The 12th century came from my obsession with Robin Hood and outlaw stories as a kid. I loved the Disney Robin Hood movie and the Kevin Costner movie - was absolutely smitten with Sean Connery as Richard back then. Then when I was in high school, I was gifted from a teacher "1215: The Year of the Magna Carta" and it just snowballed from there. That year, the same teacher had us do a performance of The Lion in Winter for our small stage show and that just took off for me. I was already writing RPF for The Lord of the Rings movies and for soccer, so it wasn't that much of a stretch for me, especially after seeing the film version of the Lion in Winter during preproduction. I ended up going to university for a history degree and studied women in the 12th century under a fantastic advisor and doing work on the mistresses of Henry II. I was firmly a Philip girlie in high school but during my research for university, that is when I really fell in love with John and Henry III. The 12th and 13th centuries for me are just the perfect in-between space - we know just enough about the personalities and behaviors of the people involved in the events to feel like we could know them, but also their world view is so ancient and alien that they aren't quite Like Us. There's something very romantic and exciting to me about a period where you know so much and yet can't one-for-one experience what it was like for them to be really alive. Today the middle ages is a lot of things for me, including obviously a big inspiration for rpf and smutty bits and pieces, but I'm also fascinated from a work standpoint on the accessibility of legal services for the poor and how our ideas about the rights of the poor develop out of the 12th century (and especially from John's reign).