The Way It Works
My son took me to a medieval fair years ago and we saw knights jousting and I was very impressed. I got to talk to one of the knights afterwards and he told me that they had the joust all planned out and had predetermined who the winner would be. They had to do that to be sure they wouldn't be hurt.
I was pretty sure that was how it would be at this tournament, --all planned ahead of time. But I had to ask someone!
First we talked to the girl who took tickets for admittance to the dungeon. I didn't want to go in there (it was gruesome) but she wasn't busy and had time to talk to us. She told me that the knights worked on the games during the day and knew who would win, but that she didn't know who would win on any particular night.
Our serving wench knew very little about the tournament and who had won the night before. She didn't even notice who won that evening. She was really busy with serving.
After the tournament I was able to talk to the dungeon guard again. I told her the blue knight won. She remembered that we had been wearing red and thought I would be disappointed that our knight hadn't won. But I was very happy that the blue knight had won because his build and movements had reminded me of one of my grandsons. From there I asked questions and this is what I learned about the way it works.
All of the knights come together at 8 am and work at the plan for the day and they practice and drill for the evening's performance. They are there from early morning until after 8 in the evening. After the performance, they mingle with the audience and sign autographs. It's a long, hard day for them.
Their routine has to be planned to the last detail. They use real weapons and have to handle them carefully to not harm anyone. I saw that when they clashed swords, real sparks flew!
The green knight is always an unpleasant character. He is never the winner in the end, but it isn't always the same person playing him. We were going to be green at first but when my sister-in-law was told how evil he was, she made them assign us to another knight and we were given the red knight.
All of the characters were very good at what they were doing and the knights were all very athletic. Although the tournament was indoors, it was performed on sand, which was good for the horses, and also good for the knights to land on when they pretended to be knocked off their horses.
I like knowing something about what goes on behind the scenes.
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