Western culture reaches for the Middle Ages every time the present starts to feel bad. Horace Walpole did it in the 1760s, William Morris did it in the 1890s, Led Zeppelin and the counterculture of the 1970s, whimsigoth in the '90s, and TikTok calls it castlecore. The contemporary version spans the full medieval range — from the austere silence of monasticism to the jewel-toned maximalism of a great hall. Stone, wrought iron, tapestries, raw plaster, the whole weight of pre-industrial craft.