Login with PatreonA reader emailed in a question:
First of all, you’re awesome and this website is so incredibly good and needed!
I have a question for you, do you consider your texts to be good sources? I would like to use your text about Queen Tamar of Georgia in a history assignment I’m writing. But my teacher makes us writing a source criticism paper on all the used sources. SO, are you a good source worthy of my late night very last minute emergency studying??
I would use RP as a jumping-off point, but not a main source. I try to provide citations for everything I do, so use those. RP is more a “let’s get excited about stuff!” site than an academic one.
That isn’t to say my stuff is full of inaccuracies (at least not that I know of)! I do work hard to make sure what I say is correct. However, being accurate isn’t the same as giving a comprehensive view on history – I view this as peeks into movies from an alternate reality, and so I leave out a lot to get to the meat of the “movie.” And the entries all have a pretty strong point of view (as any movie would), which is also not useful for academia.
(hence me saying I’d need to do a fair bit of work to make RP-related course material available)
Lastly: I’m not a historian. My degree is in film criticism and my background is in computer graphics. This is just something I like doing, and I try to do okay by the source material.
[edit: I had used the phrase “primary source” before, which several people pointed out means a firsthand witness. like I said: not an academic]
