Obviously I’ve only seen these battles on TV on The Last Kingdom and Vikings, but with the number of people and the complete chaos I can’t understand how you could tell one side from another. I know shields were painted differently and some armies carried flags but if you aren’t holding something that says what side you’re on, I’m sure killing people on your side had to be pretty common.
Obviously I’ve only seen these battles on TV on The Last Kingdom and Vikings
See, there's the problem. The Hollywood Combat Moshpit that most popular media uses to depict hand-to-hand battles is nice to look at on the screen, but it is very much not how things would go. u/J-Force has some Medieval-specific thoughts in this thread, which also contains one of my previous linkdrops on just this subject.