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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SavageCole" data-source="post: 6338440" data-attributes="member: 6750284">Your guess is wrong.   Had the subject been in hulking/oversized plate, with her hair coiffed so beautifully, and her facial expression so soulful, I would have likewise thought about the duality of a soft feminine figure adorned in war-like trappings.  My including Asian before courtly ideals was simply that she was well ... Asian.  By no means was I trying to imply that if she had been European it would have been perfectly normal for her to be in armor. So, I'm not quite sure where you're headed here. We both seem to agree on the point that this Asian-inspired courtly woman is rare and interesting when depicted in armor and a sword and culturally it suggests a conflict between traditional female role and the martial trappings.   As for the photos depicting women in armor, these are 19th-20th century photos and again extremely rare .... not the norm. They are gorgeous though.   With that said, they are posed and ceremonial (much the way I saw the d&d artwork).   To draw a conclusion, however,  that female Asian nobles were significantly more martial than European noble women would be a mistake.  You can find many paintings of European ladies similarly practicing archery ... and few would mistake this as an indication of war-like prowess.In any case, we are talking about a game of make-believe here, right?  In the world where this game is set, any of us can imagine the culture we like.  In this world, maybe female samurai are the ho-hum norm.  All I can say was my personal reaction to the art was positive, because I felt the artist showed duality between traditional soft, feminine imagery and predominantly male armor/sword props.  It made me question and want to know more about her .... and she's just a bloody cartoon.  Good stuff all round.  I'm going to move on from this hair-splitting discussion now before my brain hurts.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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