2014-03-11
Explanation
The Joke
A woman tells her friend that she sometimes feels like she lives in the wrong era and would be so much happier in the Renaissance. Her friend says "Then let us go!" and they are magically zapped back in time. In the Renaissance, a small child approaches the woman, who finds it endearing -- until a knight charges at her screaming. She screams in terror. Then a man announces she is from the future, from "another fiefdom," and declares "this is a hanging offense." Unfazed, the woman immediately pivots and demands "Make me queen!" In the final panel, she sits on a throne and declares "You were right! Life is so much simpler here," having apparently seized power through her future knowledge or sheer force of personality.
The Humor
The comic satirizes the common romantic fantasy of wanting to live in a past era. Usually this type of joke ends with the person realizing how terrible the past actually was (disease, violence, lack of rights, etc.). This comic subverts that expectation: instead of being horrified by medieval brutality and returning humbled, the woman simply adapts by seizing power and becoming queen. The humor is in how casually she transitions from tourist to tyrant, and how she genuinely concludes that life is "simpler" -- not because the Renaissance is idyllic, but because she has made herself an absolute monarch. The joke suggests that the people who romanticize past eras might actually just want unchecked authority rather than a simpler life.