girls don't want boys girls want a spin-off series following Kate the Blacksmith from A Knight's Tale as she opens a forge in 14th century London

yes i deleted it because i got the century wrong (I mis-remembered Poitiers as Agincourt, and apparently forgot when Edward of Woodstock lived) don't @ me

Who wants a thread about what Kate’s life might have looked like irl

So. Kate the Blacksmith. To start, a note on dates: google tells me that the writer of AKT set the film in 1372, but Adhemar is called to the Battle of Poitiers which was in 1356...

...however the Black Prince (Edward of Woodstock, who disguises himself as Sir Thomas Colville) would have been 26 in 1356, and 42 in 1372 - the latter seems more accurate based on the actor.

The long and short of it is A Knight's Tale is set in the mid-to-late 14th century, sometime after the Black Death (which hit western Europe roughly from 1347-1350).

Now, all this death is important because it's probably what killed Kate's husband, and her widowhood is really the crux of the matter.

Kate is evidently from Scotland (a Scottish Widow, if you like), and that's handy because medieval Scottish history is to me what peanut butter is to jam.

On the face of it, it might seem super outlandish to have a female blacksmith in the 14th century. And, like everything about history, it is - but also it isn't.

For married women, there would likely be a division of labour within your household, where your husband might have some more formal employment, while you worked closer to home.

Housekeeping today is not easy, but prior to the invention of Mr Muscle and/or Roombas, it was even more of a mammoth task. It extended far beyond what we might think of as 'housekeeping', and notable aspects of this include brewing beer!

Beer was vital to medieval western europe: it had calories, and even better; it didn't have cholera. Women were, in many places, in charge of the household brewing, and would probably sell any surplus.

Is any of this relevant to Kate the Blacksmith? No, but it's just to situate yourself in that context; medieval Europe was patriarchal, but women (like now, in today's patriarchy) still had significant roles, economically and socially.

Back to Kate. Medieval towns (and this was true in Scotland as elsewhere) often organised their crafts and different industries into 'guilds'. Guilds were not like unions, but similarly they were not not like unions.

Guilds regulated the produce and conduct of their members, had their own banners in civic processions like the Corpus Christi parades (and would fight over who went first ), funded altars in local churches...

...some would fund healthcare for their members, and funerals too. Now, in theory, guilds were only for men - male professionals, really.

The wives (or sometimes daughters) of said professionals would participate, by way of their household enterprise, but rarely were named members - unless, of course, they were a widow.

I have read some cases where, after the death of a male guild member, the widow would take some time to wind the business up, which included looking after any apprentices, finishing orders, etc.

It is much rarer to find a widow who continues her late husband's business long-term - but it's certainly not impossible.

Kate would not be the norm, far from it, and she probably would struggle to be taken seriously - but as a widow, she would be entitled to her husband's property (if there were other heirs, e.g. children/step-children, the widow may receive a third of the property).

Widows sometimes transferred ownership of the property to someone else, on the condition they were looked after by the new landholders.

So there is no reason to believe that Kate couldn't have inherited her husband's business and continued on with it.

And, if you will allow us to stray into the sphere of speculation, perhaps Kate worked with her husband before his death, learning smithing either from him or alongside him.

So there you have it; Kate the Blacksmith and her Guild Adventures in Honour of her Late Husband.

TL/DR: She could have run a blacksmiths, mainly because she was a widow.

Note: I think they meet Kate in France, and while France was likely not dissimilar in many respects, I am assuming she had lived in Scotland for most of her life prior to meeting Will et al.

FIN.