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magpiecrust · 12 hours

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Preindustrial travel, and long explanations on why different distances are like that

I saw a post on my main blog about how hiking groups need to keep pace with their slowest member, but many hikers mistakenly think that the point of hiking is "get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible" instead of "spending time outdoors in nature with friends," and then they complain that a new/less-experienced/sick/disabled hiker is spoiling their time-frame by constantly needing breaks, or huffing and puffing to catch up.

I run into a related question of "how long does it take to travel from Point A to Point B on horseback?" a lot, as a fantasy writer who wants to be SEMI-realistic; in the Western world at least, our post-industrial minds have largely forgotten what it's like to travel, both on our own feet and in groups.

People ask the new writer, "well, who in your cast is traveling? Is getting to Point B an emergency or not? What time of year is it?", and the newbies often get confused as to why they need so much information for "travel times." Maybe new writers see lists of "preindustrial travel times" like a primitive version of Google Maps, where all you need to do is plug in Point A and Point B.

But see, Google Maps DOES account for traveling delays, like different routes, constructions, accidents, and weather; you as the person will also need to figure in whether you're driving a car versus taking a bus/train, and so you'll need to figure out parking time or waiting time for the bus/train to actually GET THERE.

The difference between us and preindustrial travelers is that 1) we can outsource the calculations now, 2) we often travel for FUN instead of necessity.

The general rule of thumb for preindustrial times is that a healthy and prime-aged adult on foot, or a rider/horse pair of fit and prime-aged adults, can usually make 20-30 miles per day, in fair weather and on good terrain.

Why is this so specific? Because not everyone in preindustrial times was fit, not everyone was healthy, not everyone was between the ages of 20-35ish, and not everyone had nice clear skies and good terrain to travel on.

If you are too far below 18 years old or too far past 40, at best you will need either a slower pace or more frequent breaks to cover the same distance, and at worst you'll cut the travel distance in half to 10 or so miles. Too much walking is VERY BAD on too-young/old knees, and teenagers or very short adults may just have short legs even if they're fine with 8-10 hours of actual walking. Young children may get sick of walking and pitch a fit because THEY'RE TIREDDDDDDDDDD, and then you might need to stay put while they cry it out, or an adult may sigh and haul them over their shoulder (and therefore be weighed down by about 50lbs of Angry Child).

Heavy forests, wetlands and rocky hills/mountains are also going to be a much shorter "distance" per day. For forests or wetlands, you have to account for a lot of villagers going "who's gonna cut down acres of trees for one road? NOT ME," or "who's gonna drain acres of swamp for one road? NOT ME." Mountainous regions have their traveling time eaten by going UP, or finding a safer path that goes AROUND, so by the time you're done slogging through drier patches of wetlands or squeezing through trees, a deceptively short 10-15 miles in rough terrain might take you a whole day to walk instead of the usual half-day.

If you are traveling in freezing winters or during a rainstorm (and this inherently means you HAVE NO CHOICE, because nobody in preindustrial times would travel in bad weather if they could help it), you run the high risk of losing your way and then dying of exposure or slipping and breaking your neck, just a few miles out of the town/village.

Traveling in TOO-HOT weather is just as bad, because pushing yourself too hard and getting dehydrated at noon in the tropics will literally kill you. It's called heat-STROKE, not "heat-PARTY."

And now for the upper range of "traveling on horseback!"

Fully mounted groups can usually make 30-40 miles per day between Point A and Point B, but I find there are two unspoken requirements: "Point B must have enough food for all those people and horses," and "the mounted party DOESN'T need to keep pace with foot soldiers, camp followers, or supply wagons."

This means your mounted party would be traveling to 1) a rendezvous point like an ally's camp or a noble's castle, or 2) a town/city with plenty of inns. Maybe they're not literally going 30-40 miles in one trip, but they're scouting the area for 15-20 miles and then returning to their main group. Perhaps they'd be going to an allied village, but even a relatively small group of 10-20 warhorses will need 10-20 pounds of grain EACH and 20-30 pounds of hay EACH. 100-400 pounds of grain and 200-600 pounds of hay for the horses alone means that you need to stash supplies at the village beforehand, or the village needs to be a very large/prosperous one to have a guaranteed large surplus of food.

