Can any American parents tell me why American children should show any interest in the Knights theme?
In Europe we had these guys running around for several hundred years, and in the UK you can barely throw a rock without hitting a castle or a battlefield site, but the same isn't true of American soil.
Where does the interest come from? Is it taught in History class, is it via TV, film and video games, or is it just that knights are the very essence of coolness?
We Americans search for identity in the places and cultures where we (er ... our ancestors
) came from.
For instance, in search of an African identity, there came up the "blackpower" culture movements, since the seventies.
European origin people (like me) search for European patterns for better understanding who we are, and think and know what we can be today. A man has to learn about his own people's history, so as to learn to be proud about who he is. In a deeper way.
There's a lot of guilt in extermination of native American peoples. Well yes, we (specially my ancestors, yours had nothing to do with it ... you're in Europe, after all .. Your wife, on the other hand, isn't European, if I recall it well. Or is it someone else's? Not sure) we (my ancestors) (in a way) actually killed the peoples who lived here before us, so that we could come to live here. It's the cruel history of humanity, not far different than what happens in the Middle East, since long long time ago. Peoples kill others to get their lands; kill the warriors, enslave the women, and throw the babies from the cliffs. That's what happened in America. From north to south. And it's our doing. My viewpoint, and it's ... somewhat a religious point of view. Many may disagree of what I say, but it's a point of view, so, I have the right to have it. And I won't fight about it, or think unfair if this commentary is erased. We aren't supposed to speak about politics or religion here.I spoke about native Americans because these are the main ethnies in America: we're European (in speech), many among us came from Africa from the beginning of the colonization (1600, 1700s), and well, before us, there were people(s) here, who were defeated (and, yet, some of them survived, remain, and are supposed to be proud about being who they are).
So, how come that we Americans (either "English"/E'angeese (Les Anglaises > Yankees) or Spanish and Portuguese) come to understand knights, castles and dragons as a bit of our own culture? Some (most actually, or, at least half*) of us came from where these things are part of culture, so we brought them with us.
As well as cinema, and literature before it, took north American "Indians" and Western (in)to Europe.
And now we have internet, so that we can even talk about it!
Crazy, aye?
*
Lets say, one third European, one third "Afro", one third divided into native Americans (very few remaining), and later imigrants, from the second half of the XIXth century, in Brasil, for example, there's a lot of Lebaneese (called "Turks", because they came to Brasil through Turkey and, therefore, with Turkish papers), Chinese (in Rio de Janeiro), Japanese (in Sampaulo there's huge Japanese population), and from the period of the War (the Great War ... before the second one), many Italian and German imigrants came, Italian mainly to Sampaulo, and German to south of Brasil, and to Uruguai and Argentina ...). My ancestors are Italian. I'm the fourth Brasilian generation of an Italian bookman, who was on his way to Argentina, but, because of seasickness, decided to stay in the first reasonable port he could believe to stablish himself 
... So, he stayed at Bahia, northeast of Brasil, and it was my grandpa who came to Rio, later on.
And all this not to count on ethnical mixtures (European and Afrodescendants, in Brasil, is widely spread, which makes us a ... kind of a tolerant people, I think, among ourselves), and not to count other Europeans from the beginning of colonization, who disputed the possetion of the land: in northern borders of Brasil, there's a lot of Dutch and French(ies), there are two countries north of Brasil, Suriname, which is Dutch, if I'm not mistaken, and French Guiana ... And there's a lot of history of Dutch dispute for Recife, one of the main northern Brasilian towns, which was, by the way, founded, if I'm not mistaken, by the Dutch. Like the Big Apple ...)
This is America! Lots of people, in lands of ... most everyone. Now, it's Americans'. English on the north, Spanish ... around, and Portuguese in Brasil.Besides that, Ron T. and mr. Bilbo Baggins became quite famous worldwide during the XXth century
Gus
