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Scratch the surface of American politics or culture, and medievalism seems to always be lurking just beneath.

For those unfamiliar, castlecore is a sort of Romantic medievalism marked by sumptuous wealth—think windswept fens, lots of metalwork, richly colored fabrics, and stone keeps haunted by desperate lovers.

It’s a kind of medievalism, in other words, that seems to have passed through a sieve of Jane Austen or Emily Brontë; now you can see it in the works of medieval-themed romantasy novels.

The medievalism that was first spotted by Architectural Digest in 2022, proliferated on Pinterest between 2022 and 2024, and is now pushing us into 2025 is a trend primarily by and for women.

The medievalism of castlecore offers people, especially women, a way to critique this tech-bro futurism without directly engaging the politics of the moment, which not everyone wants to do, especially on social media.