A dead sprint of 50-60 miles per day is possible for a preindustrial mounted pair, IF YOU REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO. Moreover, that is for ONE day. Many articles agree that 40 miles per day is already a hard ride, so 50-60 miles is REALLY pushing the envelope on horse and rider limits.

NOTE: While modern-day endurance rides routinely go for 50-100 miles in one day, remember that a preindustrial rider will not have the medical/logistical support that a modern endurance rider and their horse does.

If you say "they went fifty miles in a day" in most preindustrial times, the horse and rider's bodies will get wrecked. Either the person, their horse, or both, risk dying of exhaustion or getting disabled from the strain.

Whether you and your horse are fit enough to handle it and "only" have several days of defenselessness from severe pain/fatigue (and thus rely on family/friends to help you out), or you die as a heroic sacrifice, or you aren't QUITE fit enough and become disabled, or you get flat-out saved by magic or another rider who volunteers to go the other half, going past 40 miles in a day is a "Gondor Calls For Aid" level of emergency.

As a writer, I feel this kind of feat should be placed VERY carefully in a story: Either at the beginning to kick the plot off, at the climax to turn the tide, or at the end.

Preindustrial people were people--some treated their horses as tools/vehicles, and didn't care if they were killed or disabled by pushing them to their limits, but others very much cared for their horses. They needed to keep them in working condition for about 15-20 years, and they would not dream of doing this without a VERY good reason.

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UPDATE January 13: Several people have gotten curious and looked at maps, to find out how a lot of cities are indeed spread out at a nice distance of 20-30 miles apart! I love getting people interested in my hyperfixations, lol.

But remember that this is the space between CITIES AND TOWNS. There should never be a 20-mile stretch of empty wilderness between City A and Town B, unless your world explains why folks are able to build a city in the middle of nowhere, or if something has specifically gone wrong to wipe out its supporting villages!

Period pieces often portray a shining city rising from a sea of picturesque empty land, without a single grain field or cow pasture in sight, but that city would starve to death very quickly in preindustrial times.

Why? Because as Bret Devereaux mentions in his “Lonely Cities” article (https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/), preindustrial cities and towns must have nearby villages (and even smaller towns, if large and prosperous enough!) to grow their food for them.

The settlements around a city will usually be scattered a few miles apart from each other, usually clustered along the roads to the city gates. Those villages and towns at the halfway point between cities (say 10-15 miles) are going to be essential stops for older/sick folks, merchants with cargo, and large groups like noble’s retinues and army forces.

Preindustrial armies and large noble retinues usually can’t make it far past 10-12 miles per day, as denoted in my addition to this post. (https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/739342239113871360/now-for-a-key-aspect-that-many-people-often-ask )

#reblog #writing resources #writing research

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magpiecrust · 20 hours

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Which decade was it, 1930s or 1940s?

Well, at least all evidence points out that steel-toed safety boots were a thing by the 1950s which is what i was looking to confirm.

Now i should propably look at pictures of the old brands for reference. You can't trust google with "Vintage (Object)" because some people will actually mislabel everything up to the 1990s(!) as ""vintage"" (apaprently never having heard of the term "retro"). Also finding photos of normal old boots is hard because everything is either a shoe or a military boot.

#writing research #research #historical fiction #20th century #red revenge #writeblr

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magpiecrust · 2 days

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Preindustrial travel, and long explanations on why different distances are like that

The difference between us and preindustrial travelers is that 1) we can outsource the calculations now, 2) we often travel for FUN instead of necessity.

Heavy forests, wetlands and rocky hills/mountains are also going to be a much shorter "distance." For forests or wetlands, you have to account for a lot of villagers going "who's gonna cut down acres of trees for one road? NOT ME," or "who's gonna drain acres of swamp for one road? NOT ME." Mountainous regions have their traveling time eaten by going UP, or finding a safer path that goes AROUND.

