Kingdom Come Deliverance: The Messages Lost in the Hysteria

For the last few weeks I have been completely obsessed with the buggy but beautiful Kingdom Come Deliverance, a historic fantasy role-playing game set in Bohemia in the year 1403. I have distant recollections of the kickstarter campaign that launched this project years ago but lacked the money to devote to such projects at the time. Fast forward a few years and the release date for the game was finally announced and the trailers started to circulate. I was blown away by the ambition and the concept behind the game. Most fantasy RPGs that we see these days are engorged wonders like Skyrim or the Witcher, settings that only loosely relate to anything historical and as a lover of history the unique scope of Kingdom Come Deliverance sold me on the game almost immediately. I could hardly wait for the day to come that I could finally fire up KCD and get into the world of 1403 Bohemia.

But behind all the hype was something darker, something nastier, you see apparently Kingdom Come Deliverance is racist and sexist. When I first heard these claims I found myself taken aback and forced to just sit and mull over the total nonsense I was hearing, there were people furious and bombastic that there were apparently few if any sub-saharan Africans in 1403 Bohemia, a nation situated between Hungary and Germany, with no major ports and few major cities, a region embroiled in strife and anti-semitic pogroms while also suffering devastating plagues that would last till about 1420 that reduced the regional population by about twenty percent. Sure there would have been merchants, slaves, mercenaries, scholars, preachers and even diplomats from much of the known world circulating in major cities like Constantinople (which would fall to the Turks just fifty years after the events of KCD), Rome, Jerusalem, or Paris. But does that mean there would have been random black people scattered around rural Bohemia? Not likely. In the same way that there weren't European Knights fighting against Cao Cao during the Three Kingdoms Period in China. This isn't racist, it's history. I'm not saying there were never any black people in the region, or that there aren't today, or even that it was impossible that there were any then, simply that there is precious little evidence of such. Thus it is not unreasonable to suggest that it would be unrealistic to portray random villagers or tradesmen as being of African origin. Such an assertion is neither racist nor inaccurate, and a quick look at the credits of Kingdom Come Deliverance shows a considerable number of academics, researchers and institutes who contributed to the historic accuracy of the game.

Similar complaints about the representation of women seem to stem from an ignorance of the period. Somehow the same people who argue that women were historically oppressed are offended by the game saying that women... were historically restricted and heavily controlled in their conduct, business and professional opportunities, marriages and most other aspects of life.

After considering these objections and their merits, or general lack-there-of, I decided to forget the debate and just play the game and see for myself just how things are presented and what I found was surprising. If only those complaining the loudest had bothered to actually try the game they might have discovered some interesting things.

First and foremost the game does not shy away from very serious social issues, injustices or inequalities of the era, quite the opposite. Murdering, raiding nobles are parlayed with and allowed to depart contested lands freely while serfs who steal a chicken are hanged. Rape appears repeatedly, as a crime frequently perpetrated by the marauding Cuman mercenaries, privileged aristocrats and bandits alike and much like theft and violence the punishments for these crimes differ vastly depending on the background and status of the criminal. While infiltrating the Sassau monastery the player can discover that one of the novices was a noble who carried out several assaults and was consigned to the monastery as punishment, while another novice was homosexual and faced a similar fate for his sexual deviancy.

Race and ethnicity play significant roles in the game with the local Czechs having precious little good to say about their Hungarian or German neighbors, let alone the much maligned Jews or the demonized Cumans who are literally believed to be veritable devils by some of the locals. Even among the Czechs there is little love lost between neighbors, with the refugees from Silver Skalitz facing significant resistance and resentment from the villages of Rattay when they come there seeking aid and shelter. Even though to modern eyes all of these groups would likely appear nearly identical, in the past regional and cultural differences were grounds for social and legal divisions or even violence. Which is all significant enough before we get around to the constant warring between Hungary and the Turks, an extension of the nearly constant and centuries long conflicts between Christendom and the Islamic world.

Which brings me to gender. One of the first objections I saw to the presentation of gender was the codex entry from the game on women of the period. Apparently the line stating that women could own trade businesses given that they were "of course" supported by the aid of journeymen was cause for serious outrage. Even though this is historically accurate and relatively common sense. Just because a woman was married to a tradesman does not mean she was trained in that trade herself, nor is it even sensible to suggest that any master tradesman would run a business without the aid of at least one journeyman or apprentice. I saw one commenter complain that women did perform a number of economic roles on their own including brewing, clearly this commenter didn't know that the first brewer the player meets... is a woman.

In fact there are a number of strong female characters in Kingdom Come Deliverance, from the miller's daughter Theresa who plays a significant role early in the game and is someone who shows considerable strength of character in the face of horrific experiences, to the rude and aggressive butcher's widow Drahomira, who contracts the player to cleanse her house of evil spirits. During the game Henry has the chance to help refugees, including a strong woman, obtain jobs in Rattay despite the objection of the Bailiff about including a woman. When one of the stud-farms is attacked and the owner slain his widow takes over the business and initially loses her most valuable customers who believe a woman incapable of breeding strong horses. The player has the chance to prove those customers wrong and secure steady business for the widow.

My favorite strong female character serves as a doctor to the wounded refugees, traveling with them all the way to the Sassau monastery, working tirelessly to save their lives despite horribly inadequate conditions, supplies and experience and all while fending off the lecherous attentions of the odious custodian. Still later when a nearby village appears to be struck by the plague our young aspiring doctor journeys with the monastery physician to the village to render aid despite the risk. Yet another character is the leader of a local band of Waldensian heretics preaching Christianity in a way that defies the tenets of the church and puts its followers in constant risk of capture, torture and execution for their religious practices. Another is a millers daughter who understands far better than her father the awful state their business is in thanks to a troublesome foreman but who isn't taken seriously by anyone except the player when you stumble on the scene. There is no shortage of female characters in Kingdom Come Deliverance who face the limitations that life in that period as a woman has placed on them with strength and endurance, finding ways to persevere despite the odds.

From women's historic social limitations to religious suppression, class oppression, racial and ethnic hatred and violence, homosexuality, corruption, hypocrisy, greed, Kingdom Come Deliverance goes into considerable detail on a wide variety of historic issues, depicting these heavy subjects in a relatively serious and considered manner that gives the player the opportunity to think about history in a new way and have a better understanding for where humanity has been and just how far we have come and how far we may yet go. By getting up in arms over a few tweets made by the proud and stubborn lead developer, activists and politically inclined games journalists have overlooked the depth and complexity that the game actually does bring to these subjects in a way that seeks to accurately and truthfully represent history, both the good, and the bad.
 

Precious few games have provided such an in depth and candid look at history and the daily lives of everyday people. From the daughters of millers to disgraced nobles consigned to monastic lives the daily drudgery, the vast divisions of class, the violence, the diseases, the ignorance and superstition, not since the original Assassin's Creed has any video game that I know of gone to such lengths to try and accurately depict history in all it's terrible, complex and messy glory. According to steam I have put over a hundred and eighty seven hours into this game since it's release and I know I'll likely put in dozens more. In truth Kingdom Come Deliverance is a buggy, glitchy, often broken mess with a mediocre fighting system, a frustrating save mechanic, and rife with constant frustrations and yet, when I struggle through all of those things what Kingdom Come offers is truly unique and wonderful and has so much to tell us if we but have the patience and openness to give it a chance.