• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

  • Blog
  • Books
    • Knights of Valor
    • Dragon King
  • Sign Up
  • About

middle ages

3 Myths About Swords You Probably Believe

July 25, 2019 by Elizabeth Drake

I talked about armor here, but there’s also a lot of misconceptions about swords. Especially if you play RPGs or watch the History Channel.

 

3 Myths About Swords You Probably Believe

 

1. Swords of the Middle Ages Were Very Heavy

Many of us have played an RPG (role-playing game) in our time, whether in video game form or tabletop. This means we’ve seen the stats on weapons and had to make sure our warrior or paladin was strong enough to wield them.  While strength was important, the weights in these games and quoted on the History Channel may have been there more for game balance than representing fact.

Not exactly like what you see in RPGs, but far more accurate.

Truth: According to the Wallace Collection Museum in London that has dozens of actual swords from the Middle Ages, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any that weighed more than four pounds. Most weighed less than three. Even the large “hand-and-a-half” swords rarely weighed more than 4.5 pounds. Large parade swords only weighed up to eight or nine pounds, but their blunt edges should be a clear sign they weren’t meant for combat.

All of these swords would be easily handled by a man who’d been training with them since the age of seven.

Some of this misconception may come from producing replica swords which are not made the same way they were in the middle ages or with the same materials. Still, it wouldn’t have taken more than a trip to a museum to prove this.

 

2. Swords of the Middle Ages Were Clumsy

In a fencing booklet from 1746, the author talked about how heavy and unwieldy earlier swords were and stated they were designed for brute force. I can’t exclusively blame the Victorians for this one, though in the 1870s, a historian described earlier weapons as ponderous and requiring both hands.

Better for a video game than real life.

Truth: The weapons of the Middle Ages were light, strong, and well-designed. They were agile weapons designed to kill, and they did a fine job of it. They were not clumsy or heavy. They were not “clubs with edges”. Of course they weren’t. Men had been fighting with swords for thousands of years. Improvements were made along the way. Materials got better, and so did forging techniques. Guns would eventually change warfare, but not for a long time, and when it comes to survival, humans are remarkably inventive.

 

3. Swords of the Middle Ages Were Prone to Breaking

Again, not sure where this came from, unless a scholar was holding a 500 year-old sword that had grown brittle with time. Swords did not regularly break in battle. Seriously. If they did, that army would’ve lost, and you can guarantee the victor wouldn’t have adopted their shoddy forging techniques.

When you step back and look at this logically, of course it makes sense that knights and soldiers of the Middle Ages had finely-crafted blades that were light, sturdy and agile. War tends to bring about inventiveness as nothing drives innovation like survival. And the funding from kings and emperors didn’t hurt, either.

 

While video games may show us a visually appealing truth, and RPGs struggle with game balance, the truth about knights, swords and armor doesn’t change. Armor was practical and effective. So were swords. Important things for me as a writer to know, though I wonder if it will be disappointing or unbelievable to see the mundane truth in my work. Something for me to consider.

 Any other myths about the European middle ages out there we all take for granted?

Filed Under: Sword Tagged With: Clumsy, heavy, middle ages, Myth, RPGs, sword

3 Myths About Swords You Probably Believe

May 31, 2018 by Elizabeth Drake

I talked about armor here, but there’s also a lot of misconceptions about swords. Especially if you play RPGs or watch the History Channel.

 

3 Myths About Swords You Probably Believe

 

1. Swords of the Middle Ages Were Very Heavy

Many of us have played an RPG (role-playing game) in our time, whether in video game form or table top. This means we’ve seen the stats on weapons and had to make sure our warrior or paladin was strong enough to wield them.  While strength was important, the weights in these games and quoted on the History Channel may have been in there more for game balance than fact.

Not exactly like what you see in RPGs, but far more accurate.

Truth: According to the Wallace Collection Museum in London that has dozens of actual swords from the Middle Ages, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any that weighed more than four pounds. Most weighed less than three. Even the large “hand-and-a-half” swords rarely weighed more than 4.5 pounds. Large parade swords only weighed up to eight or nine pounds, but their blunt edges should be a clear sign they weren’t meant for combat.

All of these swords would be easily handled by a man who’d been training with them since the age of seven.

Some of this misconception may come from producing replica swords which are not made the same way they were in the middle ages or with the same materials. Still, it wouldn’t have taken more than a trip to a museum to prove this out.

 

2. Swords of the Middle Ages Were Clumsy

In a fencing booklet from 1746, the author talked about how heavy and unwieldy earlier swords were and stated they were designed for brute force. I can’t exclusively blame the Victorians for this one, though in the 1870s, a historian described earlier weapons as ponderous and requiring both hands.

