Try reading the banquet scene from the start of Beowulf..."þæt he dogora gehwam dream gehyrde hludne in healle; þær wæs hearpan sweg,
swutol sang scopes."

Sweetly sang the scopes - but gehyrde hludne in healle, the din in the mead-hall. My own assistant Roland, not long after this was written, was contracted to perform a leap and a fart in the face of the King at the Christmas feast. No, life in the Court was not about softness, it would be fifty years before Queen Eleanor created Courtliness and the music of Gentility, learned from the Arabs during the Crusades. Life in court was about power plays, strength and devil take the hindmost - not least in England, for twenty years and more split by war between Stephen and Matilda.