Tratyn Runewind
First Post
Hello!
To me, the Knights of the Round Table are the archetype of the "knight in shining armor", especially Galahad, Lancelot, and Percival.
The original Paladins were the Knights of the Palace, or Knights Paladin for short, the twelve Peers of Charlemagne. Roland and Ogier the Dane are the only two I can remember off the top of my head. If I remember correctly, the D&D Paladin class was inspired a great deal by the character Holger Carlsen in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. I'll also note here, as I think I did in the previously-menitoned thread on Dirty Harry, that the D&D paladin class involves an explicitly religious component. They are holy warriors, and non-holy warriors like Dirty Harry or Batman don't fit the mold for me, no matter how Lawful Good they might be. Even among the Arthurian knights, only Galahad and maybe Lancelot are potential paladins to me. And Lancelot falls before the story ends.
One medieval writer compiled a popular list of the "Nine Worthies of the World", who were held up as examples of what a noble warrior might aspire to. The list included three pagans (Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus), and three Christians (Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey de Bouillon).
Don Quixote does indeed seem to have the ideals down pat; he may not be perceiving the real world, but he applies the ideals as a knight would in the world he is experiencing. The differences between the world he perceives and the real world are the source of the tragedy and the comedy in the stories of Quixote.
The inclusion of Wheel of Time characters does bug me a bit, fan though I am of the series. They are, after all, broad adaptations of mythic figures that others have mentioned, and Gawyn and Galad are particularly blatant Arthurian borrowings.
True enough. He treated captured Christian leaders fairly well after the battle at Hattin, though this was typical with high nobles who were expected to be used in prisoner exchanges. Still, no one is denying that he would have crushed the Crusader states if he could have, deals or no deals. Indeed, he launched a campaign with this goal soon after that, and was stopped mainly by the efforts of Conrad of Montferrat, the timely arrival of the Crusade led by Richard of England and Phillip of France, and his own declining health.
Actually, as I understand it, Saladin is viewed with suspicion in many radical quarters of the Arab world as too accomodating. The real hero of the radicals is most often the Mamluk Baybars al-Bunduqdari, whose brutality in the sack of Christian Antioch is viewed with great approval. After pillaging the city, rounding up all the salable slave material, and killing everyone else, he wrote a taunting letter to the city's absent ruler Bohemond, gloating over his victory. Here are some excerpts, as quoted by author John J. Robinson:
"Hadst thou but seen thy knights trodden under the hoofs of our horses! Thy palaces raided by plunderers and ransacked for booty! Thy treasures weighed out by the hundredweight! Thy ladies bought and sold with thine own treasure, at four for a single dinar! Hadst thou but seen thy churches demolished, thy crosses sawn in sunder, thy garbled gospels hawked about, the tombs of thy nobles cast to the ground, the monk and the priest and the deacon slaughtered on the altar, the rich abased to misery, princes of the royal blood reduced to slavery! Couldst thou but have seen the flames devouring the halls...the Churches of Paul and Cosmas rocking and going down -- then thou wouldst have said, 'Would God that I were dust!'
This letter holds happy tidings for thee. It tells thee that God watches over thee to prolong thy days, inasmuch as thou wert not in Antioch. Hadst thou been there, now wouldst thou be slain or a prisoner, wounded or disabled. A live man rejoiceth in his safety when he looketh on a field of the slain...As not a man hath escaped to tell the tale, we tell it to thee. As no soul got away to apprise thee that thou art safe, while all the rest have perished, we so apprise thee."
Baybars was also the first Muslim leader to score significant victories against the Mongols, who had mercilessly crushed the sect of Assassins and broken the power of the Caliph at Baghdad, pillaging and ruining that city utterly in 1258.
The Orthodox Christians, who had previously demonstrated their willingness to live under Islamic domination, were indeed spared. For their willingness to cooperate, they were returned Christian holy places which had been taken over by Latin Christians under the Crusader regime. Latin Christians had to pay ransoms to escape, and most of those who failed to pony up were sold into slavery. This highly profitable "sparing" hardly consitutes evidence of great magnanimity to me. Rather reminds me of a mugger who might leave his victims enough for bus fare home...
Actually, Raymond of Toulouse did gain some respect from the Muslims for chivalrous behavior in the aftermath of the conquest of Jerusalem. It is said that when the towns of Ascalon and Arsuf came to negotiate surrender after the Crusaders had established themselves in Jerusalem, they had as a non-negotiable condition that such surrender was to be made only to Raymond of Toulouse, whose fair reputation had begun to spread. This supposedly infuriated Godfrey de Bouillon, the leader of the Crusaders, and the negotiations failed, leaving those towns in Muslim hands for years to come.
Of course, the standards of chivalry to which Raymond was being compared were not stellar. As one report on the conquest of Jerusalem read: "If you would hear how we treated our enemies at Jerusalem, know that in the portico of Solomon and in the Temple our men rode through the unclean blood of the Saracens, which came up to the knees of their horses."
You mean heroes whose lives we know about tend to be actual human beings, and not perfect icons? Even a cursory reading of the biographies of many Christian Saints makes this abundantly clear. No mere mortal I have ever heard of has overcome every moral challenge they ever faced, yet many can still be recognized as living with great virtue.
Too funny. I could just see him in medieval times, trying to build up a "charitable" empire by harassing dealers of horses that he labels "unsafe at any speed", and then trying to parlay that into a noble or royal title. I'd certainly pay to see the lawsuits of his pressure groups settled by putting him in a trial by combat. Celebrity Deathmatch with him and Lee Iacocca!
Anyway, hope this helps!
