As a dissenting opinion: I know a frakking lot about about the historical setting (European History minor, teach AP Euro). The lack of heraldry doesn’t bother me a bit. The lack of copious gratuitous nudity on the part of Sossamon bothers a good deal more.
While I’m pleased by Paul Bettany’s gratuitous nudity!
I like A Knight’s Tale. It’s a good, dumb movie, the kind where you can cheer the good guys, boo the bad guys, and happily waste a couple of hours.
Ivylass, I disagree with you. Roland, the only one of the bunch with any sense, winds up with Kate, the Smithess. I’ll give Wat one of Jocelyn’s maids, but only if he cleans up a bit.
Heh.
Anyway Argent Towers if you’re the type to get pissed off about armor, never watch The 13th Warrior ( which I personally like better than A Knight’s Tale ). A purportedly “serious” film, rather than a sly wink of one, where the anachronisms are rife. Don’t bother me none, though - I just watch the scene where Antonio Banderas cuts an anachronistic two-handed sword ( they’ve never found a Viking example ) down to an anachronistic scimitar ( not yet established in the Arab world in that period ) on a grind wheel without destroying the temper and smile. I know it’s bullshit, but it is enjoyable bullshit in a fictional context.
Now quasi-historical films that take insane liberties with historical facts, for example Elizabeth - those are the ones that truly annoy my inner geek. But heck, the costuming in that one is apparently pretty good :D.
Jocelyn’s appearance completely ruins the movie for me. She’s a lovely girl, but she doesn’t look European at all.
I’ve mentioned before on here how I dislike quasi-historical stories that want to have “girl power” type heroines without addressing any of the real hardships faced by women at the time. I give A Knight’s Tale credit for bothering to make Kate’s background fairly plausible. (As plausible as anything else in the movie, at least!) It would have been pretty unlikely for a young, unmarried woman to be working independently as a blacksmith, but for a young widow who’d worked with her husband in his shop to maintain the business after his death is more believable. It’s also made clear that “respectable” people consider a female blacksmith good enough for repairing household goods or shoeing a horse, but don’t take her seriously beyond that – despite her talents when it comes to armor.
None of this is of great importance to the story and it would have been easy enough for the filmmakers to leave it out, but I appreciate that they did not.
I agree. She has a very modern and “exotic” (mixed race) look that would be great in plenty of movies but seemed out of place in the role of a European noblewoman.
I don’t know about armorsmiths in particular, but when a blacksmith was done with his apprenticeship and ready to be a journeyman he would make a touchmark which was closer akin to a silversmith’s hallmark or a trademark rather than something heraldic. The design would be carved into a soft steel plate which was then hardened, oiled, and kept in a safe place. From time to time when a new touchmark was needed, a piece of bar stock would be heated to yellow, driven into the plate, then hardened itself. the smith would then use it to mark his work. Maybe hand-cutting a swoosh was the way the did it in 1340 
the movie is one of my guilty pleasures: Dumb but I like it anyway. It was about the sixth time seeing it before I noticed a saluki at the beginning. It was in the king’s box, just standing there looking around in the background. Nothing much was made of it so I’ve wondered if someone just brought his dog onto the set because it looked neat or something.
Oh, and Kate, definitely. Jocelyn is a game player.
“What are you doing!?”
“Losing.”
“. . . I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
The fact that there really was a knight named Ulrich von Lichtenstein who had some fame as a great jouster makes me suspect that just about all the anachronisms, armor included, were deliberate.
Particularly when you consider that the historic Ulrich allegedly rode around with a little doll of the goddess Venus on top of his helmet. Sometimes, reality is just too goofy to pass off as credible fiction.
I guess ignorance really is bliss. 
So what? There was plenty of non-European blood introduced by the Moorish conquest of Spain and invasion of France.
Maybe so but S.S. doesn’t look Moorish, she looks Asian. I’m pretty sure she’s at least half Filipino. That kind of look would have been really unlikely in 1370 England.
OK, now, just to provide a little something for people to look at - I want to show you all some historical depictions of what knights at a tournament actually looked like. There are many incredible illustrations, in full color, from that time period from which we can see what the participants in a tournament would have been decked out with.
