Andreas Kjeldsen (Stark Raving Sane Games)
The Knight & the Maiden: A Modern Medieval Folk-Tale is an upcoming comedic narrative adventure game with visual novel elements set in a secondary world inspired by Southern Europe in the late Middle Ages. The story follows the noblewoman Charlotte Montford as she disguises herself as the Mystery Knight to win a tournament, free her unjustly imprisoned father, court a princess, and thwart a plot against the small city state-principality of Castamont.
To fit both the game’s genre and themes as well as the personality of its main character, we decided from the beginning that The Knight & the Maiden would be a non-violent game with an emphasis on dialogue, character interactions, and puzzle solving, but no combat mechanics. Instead, as a replacement for the tension-building role that combat encounters normally fill, we drew inspiration from the Ace Attorney series and added a number of legal disputes as an additional element of conflict in the narrative. As in Ace Attorney, the player must explore the game world to establish the facts of the situation and gather evidence, then ultimately present the correct pieces of evidence at appropriate moments during a trial scene.
It would of course be impossible to accurately represent the immense diversity and complexities of late medieval legal systems, especially in the context of a computer game that requires a great deal of simplification. Instead, looking for historical verisimilitude rather than realism, we have chosen to create a fictionalised legal procedure with some highlighted real historical elements, including materials from the Sachsenspiegel, an influential 13th century German law book.
One of these disputes happens in Chapter 6 of the story when Charlotte investigates the murder of a local scholar and discovers that a powerful Castamontese noble is responsible for the crime. Here medieval legal practice conveniently provides a narrative justification for why Charlotte is taking the main stage in the investigation and the trial in place of the authorities – she is essentially conducting a private prosecution (“ex querela”) on behalf of the murder victim. Other highlighted elements include the issuing of a “warrant ad capias” for the arrest of a murder suspect, the importance of social status and “bona fama”, and trial by combat.
A later chapter further adds the procedural use of spokespersons (Sachsenspiegel I 60f) – as Charlotte is called upon to defend her father against charges of high treason – and sees the villain (unsuccessfully) try to use the Edict of Calefurnia (Sachsenspiegel II 63) against her, which prohibits women from acting as pleaders or spokespersons in courts of law.
In this way the player experiences a legal procedure that is familiar in its broad contours (with judges, witnesses, evidence, etc.), but is also continually reminded that the setting is a different place where “they do things differently”. Drawing on medieval legal history adds tension and conflict to the story, creates specific tasks for the player to accomplish, and adds a great deal of historical verisimilitude to the setting and story of The Knight & the Maiden.
Sources
Roeck, Bernd, ’Criminal Procedure in the Holy Roman Empire in Early Modern Times’, IAHCCJ Bulletin 18, Spring 1993, pp. 21–40
Der Sachsenspiegel, tr. Paul Kaller, München: C. H. Beck, 2002
The Saxon Mirror: A Sachsenspiegel of the Fourteenth Century, tr. Maria Dobozy, Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 Vitiello, Joanna Carraway, Public Justice and the Criminal Trial in Late Medieval Italy: Reggio Emilia in the Visconti Age, Leiden: Brill, 2016
This sounds lovely 🙂 Was there a particular reason you leaned on the Sachsenspiegel over and above other possible medieval legal setups or codes?
To be honest, mostly because I was already familiar with it from my previous academic work, and it’s available in translation. A North Italian law code would probably have been a better fit, but unfortunately that’s where the practical realities of making a commercial product (especially limited time) get in the way of doing all the research I’d like.
I love seeing games give people a taste of how the society behind medieval sources worked, and look forward to enjoying the rest of the experience you have created! My question is why did you pick the Sachsenspiegel as a primary inspiration? Medieval law is by no means my speciality, but as far as I know there are quite a few surviving texts from various geographic and temporal contexts. Was there something specific on the Sachsenspiegel that made you want to depict it? (And do you have any ‘runners up’ that you would have liked to use?)
As I wrote to James above, it was mostly practical reasons. I would have liked to include more Roman law – which I do hint at a little bit, e.g. with the “Civil Code” quote in the screenshot above – but I don’t know enough about the late medieval reception of it to really do it justice.
Thank you for sharing your game, I’d absolutely want to play this! I was wondering if you bring in any visual representation of the materiality of law books, either the Sachsenspiegel law book inspiration or the version you created for the game, e.g. do the players see the laws as text they read on the screen or see a representation of books or documents in the game space?
