The Most Bizarre Sexual Practices in Medieval Castles | Sleepy History Story

Step into the torch-lit keeps of medieval Europe as we uncover how intimacy, rumor, and power unfolded behind stone doors. This 210-minute journey moves from screens, bed curtains, and laird’s lugs to bedding ceremonies that were more civic theater than private bliss; from iron myths and “first-night” legends to the real paperwork of consent, banns, and annulment. We tour stillrooms of saffron wine and mandrake charms, steamy bath chambers and public stews, and kitchens where humoral diets claimed to cool or kindle desire. Along the way we decode laces and points, door codes and candle signals; read love in acrostics and letter locked notes; and watch festivals tilt the rules just long enough to be remembered. Grounded in real spaces and practices—oriels and garderobes, gimmel rings and merchet, relic ribbons and wax ex-votos—this film shows how architecture made secrecy possible, why legends stuck, and how the bedchamber could double as a council chamber.

Join us as we explore:

0:00 Introduction: Behind Stone Doors (screens, tapestries, oriels, and the architecture of privacy)
12:30 Courtly Love & Castle Etiquette (troubadours, favors, coded gestures, and the “Courts of Love”)
25:00 The Bedding Ceremony (public tucking-in, warm pans, witnesses, and what counted as “proof”)
37:30 Myths That Won’t Die (chastity belts, “first night” legends, satire vs. law and evidence)
50:00 Potions, Charms & Stillrooms (saffron wine, mandrake, perfume—plus the line between prayer and spell)
1:02:30 Diets, Humors & Desire (lettuce vs. spices, Regimen of Salerno, why soup sometimes beat sorcery)
1:15:00 Baths, Steam & Screens (private tubs, public stews, felt caps, etiquette, and epidemics)
1:27:30 Night Codes & Servant Networks (watch cries, bells, stools, knocks, keys, and candle signals)
1:40:00 Clothes, Laces & Layers (spiral lacing, points, detachable sleeves, belts and pomanders)
1:52:30 Love & the Law (banns, present vs. future vows, church courts, and bed-trial reality)
2:05:00 Faith & Fertility (pilgrimages, relic ribbons, ex-votos, and heir-hungry dynasties)
2:17:30 Secrets in Ink (acrostics, pocket ciphers, invisible ink, and letterlocking in psalters)
2:25:00 License, Stars & Power (festivals, charivari, planetary hours, gossip networks, household rules, quiet queerness, witchcraft accusations, and why the bedroom was a throne room)
2:30:00 Conclusion & Wind-Down (what the archives show—and what the stone still keeps to itself)