The Real Robin Hood: A Truly English Hero

Guest essay by The Brothers Krynn

The Brothers Krynn is one of my favorite substack pages and I strongly recommend you follow, whether you like fantasy literature, history, religion, or myth.

The Brothers Krynn

publishes articles on Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Robert E. Howard, anime, and anything else sci-fi/fantasy you can think of. I’ve been trying to get him on my podcast to discuss all these things and more, but I admit, the scheduling difficulties are all mine. He will certainly appear as a guest this summer, but until then, I’ve asked him if I may share one of my favorite articles of his, in fact the article that inspired me to invite him on my show. Here, in Sir Robin of Locksley, he writes about the English virtues of Robin Hood, and how modern films gets them wrong. Enjoy, and FOLLOW HIM!

Sir Robin of Locksley

Someone I follow on Twitter recently posted about the problems facing recent adaptations of the Robin Hood legend. He also complained of how the adaptations have gotten ever more gritty and farther away from the inspiration. I must admit to not knowing what to make of this latter complaint.

It isn’t that grit is always a bad thing in a movie (see the Centurion movie from 2008 or Solomon Kane from 2009), however it has gone perhaps a little too far in the past fifteen years. What is more is that directors and writers have tried to depict every possible variation of the myth EXCEPT for the actual myth.

Technically the last time we got a straight up Robin Hood story in some ways, was the Mel Brooks comedy Robin Hood Men in Tights, and before that to an extent Disney’s fox-animation one. I won’t say this is unacceptable, but for those who’ve read the original stories from Medieval literature it is indescribably frustrating. It is also frustrating that we have not gotten a Hereward the Wake story, but that’s perhaps for another time (I’m planning on working on a kind of adaptation of that particular story).

Robin Hood though is a character with a great deal of potential, and yet he’s been utterly deconstructed, utterly undone and is currently left in the mire. It is undeniable that people have forgotten the core of the character.

The character is more than a freedom fighter, he’s supposed to be the ideal everyman, the one who fights for everything that is English when no one else will. He fights for the people sure, but also his faith, his country, his wife, his friends when no one else will. He is so utterly English that he should crack obnoxious jokes at everyone else’s expense, he should be cheerful and laughter loving and devoted to his nation. Why? Because to him, to be English is to know joy.

Historically sure he appears in the first tales possibly during the reign of Edward II, and is resisting Thomas of Lancaster. He does this because he’s a loyal subject of England, and is fighting a desperate war in which he almost has no chance but he feels himself to be loyal to the King. He’s a patriot with a passion for his nation who feels that his liege has violated the trust of the realm out of greed. In later stories he’s placed earlier to the reign of John, where he got properly fleshed out.

These latter stories that place him earlier are even better, and are important in fleshing the character out. Always English authors seemed resolved to add to the stories, and to contribute ever more to flowering the character into a true chivalric icon, until the 20 century when it stopped somewhat abruptly. And this is a shame, as he’s an important icon one who has so much to share, so much to give still to the English.

I suppose the thing I like about him is that he gives the English hope. I like that about him, and I think this aspect of the character has been sorely let down in recent decades as he should be an ‘aspirational’ hero in some ways. The sort who inspires people and whom everyone can rally around and laugh about and celebrate and say ‘good on merry old England for having one such icon’.

The Core of the Character

As a character Robin Hood or Robin of Sherwood Forest is someone who in prior centuries was a source of a great deal of pride on the part of the English. In a lot of ways he’s an updated version of Hereward the Wake, the one guerrilla fighter who nobly resisted the cruel Guillaume le Conquerant (William the Conqueror). Yet there’s a uniqueness to Robin, who comes with the Merry Men as a support cast, a wife in Maid Marian and so much more.

The reason he’s been a source of pride for the English from what I can tell, it’s that he’s a Freedom Fighter, he’s sticking it to a tyrannical King, one who often times seems more foreign than those that King is fighting against. This is important to the English but it’s more than that. Robin is not simply resisting the tyranny of a bad lord, sheriff and monarch for the true King and people.

In a word Robin IS Justice.

He’s an ideal. He never misses the mark, never fails to fight for what’s right. He’s in a way the ultimate father-figure, the sort of man who is paternalistic, who is kindly and brave and does what’s right. He’s also someone who is sincere, and while of middle-class birth (for the Middle-Ages) he’s a man who is unswervingly loyal to his people.

The man is wholly incapable of disloyalty and incapable of forsaking the English. He’s also someone whom every Englishman can relate to.

And what’s there not to love about his story? It’s basically about you the average Tom, Richard or Henry gathering the lads/mates from the pub and banding together to resist a bad government to restore good government, justice and Englishness to London. All while finding true love, fighting off evil for her hand and riding off into the sunset with her.

In a word it’s every guy’s idea of romance. But more than that it’s every ENGLISH guy’s idea of romance.

It is very specific I must argue to the people of England, and one thing I suppose that irritates me about the poor adaptations and the slip-ups is that it feels like a direct and deliberate slight against England. While I’m French, and also part-Scotch and naturally prefer them to England, I do have a certain affection for France’s old enemy. England should be respected, her chief-most iconic character in terms of Medieval Literature alongside King Arthur in my view deserves far more respect.

