Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

A Medieval Knight - His Weapon and Armor

What was life like for a Medieval Knight? What kinds of things did they do and what kinds of skills and weapons did they have?

The role of the knight changed over the centuries of the Medieval Ages but there are some general roles that held true.

A knight was pledged to serve his liege or king in military service. Generally this pledge was termed that the knight would serve 40 days of each year in military combat for his king. In exchagne the knight would receive loot from battles, his own estate and position in the court

Hand Painted Medieval Feudal Knight Enforcer Display Statue: available at Amazon.com

Today We take a look at What it took to become a Medieval Knight

Becoming a Knight and training

Generally there were two ways for a man to become a knight. He was either born into it or he proved himself worthy of being a knight through bravery and prowess on the battlefield.

For a boy that was born of a knight or of royalty there was a standard process for induction into knighthood. At a young age (usually around the age of eight) the boy was sent to the local lords castle to become a page. There he would learn all of the necessary things of knighthood. This early training would be in the rules of the court, chivalry, music, writing and weapons. After several years of this training he would become a squire where his training would focus more on combat. He would learn use and training in weapons and in particular he would learn the tactics of fighting on horseback. This was one of the most important aspects of becoming a knight. It was the mounted knight that held awe, respect and ability in the medieval world.

Tomorrow we will take a look at Chivalry and the code of conduct of the Medieval Knight.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Swords and Sorcery is a great subgenre of fantasy and it goes all the way back pretty much to Robert Howard and his Conan works. And he didn’t realize this was what he was writing until Fritz Leiber coined the term “Swords and Sorcery” in 1961.

It is a great genre that has lots of fun and action but the female characters in the works tended to be one-sided (beautiful and ancillary to everything of substance). They were usually the damsel in distress.

But in the mid 80’s through the mid 90’s Marion Zimmer Bradley compiled and edited a series of anthologies called “Swords and Sorceress” where the female characters were center stage. There were 21 books in all and this is a great series of books.

If you want to read a bit more about this series here is a nice Wikipedia article about it.  

Here are some links to the books:

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword And Sorceress XXI (Sword and Sorceress) (This is the book shown here in this post.

Here is the first book in the series: Sword and Sorceress: An Anthology of Heroic Fantasy

Here is a quick amazon link to a list of the books The Sword and Sorceress books at Amazon

Popularity: 4% [?]