Castles Are Actually Really Complicated!

Hello. This is unusual for me, because I can't sit still for more then 45 min., but I found the time somehow.

I am gonna skip the pleasantries, because I do want to tell you about something. Castles.

We from the 21st century think of castles in the context of fairy tales, or simply as places of extravagance where kings and queens once lived, now made ruins by time. But castles still exist, and you can buy them, and who wouldn't want to? Because almost every little girl wanted to be a princess, and somehow those girls got their younger brothers wanting to be the princes. But that is just a fantasy of children. Every adult knows that no one can own a castle realistically. So they don't even think about it. But my family is weird, and it just so happens that I'm in Iowa while my sister, Sissy Monster and her husband, who doesn't have a nick name yet, are very possibly in the market for a house. How does looking for a house escalate to looking for a castle?  The mentality of their search. It seems to me, they aren't looking for just a house in a certain price range, or the number of rooms compared to the number of kids they have, but a new home where the kids can be more free. If a place has a happy history then it will get bought, unlike the  many cardboard cutouts of houses that are popping up everywhere; those have no character! What has more character, or freedom than a castle?
 Not that the house they have now isn't fantastic, with it's unique build, and sense the house gives off as you walk in the door: which must be because of the happiness that emanates from the family inside. (Plus the happiness of the delicious foods you will have at dinner.)

I also wanted to share what I've learned about castles from a book in my home-school curriculum.
 Think of a castle for a sec. It probably looks like the castle at Disney Land, right? Those are all well and good for tourists, but castles where actual kings lived, and fought in, and DIED defending weren't that comical. In the golden age of castles, men were jealous and greedy, so there were a lot of wars going on over territory. So not only the castle, but the village that always surrounded the castle had to be fortified.
The builders planed well, because the town and fortress were normally on higher ground, yet by water, perhaps a river, or a lake. The way my book showed the ideal place for castle building was right on a river bend, the huge wall surrounding the village placed on a kind of cliff. Just inside that corner the immense eight foot thick outer wall, called the "Outer Curtain", would join the wall around the village. So a castle much like the one here,  Medieval Castle Anatomy 101 « My Literary Quest, would be encompassed by a village and a wall, banked by a river on one side, which would water the crops of the farmers outside the village, now almost the size of a small city by our standers.

Bear in mind that I don't think many of those types of castles are still standing, but if they are we get first dibs!