To me, the Knights of the Round Table are the archetype of the "knight in shining armor", especially Galahad, Lancelot, and Percival.
The original Paladins were the Knights of the Palace, or Knights Paladin for short, the twelve Peers of Charlemagne. Roland and Ogier the Dane are the only two I can remember off the top of my head. If I remember correctly, the D&D Paladin class was inspired a great deal by the character Holger Carlsen in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. I'll also note here, as I think I did in the previously-menitoned thread on Dirty Harry, that the D&D paladin class involves an explicitly religious component. They are holy warriors, and non-holy warriors like Dirty Harry or Batman don't fit the mold for me, no matter how Lawful Good they might be. Even among the Arthurian knights, only Galahad and maybe Lancelot are potential paladins to me. And Lancelot falls before the story ends.
One medieval writer compiled a popular list of the "Nine Worthies of the World", who were held up as examples of what a noble warrior might aspire to. The list included three pagans (Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar), three Jews (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus), and three Christians (Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey de Bouillon).
Don Quixote does indeed seem to have the ideals down pat; he may not be perceiving the real world, but he applies the ideals as a knight would in the world he is experiencing. The differences between the world he perceives and the real world are the source of the tragedy and the comedy in the stories of Quixote.
The inclusion of Wheel of Time characters does bug me a bit, fan though I am of the series. They are, after all, broad adaptations of mythic figures that others have mentioned, and Gawyn and Galad are particularly blatant Arthurian borrowings.
True enough. He treated captured Christian leaders fairly well after the battle at Hattin, though this was typical with high nobles who were expected to be used in prisoner exchanges. Still, no one is denying that he would have crushed the Crusader states if he could have, deals or no deals. Indeed, he launched a campaign with this goal soon after that, and was stopped mainly by the efforts of Conrad of Montferrat, the timely arrival of the Crusade led by Richard of England and Phillip of France, and his own declining health.
Actually, as I understand it, Saladin is viewed with suspicion in many radical quarters of the Arab world as too accomodating. The real hero of the radicals is most often the Mamluk Baybars al-Bunduqdari, whose brutality in the sack of Christian Antioch is viewed with great approval. After pillaging the city, rounding up all the salable slave material, and killing everyone else, he wrote a taunting letter to the city's absent ruler Bohemond, gloating over his victory. Here are some excerpts, as quoted by author John J. Robinson:
"Hadst thou but seen thy knights trodden under the hoofs of our horses! Thy palaces raided by plunderers and ransacked for booty! Thy treasures weighed out by the hundredweight! Thy ladies bought and sold with thine own treasure, at four for a single dinar! Hadst thou but seen thy churches demolished, thy crosses sawn in sunder, thy garbled gospels hawked about, the tombs of thy nobles cast to the ground, the monk and the priest and the deacon slaughtered on the altar, the rich abased to misery, princes of the royal blood reduced to slavery! Couldst thou but have seen the flames devouring the halls...the Churches of Paul and Cosmas rocking and going down -- then thou wouldst have said, 'Would God that I were dust!'
This letter holds happy tidings for thee. It tells thee that God watches over thee to prolong thy days, inasmuch as thou wert not in Antioch. Hadst thou been there, now wouldst thou be slain or a prisoner, wounded or disabled. A live man rejoiceth in his safety when he looketh on a field of the slain...As not a man hath escaped to tell the tale, we tell it to thee. As no soul got away to apprise thee that thou art safe, while all the rest have perished, we so apprise thee."
Baybars was also the first Muslim leader to score significant victories against the Mongols, who had mercilessly crushed the sect of Assassins and broken the power of the Caliph at Baghdad, pillaging and ruining that city utterly in 1258.
The Orthodox Christians, who had previously demonstrated their willingness to live under Islamic domination, were indeed spared. For their willingness to cooperate, they were returned Christian holy places which had been taken over by Latin Christians under the Crusader regime. Latin Christians had to pay ransoms to escape, and most of those who failed to pony up were sold into slavery. This highly profitable "sparing" hardly consitutes evidence of great magnanimity to me. Rather reminds me of a mugger who might leave his victims enough for bus fare home...
Actually, Raymond of Toulouse did gain some respect from the Muslims for chivalrous behavior in the aftermath of the conquest of Jerusalem. It is said that when the towns of Ascalon and Arsuf came to negotiate surrender after the Crusaders had established themselves in Jerusalem, they had as a non-negotiable condition that such surrender was to be made only to Raymond of Toulouse, whose fair reputation had begun to spread. This supposedly infuriated Godfrey de Bouillon, the leader of the Crusaders, and the negotiations failed, leaving those towns in Muslim hands for years to come.
Of course, the standards of chivalry to which Raymond was being compared were not stellar. As one report on the conquest of Jerusalem read: "If you would hear how we treated our enemies at Jerusalem, know that in the portico of Solomon and in the Temple our men rode through the unclean blood of the Saracens, which came up to the knees of their horses."
You mean heroes whose lives we know about tend to be actual human beings, and not perfect icons? Even a cursory reading of the biographies of many Christian Saints makes this abundantly clear. No mere mortal I have ever heard of has overcome every moral challenge they ever faced, yet many can still be recognized as living with great virtue.
Posted by GrimJesta:
And if Ralph Nader could use a sword...
Too funny. I could just see him in medieval times, trying to build up a "charitable" empire by harassing dealers of horses that he labels "unsafe at any speed", and then trying to parlay that into a noble or royal title. I'd certainly pay to see the lawsuits of his pressure groups settled by putting him in a trial by combat. Celebrity Deathmatch with him and Lee Iacocca!
Anyway, hope this helps!