If you are traveling in winter or during a rainstorm (and this inherently means you HAVE NO CHOICE, because nobody in preindustrial times would travel in bad weather if they could help it), you run the high risk of losing your way and then dying of exposure or slipping and breaking your neck, just a few miles out of the town/village.

And now for the upper range of "traveling on horseback!"

As a writer, I feel this kind of feat should be placed VERY carefully in a story: Either at the beginning to kick the plot off, at the climax to turn the tide, or at the end.

#reblog #writing reference #writing research

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magpiecrust · 2 days

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tag the oc that is somehow still standing after all their trauma

#Tom #and that fucks him up too because other people aren't #reblog

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magpiecrust · 2 days

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My take is that "forced diversity" in media very much isn't a real thing but there is a trend of diversity with 0 thought put into how characters' identities affect them & if it makes any fucking sense what they're doing in the story. And also everybody forgot what tokenism is

#and majority people (white/allo/straight/cis/abled/etc) screaming ''mInoriTyNesS iS tHeiR wHole pErsOnaliTy!!!!''#when minority characters..... have different life experiences and cultures from the majority #representation #reblog

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magpiecrust · 2 days

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The fact that they named a character Octopussy and then titled the movie "Octopussy" should tell you everything about this franchise

#james bond #007 #james bond 007 #madge's

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magpiecrust · 3 days

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Sun Tzu is so fucking funny to me because for his time he was legitimately a brilliant tactician but a bunch of his insight is shit like "if you think you might lose, avoid doing that", "being outnumbered is bad generally", and "consider lying."

#reblog #writing reference #writing research

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magpiecrust · 4 days

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Is Canva actually levally trustworthy though? They have pictures of Lego Star Wars and masks from The Purge, which i'd assume to fall under copyright, so who knows about all the other pics....

(source)

Unsplash - photography, illustration, & art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

Pexels - stock photos and videos

Getty Images - photography & illustration

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

StockSnap.io - stock photos

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own.

Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3

#reblog #writing resources #art resources #moodboard #other #not sure how to tag this

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magpiecrust · 5 days

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Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.

Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.

I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.

Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.

Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.

#reblog #writing reference #writing

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magpiecrust · 6 days

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At the gate for my flight home from visiting friends and there's a woman here with a service Shiba Inu. No pics because he has a Do Not Disturb vest and taking pics of strangers is illegal but I need to stress how ON DUTY this animal is. Ears up. Eyes doing Lazer scans of everything. Examining everyone who passes within 10ft like a security guard. Ass planted on her feet. I have never seen a dog with such intense chivalric guardian energy before. He has tiny eyebrows and they are FURROWED with concentration.

#reblog #story

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magpiecrust · 7 days

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for all of you who struggle to draw horse feet. :) You’ve gotta have those pasterns in there, as they are the horse’s main shock absorbers, as seen in the “bearing weight” example.

If you can handle an animal autopsy, here’s an interesting vid on how the muscles and joints work in the lower leg of the horse.

#reblog #art reference

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magpiecrust · 8 days

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Helpful things for action writers to remember

Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.

Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.

Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.

Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.

Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.

ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.

Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.

Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.

A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.

If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.

ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)

If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.

People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.

#reblog #writing research #writing reference #writing resources

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magpiecrust · 9 days

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Medieval Warhorses, Repost + additions!

Since people loved my "Preindustrial travel times" post so much, I decided to repost my "Realistic warhorses" info separately from the original link, where it was a response to "how to get the feel of realistic combat."

The original link is here.

The "Warhorse" post on my blog, plus a recent addition, is here.

And here's the text for people who want to go down my "grown up horse-girl" rabbit hole right away!

Medieval Warhorses:

First of all: DESTRIERS WERE NOT DRAFT HORSES. Horse/military historians are begging people to stop putting their fantasy knights on Shires, Belgians, and other massive, chunky farm-horses! The best known instance of “a knight needs to get lifted onto their 18-hand draft horse” is a SATIRE (A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, if I remember right), but somehow laymen decided to take it seriously.

