throbbing light machine

I did a bunch of reading on Victorian medievalism in university -- did you know that Walter Scott wrote the entry on chivalry for the Encyclopedia Britannica?? -- but so few of them have the good worldbuilding texture that Scott manages. It's no good to give me airy castles and fairy lands forlorn, I want disquisitions on food, castle management, and the history of the English language in addition to the jousting bits ta vm!