![knights of honor mod dark ages knights of honor mod dark ages](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/67/ff/db67ffefb8a13fbdb14e0d23072d216e.jpg)
The medieval period that stretched from the fifth century to the 12th century is a vast time frame when society changed radically from one of chaos and violence to one of chivalry and the domination of the Church. This was a period time after the fall of Rome but before the rise of civilized Europe that is the time frame that we consider to be the medieval period. The period of history that we call “the dark ages” were called that for a reason. One reason that the virtue of knights is not that easy to pin down is that the institution of knighthood evolved over many hundreds of years through the Middle Ages.
![knights of honor mod dark ages knights of honor mod dark ages](https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/13/12939/381746-kof16.jpg)
And while knights were quite real and a big part of the history of the medieval times, their level of good or evil was less clear in reality than in our stories. By “good”, we associate our modern values of valor and virtue to some very ancient figures. Within the King Arthur legends, the knights were predominantly good. To what extent knights were good or bad in the reality of medieval times was no doubt a result of many more complicated factors than we accommodate when we talk about knighthood. These images of good and bad in knight form are perpetuated in movies and other entertainment venues that are based in the middle ages. Even in the ancient game of chess, we know right away that it is the white knight who is “good” and the black knight who is “bad.” We have allowed the idea of good knights and bad knights to become quite entrenched in our culture. Of the many characters where that is true, the knights that represented the elite of the military of medieval castles are perhaps the most romanticized. The stories and images that have come down to us from medieval times have become so morally simplistic as to make them more parables or fables than genuine history.