Hell, I think the film’s historians knew that this was extremely inaccurate and begged the director not to do it.

For the purposes of this post, I will not get into the different TYPES OF WARHORSES. That is a hyper-fixation for another day, lol.

—

First problem with “Draft horses as warhorses:”

The bulk of modern-day “breeds” are far too recent for a medieval or medieval-fantasy story. Modern horse “breeds” began around the 1700s-1800s, so that’s in the EXTREMELY late-medieval/early-modern period. Before that, most medieval horses were referred to by “TYPE/PURPOSE” and maybe a “Country/Region.” “Spanish/Iberian horses” (the ancestors of modern-day Andalusians, Carthusians, and Lusitanos) were overwhelmingly popular for combat, and other baroque horses were also esteemed.

Destriers are physically average-height at 15 hands high (about 5 feet tall at the shoulder/withers), but the important part is that they are STACKED at 1200-1300lbs when most 15-hand horses are only 900-1000lbs, so that’s a quarter to a third more weight in muscle.

And remember, muscle will not make a given horse look “chubby!” Good ways to get across a warhorse’s muscles in writing is 1) how ROCK SOLID they are when you touch them, 2) their chiseled shoulders, necks, and butts, and 2) when they get into motion, especially for a fight, their muscles will flex and get REALLY defined. The three regions I mentioned are usually the most visible if they’ve got horse tack or a rider on them.

Think of the difference between “regular horse” and “destrier” as “regular Tom Hardy, who looks fit but normal,” versus “Tom Hardy playing Bane, where he put on thirty pounds and his torso and arms look like a fucking tree-trunk.”

Warhorses had nerves of steel, and the best-trained warhorses used could sprint and turn on a dime–they’ve been called “the sports cars of the medieval world.” This is a far cry from huge, sweet, and lumbering draft horses.

Besides Spanish horses, modern-day candidates for destriers would be European cobs (heavier all-purpose horses, large Welsh cobs are the best-known modern breed), and Foundation Quarter Horses (working/stock horses that can herd cattle and race and actually USE their muscles, not the bloated halter-horses who are mostly bred to look “good” to judges).

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But if the destrier was supposed to be the horse equivalent of “Tom Hardy as Bane” and not “The Mountain from Game of Thrones,” then how could they carry a knight’s armor as well as their own?

First of all, human combat armor is different from JOUSTING armor and it is easily half the weight for better mobility. Warhorses from proper medieval times aren’t shown wearing much horse-armor, even in jousting. The stuff you see in museums is also frequently the custom-made armor for wealthy nobles, who either 1) wore it once or twice a year for public celebrations, which is also why the armor’s in pristine condition instead of dented and bloody like combat armor would be, or 2) wore it because they were rich enough to not want themselves OR their expensive horses to die too soon in combat.

Assuming that all destriers needed to carry 150lbs for an adult armored man, PLUS another 150lbs of the horse’s riding tack and armor, is like people from the years 2500-3000 assuming that everyone with a “car” must have a Lamborghini or a Ferrari that takes up a lot of maintenance (if you want to keep it looking nice, at least) and can go 200 miles per hour.

So the vast majority of realistic warhorses/destriers didn’t get much if any armor, because 1) horse-armor is for princes and dukes, not Count Whoever’s third son or his nephew that he tossed out on adulthood with barely any money, and 2) horse-armor is going to weigh down your FAST and NIMBLE warhorse. (Remember: Knights wanted sports cars, not tanks!) Take a look at the horses and knights of the website called “Destrier!” Most horses there aren’t notably tall, and they mostly wear head-armor and fancy but not heavy horse-tack like capes, instead of full barding.

Another reason average/short warhorses were preferred is for medieval safety issues: You wanted to mount your horse from the ground without help. The famous knight Jean Le Maingre was so dedicated to fighting that he could VAULT onto his horse in armor, without touching the stirrups. His instructions are, essentially, “put on your armor, find your horse, put your hands on the horse’s back/saddle, and FUCKING JUMP.”