Here’s a fantastic series of HUGE color images: the Burgkmair Tournament Book, commissioned by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor around 1540. OK, yes, this is Renaissance and not Medieval, but apart from the form of the armour, the regalia would have been basically the same.
Note the elaborate helmet crests - in this case, two exotic birds - and the extremely colorful heraldic tabards draped over the horses (which match the cloth skirts, and the shields, of both knights.
Here you can see two more knights wearing slightly earlier styles of jousting helm, which are a little closer to what they wore in A Knight’s Tale (though the visors wouldn’t have been movable on the helmets shown in the illustration…and they didn’t have those kind of helmets in 1370.)
Note the blind hoods over the horses. They would not have needed to see because they would just be charging forward in a straight line, separated by the tilt barrier.
This terrific series of images shows the tournament book of Rene of Anjou, from the mid 1400s. Note the extremely elaborate heraldic tabards over the knights, decorated with very colorful designs from their coats-of-arms.
Here is an amazing drawing demonstrating how the crest (in this case, a really outrageous one) would have been affixed to the helmet.
All very interesting stuff, and very colorful. The aesthetic of A Knight’s Tale looks downright drab in comparison! Even those completely ignorant of the history would have probably been more visually awed if they had actually made the film period-accurate.
Which shouldn’t matter a bit.
To take issue with the folks who label this a dumb movie I would argue that it might be one of the smartest movies of the last while. This is a movie in which every single bit, especially the anachronisms, ESPECIALLY the anachronisms, was thought out, conceived, and executed to near perfection. Right from the opening scene the director lets the viewer know that this is a story about sports and fans and life and this production isn’t letting anything get in the way of telling it.
Imagine some of the production discussions…
Director “I need some medieval sounding dance music.”
Musical Director “I can do that. Gimme a few. Anything else?”
Director “Sure, it has to be in the same key and medley in perfectly with Bowie’s Golden Years.”
MD “WTF?”
That’s hilarious. And it centers on the fact that, whether it’s 1340 or 2005 getting a hot chick to dance with you is the best thing on earth if you’re a young man.
Or the scene where the two lovers confront each other in the chapel and the discussion goes back and forth with both of them alternating agressive and defensive as they move fore and aft. That’s a brilliant display of the push and pull of young love, all insistent on knowing what’s right and having trouble acknowledging each other.
Or the scene where the team are drafting the letter to Jocelyn. The text of that letter, and the way it’s presented in the movie are as heart rending as any burdened love story written by any writer, anywhere.
It is as brilliant a movie about young love, lust and romance as ever there has been. The anachronisms, which aren’t in there by accident, heighten the sense of ‘this can happen at any time and in any place’. The background changes, but love and passion strike whom and where they will. Celebrate it!
It totally wouldn’t have worked with a lead couple in their 40s. Mature love and lust are very different things than that experienced by the young.
You have a point there. If it were really a dumb movie, it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as it did. I noticed there were a lot of comments on IMDB from people who didn’t expect to like it and wound up loving it. It is a well made, well thought out movie.
On the other hand, I’d argue that it’s a “good, dumb movie” because it isn’t intended to be some work of high art, grand social commentary, or historical drama which is accurate down to the paint on the cathedral, but a movie whose sole purpose is to entertain people for a couple of hours. In those terms, it succeeds very well indeed, and I like movies like that a great deal. In fact, since I’m going to be laid up at home for a while, I may watch it later this week and use it to take my mind off my troubles.
French, Hawaiian, Dutch, Irish, Filipino and German… according to her IMDB biography (no percentages unfortunately) 
I’m another who likes the move (a lot) now but didn’t fully appreciate it on first viewing.
And it looks like the bulk of that scene was shot in one shot. That also takes effort, not only on the part of the actors but on the part of the director.
And that is knightly too 
(what, no love for James Purefoy, aka Marc Antony in Rome?)
Was it Anya Seton for you too, or are you a professional historian?
Anya Seton.
And ivylass, I did mention the gorgeous Black Prince!
Edward, the Black Prince, was already dying by 1371, by a “wasting disease.” Would it have killed them to, if nothing else, just set the film 30 years earlier? It’s not like it would have made any difference whatsoever.
But that would have been the wrong time for Chaucer, and a more egregious inaccuracy.
Liked it before he died. It was goofy, campy, but fun, and it worked.