Compare the idealized literary code of chivalry to documented historical realities of medieval knighthood.
Legend and history are not the same kind of text, and comparing them carefully -- rather than assuming legend simply reported the facts -- is one of the most valuable skills a reader of history can build. Week 19 studied chivalry as an IDEAL: courage, courtesy, protection of the weak, mercy toward a defeated foe. This week compares that ideal against the documented reality of medieval knighthood, which was more complicated and, in places, considerably less noble.
Real knights were heavily armed landholders whose warfare regularly devastated the farmland and villages of the very peasants the chivalric code claimed to protect, since medieval armies routinely lived off the land they marched through. Chivalric "mercy" toward a defeated enemy applied mainly to fellow knights and nobles, who could be captured and ransomed for a large payment -- a practical, profitable arrangement between social equals -- while common foot soldiers captured in the same battle usually received no such protection at all. None of this means chivalry was a total fiction; individual knights sometimes genuinely lived up to its ideals. It means the code functioned partly as a real ethical aspiration and partly as a set of rules protecting one class's own interests -- and a careful reader holds both truths at once, rather than picking the flattering one.
Mastery looks like: They can name at least one specific gap between the chivalric ideal and documented historical reality, and explain why holding both truths at once is more accurate than choosing one.
Common stumbles: Collapsing the comparison into a single verdict ("chivalry was fake" or "chivalry was real") instead of holding the real aspiration and the class-serving reality together.