Unless you’re seven feet tall or a gymnast, you’re not jumping onto an 18-hand draft horse.

So all those Red Dead Redemption animations where you get to alley-oop your way onto your loyal steed? POSSIBLE, IF YOU ARE CRAZY/ANGRY ENOUGH.

Quick note: In ancient Ireland, they refer to a “steed-leap” that nobles, warriors, and other “people rich enough to own RIDING horses” were trained to use–with the important distinction that Gaelic nobles often took pride in either using saddles without stirrups, or NOT USING SADDLES TO PUT ANY STIRRUPS ON. So the bulk of Gaelic Irish nobles could theoretically go Red Dead Redemption on your ass.

—

And the third reason most combat-ready warhorses didn’t get armor is because infantry (the vast majority of most medieval armies) just had a low chance of hitting them in the first place.

First of all, most horses are already faster than people. Destriers were EXCEPTIONALLY fast as the cream of the crop. For the horse to need armor, someone needs a good chance of hitting the horse.

Second, most horses are hard to kill physically because horses don’t tend to like getting stabbed or shot at, so they will likely try to kill YOU, which means that a knight and his horse are TWO fighters who are both very angry and very protective of each other. Most people love their horses, and many combatants share intense bonds! IMAGINE IF YOUR HORSE IS ALSO YOUR SQUAD-MATE!

And last of all, most horses are hard to kill mentally because when you want to use cavalry, you ALSO want the other side’s infantry to get consumed by panic and bolt for their lives, away from their companions and AWAY FROM THE CHARGING HORSES. (Which routinely leads to a slaughter, often called a “rout” in period literature, or a “curb-stomp battle” on TV Tropes.) While most knights could dish out one-on-one duels against EACH OTHER, a knight against a foot-soldier is going to have a huge and explicitly unfair advantage if the soldier is not specifically trained and equipped to take them on.

See, when you get a herd of knights on their steeds, the noise and the wave of horseflesh charging at you is going to make your reptile-brain instincts scream “NOPE NOPE NOPE, WE GOTTA GO!!!”

That instinct is so strong that infantry ACTORS in movies–who know that this is not a real war, and the riders don’t actually want to kill them–still routinely break formation and run.

It was possible to stop cavalry with infantry and end up slaughtering them instead of getting routed–it was just extremely notable.

Also, unless you’re specifically going for blood: You don’t WANT to slaughter a whole formation of knights! That means you’ve just pissed away a WHOLE lot of money that the knights represent!

You killed the horses that you could have used for your own side, and possibly bred for more high-end horses! You ruined the armor that you could have used for your own side, or at least melted down for high-quality, already-mined metal! You killed the knights that you could have sweetened up and used for your own side–or more likely, told their families to pay you if they wanted them home intact.

Barely anyone remembers that knights were as good for HOSTAGES as they were for actually fighting. (Except for Game of Thrones, and it’s still only plot-relevant for Jaime Lannister and Theon Greyjoy, and they explicitly did NOT get the protection a noble hostage should have.) It’s noted that Agincourt was a GREAT ending for England because capturing all those French nobles earned them TWENTY YEARS’ WORTH of regular income in ransoms. If they hadn’t won and gotten all that sweet, sweet French money, they would have been bankrupted and depopulated instead.

—

Two more strikes I’d feel are appropriate for “not wanting draft-type horses in combat:”

-Logistics 1: Too much food, too much hassle. Horses are already notorious for eating a lot, and a DRAFT horse that’s 2000lbs instead of 1200lbs will eat twice as much. No army wants to use their fodder for only half the number of horses they’d expect.

