I also feel that a lot of authors pick and choose when it comes to which components of 'modern perspectives' they employ. So a character they admire will display the author's interpretation of chivalrous medieval behaviour — but also treat the women in their lives as equals in every context, and find exactly the same elements of medieval Catholic religious practice ludicrous as a 21st-century reader. And so on.
It's a different version of the phenomenon I've noticed in a lot of current genre fiction by Extremely Online authors — an intense anxiety that their readers are going to think that depiction equals endorsement, and consequently being unbelievably explicit in stating — in-text — that they are aware that whatever kind of bigotry is being depicted is wrong. But here it's motivated by a fear that readers won't love the author's historical faves if those characters display any hint of an unfamiliar morality. I find it frustrating and condescending — but I obviously didn't notice it back when I first read those Penman novels.
no subject
It's a different version of the phenomenon I've noticed in a lot of current genre fiction by Extremely Online authors — an intense anxiety that their readers are going to think that depiction equals endorsement, and consequently being unbelievably explicit in stating — in-text — that they are aware that whatever kind of bigotry is being depicted is wrong. But here it's motivated by a fear that readers won't love the author's historical faves if those characters display any hint of an unfamiliar morality. I find it frustrating and condescending — but I obviously didn't notice it back when I first read those Penman novels.