Thank you, Tess! No, the law books as texts do not appear in-game, except in a very minor way as part of a library where the player can read small samples from different medieval texts. But that’s mostly intended as flavour.
My preferred approach to incorporating historical elements is to continually include little fragmentary references throughout the dialogue (such as the “charges ex querela” or the “Edict of Calefurnia” in the screenshots above), which suggest to the player that there is a much larger social (and in this case legal) texture going on under the surface. So the conceit is that the in-game characters are all intimately familiar with the texts and the procedures, and in this way the player can also experience it through the characters and get a sense of what’s going on without having to read and understand a complicated law text. It’s more or less the same approach as the “immersion” method I talked about back in MAMG22 (Proceedings p 32).
I know I said it in previous MAMGs, but I’m dying to play this game! You wouldn’t have a release date to tease us with, would you?
In the meanwhile, two questions:
1- Why Southern Europe especifically? Was it just an aesthetic reason? Or are you drawing from particular narrative references?
2- Have you checked Thom Gobbitt’s work on his Lombard Laws RPG? Nothing to do with your chosen timeframe, but it’s an interesting exercise into how to adapt law principles into game mechanics.
No release date as yet, unfortunately, but it’s getting closer!
1: I picked Southern Europe because the story is also about a small city state that is being threatened by a larger and more powerful neighbouring realm. So it’s very much inspired by the situation in Northern Italy around 1500 and the ambitions of France and Spain in that region.
2: Oh yes, I remember that from last year’s MAMG. I’ll have to take another look at that.
I am also so desperate to play this game. My question is about the blending of historical/fictional here and how players experience it – given that some of the texts or edicts referred to are historical, are you planning to include a codex or a way of ‘clicking through’ to find out more about these particular things in our historical context? (I suppose when I say clicking through I’m thinking as in Pentiment, but just using a codex or similar would work as well). Or will it generally be the case that players will only know that some of these are genuine historical law codes/edicts if they already know about and recognise them?
Thank you, Kate! I’m planning to include a kind of footnotes system, so when the player comes across a historical reference, there’ll be a button they can press to get some further explanations/context and maybe source notes. It’ll be a lot of work, so I’m not 100% sure it’ll be possible, but I’m hopeful.
Fantastic – this sounds like a really useful and interesting resource for players and (selfishly) scholars of history games!
Thank you very much for the interesting article. The game looks great. I have asked you elsewhere, but I wanted to ask you again here if it’s okay. In my research, I explored how Western RPGs and JRPGs have different approaches to depicting the Middle Ages. It seems that your game has received some influence from the Japanese media. I wanted to see if there was any influence from JRPGs in setting the tone for this game, or how to portray the Middle Ages?
Thank you for the question, that sounds like a really interesting area of research!
I suppose there is some influence, since I am creating the game in the RPG Maker engine, which was originally designed to make JRPG-style games, so it tends to encourage that aesthetic. I believe my artists also draw a lot of inspiration from Japanese games and anime. But as for the story and writing, I would say the inspirations and influences are mostly western, such as Terry Pratchett and Lucasarts adventure games.
Thanks for the paper, on what looks like a fascinating and fantastic game! (and sorry my message is coming in so late, it’s been a busy week and weekend…)
I’ve read the previous comments on why you chose the Sachsenspiegel, and undertand entirely that access to a workable translation of a relevant law texts is an essential requirement for making games – you’ll be happy to know that there’s now an open access, English translation of the late medieval, North Italian “Libri Feodorum” (Attilio Stella, 2023: https://brill.com/display/title/61441?language=en)! which might be of interest in general …or for a future game! Unforunately, the other north Italian legal collections, the Liber Papiensis (eleventh-century) and Lombarda, which was compiled around the turn of the twelfth-century, don’t yet have modern English translations, and the Lombarda doesn’t even have a critiical edition. which definitely makes them harder to work with and gamify.
Back to your game! I like the approach of bringing in snippets of law as a way to hint at the background and add the sense of depth and Otherness for the player, and think it works well. To what extent did you let the content of the laws actually shape would could or could not happen in the game? E.g. in the example above you use the instance of the Edict of Calefurnia to form a stumbling block to be navigated, but ultimately the course of the game goes contrary to the legal contents as cited (I’m araid, I don’t actually know the contents of the Sachsenspiegel): so, does Charlotte draw on other laws and/or contemporary evidence to counter the situation?