-Logistics 2: Too much hair, too much hassle. Shires and other British horses often have feathering on their legs, and anyone with long hair knows that loose hair/fur is a fucking PAIN. You can braid a horse’s mane and tail, but if you’re one of the many average/poor knights who DON’T have servants to take care of your horse for you, do you want to spend extra time cleaning and combing out your horse’s LEGS instead of necessary things? Like feeding them, grooming them, and checking for wounds? Nope, you’ll probably shave the feathering off or just pick a horse that doesn’t have it.

-Extra note on Friesian horses, who are RIDICULOUSLY common in “medieval” movies: Friesian horses are technically baroque horses in body form (Strong-boned! Big necks and butts!), but they’re also over-used in general, so most horse folks are sick of seeing them in movies. And if you don’t have the right kind of MODERN Friesian, you’ll probably be a laughingstock in addition to an eye-roll.

Some strains of modern Friesians are from carriage-horse lines, often referred to as “big movers.” This means “fun to LOOK AT, but terrible to RIDE.” Because, you know, those strains of Friesians weren’t meant for riding, but for PULLING CARRIAGES. Their movements are big, dramatic, and flashy… and their trot is notorious for bouncing people out of the saddle with every step. Not something you want for a knight who fills his opponents with terror.

A good riding horse’s movements are usually smooth and low to the ground, often described as “floating” and “effortless.”

—

A horse-note that I can’t figure out where to put: Many Western cultures love the idea of fiery stallions (intact male horses) for their noble knights and kings to ride into battle on, but realistically, stallions are only half of a given horse population. Many Western stallions are also gelded if they’re not the cream of the crop (which is probably at least the bottom half of the male horse population). So mares can be used by at least half of a realistic formation who just wants a warhorse, and doesn’t care about aesthetics or masculinity.

Also, mares can be ruthless and stallions can be nervous wrecks! Horses are living creatures, with personalities and feelings!

Horses also aren’t very sexually dimorphic, so a 1200lb war mare is DEFINITELY a match for a 1300lb war stallion. And remember how Loras Tyrell used a mare in heat to distract The Mountain’s stallion? That happens with a lot of stallions… almost like they’re living creatures, with instincts that they can’t always control! So if you know when your girl is ready to go every month, you can play dirty in a joust, too!

Just remember that you’re taking an equal risk, since your mare will possibly try to let a stallion mount her instead of fighting. You will either need to bail when she starts making googly-eyes, or you need to know you have ABSOLUTE loyalty from her, and she will listen to YOU instead of “the hot dude I just met five minutes ago!” HORSES ARE LIVING CREATURES, WITH INSTINCTS THAT THEY CAN’T ALWAYS CONTROL.

Then geldings will be used by at least another quarter of “the knights who cannot afford a horse good enough to keep his testicles,” so that leaves “a quarter or less” of knights who can realistically be mounted on stallions.

WORSE NEWS: If you geld a stallion too late (usually once they’re MOSTLY physically mature at 4-5 years old), that risk may never go away–so you’ve got a gelding who’s not breeding quality, but he’s still chasing mares in heat and fighting other stallions in turf battles, without understanding that he can no longer make babies!

On the other hand, some cultures don’t geld stallions because they view it as unnecessary or outright unnatural… but they also don’t want half the horse population distracted by pretty mares, or fighting with other stallions who walk by the pasture, so those cultures breed them to be sweet and easily managed (outside of battle, at least).

In short: ALL HORSES HAVE POTENTIAL TO BE WARHORSES, WHETHER THEY HAVE BALLS OR NOT.

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Update, Feb 2 – Another day to expand on that “Different types of warhorses” mention!

Much like the common misconception of “all knights must be at least 6 feet tall and have 200 pounds of muscle” varied in real life due to genetics, cultural values, and logistics problems, the assumption that “all knights MUST have top-quality destriers that cost seven times the price of a normal horse” was not the case for the vast majority of “knights.”

Knights would have either “the best horse they could AFFORD” or “the best horse FOR THEIR SPECIALTY.”

