Origin Story

England in the Middle Ages spanned a period from the end of the 5th century right through until the beginnings of the Early Modern Period in around 1485. Medieval Morticia, as she later became known, was a woman who is shrouded in mystery.

They say she came from the darkness that followed the violent collapse of the once great Roman Empire. Newly free from Roman rule England was a scarred land, the economy was reduced to naught and many a town lay abandoned. Soon England rose again, developing and strengthening a new, diverse set of kingdoms with a wealth of artistic and religious culture and national identity.

In the 8th and 9th centuries however England experienced a multitude of brutal attacks from Norsemen better known as Vikings who targeted the most prosperous kingdoms, raiding and pillaging. Though by the 11th century England was once again powerful. They say she was a witness here.

This new century brought a new foe, The Normans. 
They eradicated the Anglo-Saxon elite and replaced them with their own Norman and French nobles. Thus came the reign of William the Conqueror. Morticia saw his rise, and the rise of his successors who took over England and enforced a new Feudal System, ruling by a network of castles whilst structuring and stratifying society on the basis of land tenure.

By the 12th and 13th centuries England had grown large and trade was good, but by the 14th Morticia witnessed further disasters that crippled England’s population. These disasters came in the forms of The Great Famine and The Black Death. Economy was chaotic and the old feudalistic order was thrown into disarray, social unrest came in the form of revolts and new classes of nobility used a reversed form of feudalism known as bastard feudalism to take what they could.

The 14th and 15th centuries saw The Hundred Years War rampage throughout 1337 to 1453 between The House of Plantagenet, the rulers of England, and The House of Valois, the rulers of France. Then internal social unrest saw England’s rival factions within The House of Plantagenet, The Houses of York and Lancaster, fight in The Wars of the Roses. They say the end of these wars, and subsequently the end of the Middle Ages in England and the start of the Early Modern Period, is marked by the death of King Richard the III and Henry VII’s rise to the throne in 1485.

During these centuries Medieval Morticia observed life and death, witnessed triumphs of art, culture and identity, mixed with political, economical and natural disasters. Her legend spans the entirety of English Medievalism and continues on for centuries after, with stories, sightings and accounts of her throughout the ages. Her true origins are unknown.

These stories, sightings and accounts, which date back from the medieval period to through to the modern day, are sporadic, she appears both ancient and eternal, a patron of the arts, a collector of things, an observer, a dark ethereal figure on the battlefield, a faceless body in a crowd. Some say she is a harbinger of ill omen, others a herald of the good things to come.