Dark Origins Return: Revisionist Robin Hood Reclaims His Violent Roots
From Robin Hood’s violent, subversive roots in 12th-century ballads to a sanitised, noble hero in Henry VIII-era chronicles and 20th-century cinema, new revisionist works—most notably Michael Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hood and Amy S Kaufman’s The Traitor of Sherwood Forest—reclaim his dark origins, portraying him as a man shaped by and shaping power through storytelling, with grim violence and ambiguous ethics that echo today’s political climate.