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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grydan" data-source="post: 5828637" data-attributes="member: 79401">With all of the talk about what paladins are, or should be, or must be that's been bouncing around, I'd been curious as to the background of what paladins were meant to represent in the game.It is my understanding, and feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, that the primary inspiration for the paladin is one specific character. Just like how the ranger was inspired by Strider/Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, the paladin was inspired primarily by Holger Carlsen from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions.So I tracked down a copy and read it. It's quite fun, and for something written over a decade before D&D came into existence, it's very easy to see how it influenced the game.A conflict between Law and Chaos. A mighty warrior (referred to multiple times as a paladin, other times as a knight) drawn into the conflict. A loyal steed. A quite literally named "magic weapon", the Dagger of Burning. A named sword. Dragons, werewolves, dwarves, elves, faerie, witches, and so on and so forth. A tunic that allows someone to change shape. The troll in the story is very clearly the primary inspiration for D&D's trolls.What struck me, however, is how poorly Holger Carlsen would be modelled by most versions of the paladin, throughout the history of the game. Maybe even all of them. In fact, most of the descriptions offered in this thread about what a paladin is or should be would kick him to the curb.I don't particularly care what the paladin turns out to be, though I hope alignment remains strictly optional. It just amuses me that the character I had been lead to believe inspired the class apparently couldn't qualify by most people's standards.</blockquote>

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