Sandy Petersen 🪔@SandyofCthulhu
Of course if you've done even the tiniest bit of research, you are aware that a sword won't actually cut through metal armor. While knights, of course, carried swords, their main weapons against other knights were maces, picks, hammers, and so forth.
If you want to read some interesteing medieval action, written by a man who actually lived the life, I recommend Le Morte d'Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory. He fought in the Wars of the Roses (which were plenty medieval) and pined for the good old days when knights were chivalrous. He makes editorial comments about how great it was when fighting men had true honor and weren't just a bunch of backstabbing assholes as they are now (for him, the 1400s). Le Morte d'Arthur is a pretty easy read if you get a good modern rendition. (The original text is pretty archaic.)
It's almost funny how Malory keeps coming back to the "Back then men were trustworthy" given that so many of his characters and encounters are wholly villainous. He has guys like Sir Bruce sans Pity who literally swaps the heads off ladies for fun.
His descriptions of fights and jousts are realistic, because he fought and jousted. Of course the heroes are more or less super-powered. But still, his idea of an amazing feat is when King Arthur on horseback, picks up a knight in full armor and carries him around the tournament grounds, dangling from his hand. It's amazing, but not Spiderman level.
In the book, Lancelot's toughest battle is when he faces a foe in full armor, while Lancelot is completely unarmored. Malory, correctly, sees this as a grievous weakness, and Lancelot is in real danger. Whereas in a modern film you'll see a loincloth-clad barbarian fighting a dude in armor like it's nothing.
In one crucial scene, Lancelot goes into a battle frenzy trying to rescue Guinevere from being burned at the stake, and while in it he kills Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris (Gawaine's brothers), who were standing unarmored by the Queen, as symbolic guards only, literally hoping for Lancelot to rescue her. But in the fight, since they're not defending themselves, they're killed. Its particularly poignant because Sir Gareth is generally portrayed as one of the nicest, if not THE nicest and best-loved knights of the Round Table. This triggers the final war, because Sir Gawaine refuses to forgive Lancelot for this crime. Gawaine basically takes control of the army, and Arthur retreats into ineffective melancholy while his son Mordred ruins everything back home.
