Georgy_K_Zhukov

I absolutely love the history of the legion, but I must confess that I am not too well read on its recent concerns, so a few questions:

• In the past, it has been said that "The Legion is only as good as its worst German", reflecting on the large role that German members have played historically. Do you feel this still holds some truth?

• What are the current rules for Frenchman joining? Do they still need to assume a Francophone identity such as Belgian, or has that been relaxed? If the former, can they admit they are French later one once they normalize their identity?

• How does the Legion currently treat the Algiers Coup as regards its institutional memory?

• Historically, the Legion has been one of the few thoroughly professional units of the French military. With the French, as I understand, moving away from conscription and looking more towards a volunteer army however, how do you feel the Legion will fit into the military landscape of the future?

• Combined with being a professional corps, the foreignness of the Legion has also made it an attractive tool for French policy when needing to commit troops to possibly violent overseas regions. Is this something that Legionnairres are proud of - being the "go to guys" for danger assignments - or is there some level of resentment within the force that, taking into account of course you signed up for this, you nevertheless are being used for missions that they might not want to risk Frenchmen with?

Anyways, thanks for doing this AMA, I eagerly await your responses!

Looks better on a resume if nothing else.

Yeah, if he can say these with a straight face...

And although I can take these characters for a walk, I never leave their historical reality behind.

But it's a real show about real people and real events,

I have a hard time taking him seriously. I mean really, you are claiming that Ragnar Lothbruk, a legendary figure who at best we can maybe say was inspired by one of a half-dozen candidates, is a real person and the real historical events of his life are depicted here accurately?

Come on!!! The show is entertaining, and I don't see how being honest would hurt here! If he had said something along the lines of "The events of the show are inspired and influenced by Norse histories and legends. Obviously we adapt these for a modern TV audience, but nevertheless I do believe we are doing these stories justice" I'd respect the shit out of that! Perfectly reasonable thing for the creator of the damn thing to say.

I'm a moderator of /r/AskHistorians, and talk of this does not make me at all happy. Our policy is to remove any comments that break our very strict rules. We still get people posting jokes and stuff, but for the most part, the culture of the sub has seen that go down to a very low level. A mechanism like this, that lets the jokers, shitposters, wikiquoters, and other rules breakers know that even if we "remove" their comments people will still see them, I can see as only serving to encourage people to do them more. This means much more work for us to maintain the standard we have in place.

Now, if this were an option that a subreddit can turn on if it chooses, that seems A-OK to me. We'll opt out, and keep on trucking. But if this is something you are forcing on subreddits, it is a serious assault on the principle that reddit's subs are the domain of their creators/moderators, and it will seriously jeopardize out ability to maintain the subreddit to the standards we aim for. I hope that you are just speaking off the cuff here, and not speaking of concrete changes in the pipeline, since any changes like this I would hope would only be brought about after serious discussion with the mod teams, not to mention assurances that you won't force it on those who have created communities on the assumption that such a mechanism didn't exist.

Parts certainly, but other parts are taken from a legendary saga, and this does matter when he says it is a show about real people. Like I said though, my issue isn't when the show, which I found to be suitably entertaining. It is with him overselling how historically accurate the show is. It is true that "the things that took place, the invasion, the blot, etc, are based on real events" but that isn't what he said.