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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 5692822" data-attributes="member: 463">This is spot on, and I find that the social status of the Knight is a particular source of confusion & difficulty in the typical D&D multi-period mish-mash.The origin of the knight is as the armed retainer of the pre-feudal war chief; the warriors who slept and drank in the chief's hall.  Only perceived legitimacy distinguishes these 'knights' from the brigand or pirate!  'Knight' means 'retainer' BTW; in other languages words for 'Horseman' are used - Ritter, Chevalier.The Norman 'knight' who you might see getting bushwhacked by Robin Hood is   still close to this pre-feudal origin, but now he rides a horse, is reliably outfitted in mail armour, and has more the air of a professional soldier.  He might be a step above the shortbow archer, and a big step above peasant levies, but he's still essentially a common warrior.  A 'castle guard' is indistinguishable from a 'knight'.Then as the centuries passed the Lords began distributing their knights around their manors, in the high medieval the knight becomes the petty-lord of a small village.  Professional & semi-professional infantry re-emerge as eg Billmen, in this transitional period you start getting the professional soldier who is a man-at-arms but possibly not a knight; towards the end a 'castle guard' is a 'man at arms' who is not a knight, knights become too posh for that sort of thing.In the late period, knighthood with its duties becomes unpopular, in England knights are increasingly rare; yeomen now provide the core of the military caste.  Where they do appear they're an elite, heavily armoured minor nobility in field plate, riding a destrier.  In France with its greater population and greater wealth, knights remain the core of the battle-force for much longer.</blockquote>

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