By Juan Manuel Rubio Arévalo (Central European University)
The Crusades are often seen as defining the Middle Ages, for good or ill. For Reformation writers, the Crusades exemplified Catholic greed and worldly corruption, even while praising the piety of individual crusaders. For Enlightenment authors like Voltaire and Gibbon, the crusades embodied the medieval “ills” like fanaticism, intolerance, ignorance, and violence. However, nineteenth century scholars used the Middle Ages and the Crusades (led by “national” leaders like Richard I of England or Godfrey of Bouillon in Belgium) as foundational nationalist moments, demonstrating European cultural superiority and justifying global imperial ambitions. Even today the Crusades are used to portray political projects as “medieval” in their ignorance and violence (Kingdom of Heaven’scriticism of the War on Terror), or as “medieval” in their “chivalry” and necessity, (right-wing attacks on Islam and immigration). However, while influential, the Crusades were not all pervasive to medieval life: most people never took the Cross.
Video games are part of this phenomenon. Some, like Assassin’s Creed (2006) or Dante’s Inferno (2010), make direct use of the Crusades to demonstrate “medieval attitudes”, others, such as Total War: Medieval 2 (2006), are subtler in their representation. At first glance, the Crusades are simply part of TWM2’s mechanics. However, upon closer examination, the shadow of holy war looms over most of the gameplay. In the default campaign, all factions must conquer at least one holy city (like Jerusalem, Constantinople, or Rome), even where this makes little sense: Russia (Novgorod) and the Moors (Córdoba) must both control Jerusalem for its own sake (figures 1 & 2). The game’s imagery further reinforces the presence of holy war. Regardless of whom the player faces in the battlefield, when an enemy general is killed or army routs, the imagery depicts the opposing religion. For example, when playing the Turks and killing an Egyptian general, the image still shows a fallen Western knight. In the game, the Crusades and Jihad are key to the interpretation of the medieval world (figures 3 & 4).
Figure 1 and 2. Campaign Goals for Rus and The Moors
Figures 3 and 4. Army Routs and General Fallen notifications
The game’s target Western market partly explains this focus. Being a British developer, Creative Assembly set TWM2 within a Western framework: Western factions mostly resemble modern nation states; Catholicism and Orthodoxy are differentiated while Islam is monolithic; there is no Caliph, but the Pope plays a key role; and the campaign starts at the dawn of the Crusades (1080) signaling their centrality (I would argue that for the Muslim world the eight and ninth centuries are more relevant of their understanding of the Middle Ages than the expeditions to the Holy Land from 1095). Even the religious mechanics are Eurocentric: Muslim players must deal with heretics by burning them in an inquisition-like trial (figure 5), and the Jihad mechanic is simply a Muslim “Crusade” even if it had its own peculiarities in terms of participation, targets, and justification. For example, Jihad was considered a consistent obligation in frontier regions where Islam faced powerful enemies, like the Syrian frontier between the Caliphate and the Romans. Likewise, for Shi’a Muslims Jihad was valid against apostate Sunnis, a nuance TWM2 can’t explore due to its simplification of the Muslim world.
Figure 5. Blasphemer Executed
I want to finish by highlighting how the War on Terror impacted the preponderance of Jihad and Crusade in TWM2. Here, both forms of Holy War follow the civilizational rhetoric that permeated U.S. interventions in the Middle East in the early 2000s. For example, while crusading Catholic players may hire professional crusader knights and sergeants, a Muslim player during Jihad can access Ghazis and Mutatawwi’a; units of comparatively poor quality and which are described as religious fanatics, language that is absent in the description of crusader units (figures 6 & 7). Likewise, while the trait “Crusader” gives a bonus to a Catholic general fighting Muslims, the trait “Holy Warrior” which a Muslim general gains after a successful Jihad only gives a command bonus against Catholics, even if in Muslim tradition the war with the (Orthodox) Eastern Romans was more prestigious (figure 8).
Figures 6 and 7. Ghazis and Mutatawwi’a
TWM2 is a very good example how non-narrative videogames can use multiple tools – such as gameplay, objectives, illustrations – to convey concrete ideas about the past. Although this title tends to flatten historical nuance regarding the Middle Ages and the Crusades, it can still be an inspiration to use video games in more meaningful ways to illustrate complex ideas about the past.
Figure 8. Sultan Mustafa the Holy Warrior[1]
PD: I want to to thank Rob Houghton for his invaluable help in the editing of this paper.
Suggested reading:
Bonner, Michael. Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Jiménez Alcázar, Juan Francisco Jiménez. “Cruzadas, Cruzados y Videojuegos.” Anales de La Universidad de Alicante, Historia Medieval, no. 17 (2011): 363–407.
MacEvitt, Christopher. The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Mukherjee, Souvik. Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back. Kolkata: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Oldani, Andrea. “Medievalismi Videoludici: Come i Videogame Ricreano Le Guerre Medievali.” Diacrone: Studi Di Storia Contemporanea, no. 56 (2023): 73–93.
Tor, Deborah. “Privatized Jihad and Public Order in the Pre-Seljuq Period: The Role of the Mutatawwi’a.” Iranian Studies 38, no. 4 (2005): 555–73.
Tyerman, Christopher. Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
[1] Juan Francisco Jiménez Jiménez Alcázar, “Cruzadas, Cruzados y Videojuegos,” Anales de La Universidad de Alicante, Historia Medieval, no. 17 (2011): 363–407.