So why is it that he’s given sloppy deconstructed adaptation after sloppy deconstructed adaptation? It’s frustrating.

But what’s more is that Robin has another ‘core’ to the character, one that’s always been left out and largely ignored by the big studios: Piety.

The Other Side of Sir Robin

I know I harp a great deal on this one virtue, but it is an integral one to those of us who are heir to the legacy of Rome. Robin Hood is supposed to be a man who is faithful to his oaths, not just to those to the people but those he swore to the Church and to the King.

In every adaptation it seems like what’s forgotten, what’s neglected even is the Medieval element, the Christian side to the character. This was of course expressed by that twitter guy I follow, with the character’s oaths as a Crusader in some adaptations glossed over, and his participation usually something the directors feel squeamish about (such as Ridley Scott). I don’t mind if that stuff is glossed over, but why endlessly show Robin as scarred and ashamed of what he did? Why not have him be proud that he served his King faithfully?

I guess I view the shame aspect as contradicting the resistance towards John. Because, if he’s the sort to feel ashamed of having fought for Richard and upheld his oaths as a warrior why would he summon up the nerve to resist John? It seems strange to me, to show him squeamish in one way and upstanding in the other.

This isn’t to say that he has to be a sociopath about it but a milder approach would probably be better or one which still casts him in a proud light. As to his relationship with Richard, this is an aspect of the character that is important and that is integral.

The oath to Richard is held above all else. It is of the upmost importance to him. It is the thing around which his life spins.

And this gets to the crux of the character, something that the show-runners and directors over in California do not seem to understand; Oaths are Everything to Robin Hood.

What I mean by this is that the character is a man much like Lucius Vorenus. He cannot bring himself to serve a false lord, he cannot tolerate a false king, and he cannot tolerate the false, base treatment of his people. Robin resists because he has no stomach for John’s usurpation of Richard’s prerogatives, he cannot tolerate a false bishop who profanes the name of the Lord, and he cannot stomach the local sheriff abusing the law for his own gain.

In most adaptations they gloss over or generally fail to touch upon this aspect of the character. It is strange to see.

Then again the one adaptation that in recent years has come the closest to understanding this aspect of the character was that of the daughter of Robin Hood. In this one Robin is deeply attached to his oaths to his daughter, and places this above all else which is fitting.

In the original stories he always stressed his loyalty to his King, and the oaths he had previously sworn to him.

This is why it must be stated that Robin Hood is technically the sort of man whether you go with stories of him again Edward II, or John, as someone who seeks to uphold his oaths and is someone who by all rights (especially the Grand Charter or Magna Carta as it’s also called) is well within his rights to fight as he does.

Technically in the stories he’s not the criminal. His enemies are. They are the robber-barons plaguing England, we must however remember that he’s not at war with the nobility only with those loyal to John. The reason for this is that he knows that some nobleman are truly loyal to the nation.

There’s nuance to Robin Hood, and I fear it’s not been seen in some time, and yet it’s one not lost on the English or Americans who love his stories. It is lost only on a few people, who make the majority of his stories.

A Very English Icon

The trouble with the themes of the character is that they are ones that seem totally at odds with what a lot of writers and directors are doing. Robin Hood is a man who doesn’t choose to be a bandit, sure he is forced to steal from the rich and give to the poor, but he is someone who has quite literally exhausted every other option.

He’s supposed to be an everyman, someone with immense reserves of loyalty who chooses always his men, his wife and the nation above himself. He’s a man who has a sense of fidelity towards Church that makes him as important an icon as St-George. He’s become an icon in some movies of also resisting the idea of faith when he shouldn’t be like that. If you want to make him a proto-Protestant sure, if that’s what it means to be English go ahead, but don’t go making him somehow ‘un-English.’

The core, the heart is that of an Englishman from Nottingham who has every wish to defend his people and who does stand up for them. He is cool because of his defence of them, in to-day’s world he’d probably be dubbed ‘alt-right’ because of his resistance to the government.

Tyranny cannot be tolerated or borne out in the English mind, and Robin is the answer to the injustices of the age of the likes of John.

Is it possible to separate him from current political strife? Certainly. And yet movie-directors and writers never seem to clue in. Again, it’s frustrating.

It seems as though only Disney and those scriptwriters and directors from before the 70s understood him. The character is a deep one, one who honestly evokes images of a great swashbuckling, bow and arrow wielding hero.

In the modern age he’d probably be a rifle-man, but he’d be no less stalwart a hero. I must admit I’ve spoken with some, and they fancied you could do an adaptation outside England, and I don’t think it really works. Certainly a variant of the character in Canada, Australia or the US sounds cool, but Robin Hood is firmly English to me and should remain so.

He’s meant to uphold the natural English law that all men of England have a right to their property, to their wives, to their friends and so on.

At present we’re starved for a good Robin story it seems. This is why I launched the prompt back in March, as the character isn’t just someone who fascinates the likes of my friend Michael but others I think.

So fill up my comment section if you will with your favourite Robin Hood quips, lines, scenes, movies and such.