A poor knight, or one of the early Middle Ages, would have “one horse that they’re with all the time;” that horse may not be pretty or come from fancy breeding lines, but they would get the job done and most definitely be taken care of. A wealthy knight of the later Middle Ages, when everything got more expensive and status more codified and finicky, would have two or three horses–one horse for warfare and one for regular riding, with the really wealthy knights having a third packhorse to carry all their stuff. (Moreover, they would have at least one servant to help take care of three horses.)

A muscled sprinter like a destrier is better in tight quarters and for short bursts of speed; to bring in the modern example of a classic/Foundation Quarter Horse, who are ideally “short-legged and low to the ground,” these dudes can literally hit the ground running and reach top speed in a few steps/seconds, so compare that to a sports-car going from zero to sixty miles. The tradeoffs?

1) You need to be able to hang the fuck on… and to avoid getting pitched into a wall/enemy WHEN THEY STOP.

2) That full-throttle gallop will really wear out your horse. A good commander will not bring out their heavy cavalry right away, because you also have to figure out how to get them back from the enemy’s side of the field.

In very simplistic terms, this is one of several problems that the battle of Agincourt had for the French; you had a bunch of hoity-toity noblemen with no proper battle experience who all wanted to do things their own way… and how do medieval noblemen usually want to fight a war? JUST FLOOR IT AND HIT THINGS AS HARD AS YOU CAN.

That went so badly that the recorded death-toll for the French side of Agincourt has been commented as “a roll call for French nobles.”

A destrier would not be suitable for a scout or light-cavalry; they’d need lighter and ground-covering horses to cover rough terrain, and to chase down the enemy for long stretches–akin to a modern-day Thoroughbred. For period pieces they might resemble an Akhal-Teke or “Turkmene” horse. A modern-day Thoroughbred horse can “only” reach forty miles per hour at a gallop, but they can keep that up for a whole mile or longer. So now your knight’s problem is “Hanging on for two or three whole minutes,” and anyone in performing or athletics will explain how long and agonizing a few minutes would feel on a rampaging horse. Have you seen how stacked a racing jockey is? The general consensus I’ve seen from equestrians is that barely anyone in any other horse-discipline is that built.

Meanwhile, an ideal light-cavalry horse would need longer legs for a ground-covering stride, and they may or may not be taller as well; as seen in the Akhal-Teke article, many endurance horses tend to show a lot more ribs and bones than other breeds, due to how lean they are. But think of them less as a dainty riding horse and more like a hunting greyhound/sighthound–all muscle, no fat!

The other type of light-cavalry horse would likely be a pony, used to going for miles on rough terrain, with little if any feed.

EDIT Feb 4, 2024: My post got cut off, so here's the rest of it!

The other type of light-cavalry horse would likely be a pony, used to going for miles on rough terrain, with little if any feed.

A period-accurate scout's horse was known as the Irish hobby, ridden by their eponymous hobelar troops. These little dudes were VERY little and about 12-14 hands high (48-54 inches, or 4 feet tall to bit under five feet tall). They were known to cover 60-70 miles a day in their raids, which my "preindustrial traveling" post notes is the EXTREME upper end of mounted distance travel. Their modern descendant is likely to be the Irish Connemara Pony.

Very wealthy and/or lucky European horsemen could probably manage to buy/steal an Arabian horse, as they remain exceptional endurance horses to this day. However, excessively cold/wet climates will need a lot of upkeep for a desert-bred horse to stay healthy.

While Arabians are known for their adorable "dished faces," this is not actually required! Many well-bred native lines have a regular face (ie, a "straight nose/profile") but they are from well-bred parents and have the capabilities of other Arabians. To the other extreme, you have some modern show/halter lines with REALLY exaggerated heads that hit a lot of people's "Uncanny valley" buttons, and they find it creepy/weird instead of refined. This kind of "seahorse face" would NOT be seen in a period piece.

Notice how the smaller a horse gets, the more ground it can cover? This is partly because size only matters TO AN EXTENT for "how long a horse goes," and partly because of physics! Less weight for a horse to drag around on its own body means more energy for putting miles behind them!

#reblog #writing research #writing reference

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