Thank you so much for this paper, Juan – as someone who doesn’t really play strategy games, I’m so intrigued by the way these mechanics are presented and seem to be really contradictory in a way that I would have thought would annoy players, not for the deeper meanings you’re explaining here but just because it feels almost glitchy/bugged to me to get a mechanical bonus against a faction even if it isn’t the one you’re focusing on or to have a different image come up that’s unrelated to your victory? Sorry to ask a reception question on a textual analysis paper but do you know if there has been any popular feedback about these parts of the game? Unsurprising if there hasn’t been any comments on something like Christian units being stronger than Muslim ones, but some of what you describe here just seems like it would be irritating mechanically? If not, do you think that it’s these deeply ingrained crusader medievalisms that cause players gloss over and miss these incongruencies?
Reading your analysis of TW: Medieval 2 reminded of Crusader Kings 2, in which the pope would call for a crusade to the most absurd places if he ran out of targets. I once witnesses a crusade against an Indian kingdom – because all Muslim sacred sites had already been taken over. The crusade understandably failed because none of the Christian kingdoms even had the means to travel to India…
Back to your paper, I’m intrigued by the impact of the War on Terror. This was indeed significant in shaping game design trends in quite a number of ways (even outside historical games, as the whole revival of FPSs show). What about depictions of crusaders *before* 11/09? I confess I’m not very familiar with many of them (outside D&D inspired Paladin-like figures). Have you come across any depictions of the phenomenon in games (and particular strategy games) prior to the 2000s that defy trends we see afterwards?
Thank you for your question Vinicius. The case that comes to mind most immediately is Age of Empires II, which came out in 1999. However, the way that AoEII (Saladin and El Cid) work in quite a different way than in TWM2, as in those cases the Crusades (or interreligious conflicts) serve mostly as a narrative background for the general AoE2 mechanics, often framed within more nationalist traditions. An example of this is how both campaigns are heavily influenced (in my opinion) by cinematic representations from the second half of the twentieth century, such as Saladin the Victorious (1963) or El Cid (1961). In both these cases, even when medieval religiosity is condemned as fanatical and irrational, the clash of civilizations narrative les relevant as in titles after 9/11. Juan
Indeed! I hadn’t thought about AoE!
And yes, I agree with you on the impact of cinema on the game. This is probably the case for William Wallace, as well (whose campaign constantly nods to Braveheart)
Thanks for a great paper, Juan! I’m afraid I don’t really have a good question, it is just fantastic to see Medieval 2 get some attention after all these years. I spent probably a thousand hours in it back in the day, and always thought it managed to convey a relatively decent picture of medieval dynamics despite its relative simplicity compared to the newer entries in the series.
It is definitely a fun game, I also have hundreds of hours in it. I agree that it conveys a decent picture of the Middle Ages, but when you look at it closely, there are multiple issues even within the framework that the game establishes for itself. Part of the problem is also the Total War gamepla,y which closely resembles modern centralized states.
Yeah, there’s definitely glaring issues – the nostalgia is definitely overwhelming me a bit (but of course more recent comparable games like TW:Attila and CK have a range of systemic problems as well despite their more complex portrayal).
Anyway, thanks again for a really great paper!
Thank you for this paper! Last term I taught a bit about videogames and the Crusades drawing from Elliott and Hurswell’s “Crusading Icons” chapter and from Andrew Galloway’s reading of Civilization as an “allegory of control.” Following from Tess’ question, I wonder if there’s anything at the level of mechanics that marks a videogame incursion as a “crusade,” or if it’s just the skins? My instinct is that it would be something to do with bonuses from morale, following from the plenary indulgences of the medieval crusades.
Thank you for your question Stephen. The Crusades and Jihad are a whole mechanic in the game. First, a religious authority must call for the Crusade or Jihad (for the Catholics, this is done by requesting the pope, and for Muslims, any Imam with enough high piety can do it). Once the campaign has been summoned, each faction has ten turns to raise an army large enough and join the expedition, at which moment all armies gain x2 movement in the campaign map and access to certain units in the mercenary roster. Once the crusade is over, the general leading it gains some traits that increase their command and chivalry, and can get retinue members and objects (such as Templar Knights or relics).
Crusades and Jihad in the game work in essentially the same way, which I believe fits the War on Terror narrative of holy war as equal to civilizational clash. This is reinforced by the fact that the factions play as modern nation states creating national empires, which mechanically ignores the many complexities of Crusading. Just to mention one example, we know that most crusaders never stayed in the Holy Land. However, since all cities are part of a centralized government, a player controlling Jerusalem as a European faction must keep a large military presence and carry out serious efforts in converting the population just to stabilize their rule, meaning that it ends up working more like a 19th-century colony than a medieval entity. Incidentally, there is a whole historiographical tradition that saw the crusades as incipient European imperialism.
Thank you for your question, Tess. I am not aware of specific reception criticisms, but there have certainly been reactions from both developers and the community to some of the game’s simplifications. On the other hand, the Crusades expansion, released one year after TWM2, expanded the roster of both Muslim factions and introduced certain cinematics that attempted to emphasize the Muslim approach to the Crusades. More importantly, though, has been the development of Mods that expanded the variety of Muslim factions politically, although the lack of religious diversity and the Jihad mechanic are hard-coded, so they can’t be changed.
It is important to remember that these mods have been the result of many years of development by members of the Total War fandom. At the time of its release, TWM2 received very good reviews and was a commercial success (its very active modding community testifies to its ongoing popularity), and when taking into account interviews with the developers, who often emphasized a clash of civilizations narrative, the game was developed in a discursive environment that was shared by both players and developers, which I think helped players gloss over many of the issues I mentioned here.