Castle or Not?

[Haltherrion]

To me, a castle is a fortified structure a local warlord or feudal lord uses as his base of power, or as a means of projecting his power over an area. As such it relies on two elements: it must be a military fortress, and it must be focal point for government power. I don't think its status as a residence is even as important as the fact that it is a seat of government of some sort. Generally speaking, fortresses stop being castles when the seats of government are moved to fancy unfortified buildings in urban centers.

In short a castle is a fortress where authority resides, particularly authority primarily borne from the military power embodied by the castle itself.

Would this include something like the Khe Sanh fortifications with various command posts including the battalion commander's CP? Or WWI Verdun if the fort contained a commander controlling the fortification forces? The forces in the region beyond the fort?

 

[SKyOdin]

Would this include something like the Khe Sanh fortifications with various command posts including the battalion commander's CP? Or WWI Verdun if the fort contained a commander controlling the fortification forces? The forces in the region beyond the fort?

Probably not. I should have been a bit more clear that I was referring to normal governmental authority over the populace. Every fortress has a military commander in charge of its garrison. Not every fortress is the seat of a lord where he makes decisions on what this years taxes are going to be.

Probably the biggest thing separating medieval castles from modern command bunkers is their symbolic value. A castle symbolizes the power, authority, and prestige of the lord who dwells in it. That is one of the reasons people put so much time and money into making them visually impressive, beyond their practical defensive value.

 

[Haltherrion]

Probably the biggest thing separating medieval castles from modern command bunkers is their symbolic value. A castle symbolizes the power, authority, and prestige of the lord who dwells in it. That is one of the reasons people put so much time and money into making them visually impressive, beyond their practical defensive value.

I think you are on to something here. I could go for a definition of castle that includes a prestige element. I think in Earth history, when fortifications had to get squat, they lost any prestige element for authority figures and that's when you see castles (which combined both) split into military fortifications and palaces.

Including the prestige elements allows the Edwardian forts in walls to be included as a castle even some at least (I think?) were never design as a local governmental locus.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

In most of my RPG campaigns the castles or fortifications are semi-appropriate to the background - e.g. medieval european style in D&D games despite them not really being designed to cope with flying attackers or magic.

Yeah, but it depends on how prevalent such magic and flying things (like dragons are).

And for that matter, what would you do differently to cope with such things anyway?

Also-on a side note, how do things like Minas Tirith and Isengard compare with real life fortifications?
http://jchan.clubsnap.org/test/20061006/LOTR_MinasTirith.jpg
http://www.tolkienforums.com/Minas_Tirith_RotK.jpg

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think you are on to something here. I could go for a definition of castle that includes a prestige element. I think in Earth history, when fortifications had to get squat, they lost any prestige element for authority figures and that's when you see castles (which combined both) split into military fortifications and palaces.

Including the prestige elements allows the Edwardian forts in walls to be included as a castle even some at least (I think?) were never design as a local governmental locus.

I think you are getting things a bit backwards here.

I don't think, at any point, the design of fortifications led to any change in their status as castles or not. The change in the physical design certainly did not directly cause the transition from the castle system to a capitol/fort system. A loss in the prestige of regional defensive fortification is caused by their transition from castles to forts, not the other way around.

Think about things this way... Castles are prestigious because they are occupied by powerful regional lords and officials. The centralization of power by larger governments weakens that regional power, reducing their prestige. The end result of the centralization of power is the creation of a strict divide between military forces and civilian government, where regional defense is controlled by military forces loyal to the capital (who live in forts) rather than autonomous regional lords and governors (who live in castles). There is no direct correlation between functional changes to castle design (like you see with the transition to star-shaped forts in Europe) and any level of prestige in the fort.

To make a few examples of this... Most major Japanese castles were built for the exact same type of warfare as European star forts. This is certainly true for the famous Osaka and Himeji castles, which were built a century later than the earliest of the European star forts, and used a lot of the same defensive technology. They looked very different, but that is mostly the differences of Japanese architecture and the functional different needs of castles and forts. Himeji and Osaka castles had prestige because they were the homes of powerful rulers, and this had nothing to do with the necessities of their defensive technology.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Also-on a side note, how do things like Minas Tirith and Isengard compare with real life fortifications?
http://jchan.clubsnap.org/test/20061006/LOTR_MinasTirith.jpg
http://www.tolkienforums.com/Minas_Tirith_RotK.jpg

Unlike Minas Tirith, real life fortifications actually make sense. There is so much wrong with the basic design and placement of Minas Tirith in the movies that it makes my head spin... It is hardly defensible, it is oddly removed from the nearest source of water, it must have been horridly and unnecessarily expensive to build, it must be a pain to walk through every day (it makes San Francisco look flat), and it lacks even basic roads to connect it to its surrounding kingdom (if it even has a surrounding kingdom, since it doesn't even have farms in its immediate surroundings). It looks pretty from a distance, but that is about all it has going for it.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

Unlike Minas Tirith, real life fortifications actually make sense. There is so much wrong with the basic design and placement of Minas Tirith in the movies that it makes my head spin... It is hardly defensible, it is oddly removed from the nearest source of water, it must have been horridly and unnecessarily expensive to build, it must be a pain to walk through every day (it makes San Francisco look flat), and it lacks even basic roads to connect it to its surrounding kingdom (if it even has a surrounding kingdom, since it doesn't even have farms in its immediate surroundings). It looks pretty from a distance, but that is about all it has going for it.

I thought Mina Tirith was on a river delta, wasnt it?

 

[jonesy]

Unlike Minas Tirith, real life fortifications actually make sense. There is so much wrong with the basic design and placement of Minas Tirith in the movies that it makes my head spin... It is hardly defensible, it is oddly removed from the nearest source of water, it must have been horridly and unnecessarily expensive to build, it must be a pain to walk through every day (it makes San Francisco look flat), and it lacks even basic roads to connect it to its surrounding kingdom (if it even has a surrounding kingdom, since it doesn't even have farms in its immediate surroundings). It looks pretty from a distance, but that is about all it has going for it.

The design of Minas Tirith (in the movie) was based on Mont Saint-Michel. The problem with that is that Mont Saint-Michel is an island. Minas Tirith could have underground passages to the river, but that idea has problems of its own. The Pelennor fields were used for farmland and might have been irrigated, but the movie didn't really make any mention of the fields, which looked barren. The whole area around it looked oddly empty in the movie.

In the book the walls of Minas Tirith were made of a material similar in strength to Sarumans tower. That's why the land armies had to break through the gates, and not the walls.