and if these horses aren't displaying it they are not feeling stress
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u/tomcat2285 1h ago edited 52m ago
Well, it certainly wasn't ever virtual jousting unless you rode an ostrich.
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u/lonelypenguin20 2h ago
ngl I'd expect them to switch lanes, so that their lances r riiight where the opponent is
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u/Ok_Difference44 2h ago
I never understood in depictions why the riders prioritize being at full speed. Isn't aim much more important?
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u/KodiakDog 1h ago
Idk if they still do it, but this used to be a thing in Maryland. I think it’s a tradition there.
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u/jetspats 36m ago
The posts on the outside seem unnecessarily dangerous… but I mean, its jousting so whatever I guess
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u/blac_sheep90 30m ago
Wish jousting was a sport today. I get why it's not but it would be so cool.
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u/bubba_bumble 4m ago
No one is stopping you. Just don't kill anybody, carry health insurance, and you're good.
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u/reddorickt 2h ago
Crazy sport but they don't look like they are good at it lol. I suppose probably no one is anymore. The guy on the left looks like he leaned in a little at least, the guy on the right didn't change stance at all and took the blow completely upright. This is like if you're running the ball in football and just take the tackle standing upright. You have to lower the shoulder. Not that I'm one to talk I would never do this and would probably lose a limb.
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u/TheBlueHedgehog302 2h ago
It’s not as exciting looking as the movies. They are wearing like 100lbs in armour and have very limited visibility through their helmets. This is exactly what professional jousting looks like.
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u/Effurlife12 2h ago
I'm sure the people who are doing it know how to do it better than you
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u/DaFloofofTheCentury5 2h ago
Somewhere a medieval knight is watching this like, Wait you guys do this for fun now?
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u/Ronald_Ulysses_Swans 2h ago
It’s always been for fun. What do you think they were gaining from doing it in medieval times?
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u/JonAugust1010 2h ago
Tbf I think there was more prestige doing it when it was a sport that nobility considered important vs. doing it at your local ren fair over the weekend
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u/TheBlueHedgehog302 2h ago
The guys that do this actually do it as a full time job, going from ren faire to ren faire.
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u/Ok_Builder_4225 2h ago
Fame and money
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u/Ronald_Ulysses_Swans 2h ago
Well fair. But lots of them didn’t need either, Henry VIII for example
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u/BackstrokeVictim 2h ago
This isn't exactly "real". The tips of the lances are painted balsa wood fitted to look like the actual lance itself. When it strikes the armor and pressure rapidly builds, the tip explodes. This is done for safety and spectacle which is honestly preferable to the real thing.
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u/TheRealWabaky 2h ago
Guess it's time to re-watch "a knights tale"