The dark, violent medieval origins of Robin Hood

'He was not a hero': How the dark, violent medieval origins of Robin Hood were erased29 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleCaryn JamesGetty ImagesRobin Hood began as an oral tradition in the 12th Century before morphing into a heroic, family-friendly stereotype – here's how new takes are restoring his dark side.When writer and director Michael Sarnoski began shooting his new film, he showed the cast and crew one he has always loved. It was Disney's 1973 animated Robin Hood, its hero a fox with a feather in his green cap, robbing the rich to give to the poor.

That beloved version could not be further from The Death of Robin Hood, Sarnoski's dark, thoughtful drama. Hugh Jackman stars as a grey-haired, battle-weary Robin, reflective at the end of his life and acutely aware of his own legend.Warning: This article contains a graphic description of violence that some may find upsetting.

When he encounters a woman who talks about the virtuous, justice-seeking Robin Hood, he denies who he is and speaks of himself in the third person. "He was not a hero. He robbed and killed for the joy of it, nothing more."

It turns out that this violent Robin Hood and other revisionist takes pushing back against his heroic, do-gooder image are closer to the original medieval legends than the family-friendly stereotype we might think of today.Knowing the Disney Robin Hood and then reading the Death of Robin Hood, those two versions of the character, really stuck with me as a kid – Michael SarnoskiThe depiction of Robin Hood has morphed through the centuries, each change reflecting the era that reinterpreted him. These darker 21st-Century variations look backward to the story's origins, but as some of their creators note, they also speak to the present.

Complicated views of the character challenge a polarised world in which heroes and villains are often starkly good or bad, as simplified as the Robin Hood legend became over the centuries.Who was Robin Hood?Although there has been plenty of speculation about an actual Robin Hood, historians largely agree that there was no single, living person behind the character, just a vastly unequal society of wealthy landowners and impoverished peasants that inspired his creation.

The stories began as an oral tradition in the 12th Century, but the first written accounts didn't arrive until two centuries later, in ballads that showed him as a celebrated figure even then.In those first written accounts, he wasn't the noble Sir Robin of Locksley as later versions made him. He wasn't noble at all, but a yeoman, a rung above a peasant.

There was no Maid Marian in the story until the 16th Century. And while he was perfectly nice to the poor, helping them was not his main purpose. His enemies were the corrupt clergy and the land-owning nobles who took advantage of their underlings.

Getty ImagesStories about Robin Hood began as an oral tradition in the 12th Century – with the first written accounts arriving 200 years later (Credit: Getty Images)In an afterword to her revisionist novel, The Traitor of Sherwood Forest (2025), medieval historian Amy S Kaufman describes the Robin Hood of the early legends as "a morally grey medieval trickster," and a "violent, irreverent rogue". Disney was right about one thing: the first ballads suggest that Robin was as sly as a fox.A major change in the story came in the 16th Century.

King Henry VIII was a fan and sometimes dressed up as Robin Hood. During the reign of the monarch who split from the Catholic Church, Robin's devotion to the Virgin Mary vanished from the legend.As the upper classes embraced him, in influential chronicles of the time the character no longer hated the nobility, but became noble himself.

Positioned as a morally upright nobleman battling his disreputable equals, he stopped questioning the power structure of society. He was enlisted to help the good King Richard return to the throne that had been usurped by his evil brother, Prince John, a trope that persists through Disney's depiction of John as a greedy, power-hungry lion.AlamyDisney's 1973 film with a fox Robin solidified his swashbuckling do-gooder image in the culture (Credit: Alamy)During the 19th Century, children's books helped turn Robin Hood even more into a sanitised do-gooder acceptable to the Victorians.

And in the 20th Century, cinema perpetuated that portrayal, with the matinee idol Errol Flynn as the swashbuckling Sir Robin in 1938's popular The Adventures of Robin Hood. Disney, in perhaps the most formative version, solidified that image in the culture.'Two versions of the same character'Sarnoski tells the BBC that the contrast between the Disney film and the original legends has fascinated him since childhood, when he read a storybook version of the medieval ballad The Death of Robin Hood.

There, Robin dies quietly, killed by an evil prioress and her lover. "Knowing the Disney Robin Hood and then reading the Death of Robin Hood, those two versions of the character – try