lierdumoa:

You know what I love about A Knight’s Tale?

The director, during the director’s commentary, makes a point of informing the audience that the female blacksmith character is historically accurate, and that widows of blacksmiths did in fact take over their late husbands’ blacksmithing businesses in medieval Europe and it was one of the relatively rare circumstances wherein women were permitted to legally run their own businesses in medieval Europe.

This is literally the only historically accurate detail in the entire movie.