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If you want an example of how to brainwash children and young adults, look no further than the Army. Not to speak negatively on the brave soldiers who volunteer to serve and protect, but hear me out. Your average middle class American Joe Schmoe is not that violent of a person, nor that mentally tough. Part of the reason casualties in disaster or in mass shootings are so high is that most of us will freeze rather than fight or flee – we do not have effective responses to actual mortal danger.
The purpose of boot camp is not just physical fitness, but mentally conditioning every recruit to follow orders under even the most stressful of circumstances, and prepare them for the ugly reality that they may be required to kill another human being in the course of their duties.
We don’t call it brainwashing because that’s a very negative term in our language, but that is essentially what basic training is. Taking your soft, squishy, nonviolent, easily frightened civilian brain and tempering it into a strong, fearless, well discipline soldier’s brained who can kill to survive and won’t freeze up under fire.

Now how that works?

Stress. A lot of stress.

The sleep deprivation, the constant yelling of the drill sergeant, the absurd mind games and disproportionate punishments for seemingly small mistakes, obsessive cleaning standards, and relentless physical exertion all works together to make your mind very pliable and inclined to internalize and obey whatever they tell you to learn. Praise and rewards are doled out sparingly amongst the constant stress to reinforce desired learning outcomes.

The name brainwashing unfortunately stems from Chinese; it was a term coined by communist Chinese political commissars for their process of turning dissidents or American prisoners of war (during Korea) into loyal communists, traitors and informers. The “good cop / insane torturer sadist cop” routine was very effective. Under extreme stress and pain, your mind tends to lock on to any instance of kindness or decency. This is related to Stockholm Syndrome – after a while of being a prisoner, your basic human tribal instincts take over and despite being at the mercy of your captors you also grow to be dependent on them.

Now we unfortunately come to children. Children are exceedingly easy to brainwash; they will accept simple explanations for why they have to do terrible things and will give in readily to avoid pain and receive promised rewards. Children are generally mentally predisposed to listen to adults which feed them and exert authority over them, and lacking the moral inhibitions of fully developed adults, children are frighteningly efficient as soldiers; they won’t hesitate to pull the trigger, while the soldiers they face often will in the face of a child. Look up our occupation of Afghanistan, the Vietcong in Vietnam, and African Bush wars for plenty of depressing and disturbing stories of child soldiers in action. Children and adolescents

Now, one caveat with your chosen time period: the people of the medieval period were much more familiar with death than we were. While many people could live to their 50s and 60s, even in the lower class, death in childbirth was common, and many children died before the age of 5 from sickness or accidents. Those who lived past 5 could typically enjoy a full life, barring war or plague. Banditry was common, especially during wars, and people of all classes generally traveled armed. That’s not to say witnessing a violent death wouldn’t psychologically affect a young protagonist; but the effect would be dependent on the culture and community around him or her. Context is everything, and to the medieval human, death is an inevitable part of life that leads to a better world; the object is to not to live as long as possible, but to die meaningfully.

NOW finally to your setting specifically. Dark Ages England is a broad period of time. What do you mean by Dark Ages? Early Middle Ages, 600s-1000s? Arthurian legend? Pre Norman England? Or post Norman-conquest, 1066 and onward? All very different time periods with different dominant cultures. I am happy to help here as well but I’d like to keep this post focused on your main question about brainwashing and trauma.