It Was Never Supposed to Be “Duck Face”

You thought duck face was a selfie pose from the 2010s? The medieval monks got there first and they took it literally.

This collage from medieval manuscript marginalia shows us three duck-goose hybrids living their best lives: a fully-armoured knight with a duck’s head wielding a sword and mace, a courtly scene where a noblewoman presents a duck on a pedestal to her kneeling admirer, and a crowned goose looking every bit the sovereign.

These images come from the 13th-14th century tradition of marginalia — the bizarre, often grotesque doodles that monks drew in the margins of expensive religious and legal manuscripts. Duck-headed knights are a recurring motif. Scholars have debated their meaning for centuries: satires of the knightly class? Symbols of the soul? Or just monks having a laugh while copying Latin legal texts for the 400th time?

The joke of this particular meme is that the modern "duck face" selfie was never supposed to be pursed lips and cheekbones — it was supposed to be this. A knight in full plate armour with an orange beak and webbed feet. A crowned goose ruling over his kingdom. Two lovers bonding over a duck on a pedestal.

Gorgocutie’s Verdict:

Six hundred years later, we’re still making the same joke. The technology changes, the medium changes, but the human urge to put a duck in armour and call it a knight? That never went away. The only difference is we use Photoshop instead of crushed minerals and gold leaf. The medieval monks would have loved Twitter.