Better for a video game than real life.

Truth: The weapons of the Middle Ages were light, strong, and well-designed. They were agile weapons designed to kill, and they did a fine job of it. They were not clumsy or heavy. They were not “clubs with edges”. Of course they weren’t. Men had been fighting with swords for thousands of years. Improvements were made along the way. Materials got better, and so did forging techniques. Guns would eventually change warfare, but not for a long time, and when it comes to survival, humans are remarkably inventive.

 

3. Swords of the Middle Ages Were Prone to Breaking

Again, not sure where this came from, unless a scholar was holding a 500 year-old sword that had grown brittle with time. Swords did not regularly break in battle. Seriously. If they did, that army would’ve lost, and you can guarantee the victor wouldn’t have adopted their shoddy techniques.

When you step back and look at this logically, of course it makes sense that knights and soldiers of the Middle Ages had finely-crafted blades that were light, sturdy and agile. War tends to bring about inventiveness as nothing drives innovation like survival. And the funding from kings and emperors didn’t hurt, either.

 

While video games may show us a visually appealing truth, and RPGs struggle with game balance, the truth about knights, swords and armor doesn’t change. Armor was practical and effective. So were swords. Important things for me as a writer to know, though I wonder if it will be disappointing or unbelievable to see the mundane truth in my work. Something for me to consider.

 Any other myths about the European middle ages out there we all take for granted?

Filed Under: Sword Tagged With: Clumsy, heavy, middle ages, Myth, RPGs, sword

Book Review: The Bride

August 15, 2016 by Elizabeth Drake

Rating: 3.5/5

Title: The Bride

Author: Julie Garwood

book-1014197_640

This books takes place during the time of William the Conqueror, so much different time frame than my usual Regency and Victorian fare. It also takes place in The Scottish Highlands, which is not my normal venue.

Characters

Jamie– I mostly liked her. I found her character a bit inconsistent when it came to her husband. I try to chalk it up to being forced to marry someone you’ve known for 5 minutes. Her childhood was hard, but it shaped her into a competent woman. She is a bit on the perfect side. Okay, absolutely perfect. But she has personality and spunk, doing what’s right even if unconventional.

Alec- Alec was your typical alpha hero. He’s not unkind to his new and unwanted English wife, though he does view her as property. If you like alpha heroes, you’ll like him. He’s also, basically, perfect.

 

Plot

Alec has been ordered by his King to marry an Englishwoman and the English King has decreed it will be one of Jamie’s family as her father didn’t pay his taxes.

Alec chooses Jamie, they’re wed, and he takes her back to the Highlands.

Hijinks along the way, including consummating their marriage.

They get back to the Highlands, and Jamie learns she’s married not just a Scottish warrior but a warlord with hundreds of men under his banner.

Her first order of business is healing a gravely injured man which helps earn her the respect of the clan. Even though she’s English.

The underlying plot is twofold. First, someone is trying to kill her as they did his first wife (though in his first wife’s case, they made it look like suicide). Second, there is a desire to unite the clans. Both are accomplished through the heroine’s unconventional actions.

Overall, the plot is mostly fluffy and something to do between steamy scenes.

 

The book was pretty good. An easy read, something new to me, but not something I’m going to be thinking about in a week.

 

How to Make it a 5

I’ve thought long and hard about this, and there just isn’t that much to work with. I also can’t rule out the fact that I’m being unduly harsh because it’s so far out of my normal selections.

And yet, I can like a lot of things outside my norm, so there is more to it. Perhaps it’s how quickly and easily Jamie and Alec fall for each other, even though he’s angry at being forced to take an English bride and she’s being ripped away from her home, family, and everyone she knows.

Maybe how the plot to unite the clans is so easily accomplished, I have to work harder to walk to the end of the driveway to check my mail.

Maybe it’s just how everyone is so damned perfect. Jamie: beautiful beyond measure. Yup. Brave. Check. Skilled rider. Sure. Unparalleled healer. Of course. And the list goes on and on.

Alec is basically just as perfect, but the alpha hero version of it. Handsome? yes. Tall and unbearably strong? You betcha. Wealthy? His sword alone is worth a king’s ransom. Add warlord and close ally of the king, too.

 

Accept this book for what it is: a quick read, not terribly memorable but a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Filed Under: Book Review, Uncategorized Tagged With: book, Highlands, historical romance, laird, middle ages, Romance, Scottish

Footer

Connect with me on social media

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Looking for something specific?

Copyright © 2022 · Author Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

 

Loading Comments...