voices for muslim princesses?

[Han Summer]

beiss, mkrbu50, hogofwar, i don't know if anyone has brought this up, yet: i just noticed zeph's eastern princesses mod, which basically allows the muslim factions to have princesses. the people who have been using it have been assigning the eastern european voices to the princesses.

so i was wondering if you wanted to add princess voices/lines to the muslim msds? i know it adds to the mountain of work, but it sounds like something quite a few of the other popular mods are incorporating (like orientis' vnv's, and dearmad & pnumaster's bbb), as well as being perfect for what we are doing here.

[Beiss]

if having middle eastern princesses is historically correct, then we should add them, regardless of whether they are in the vanilla version of the game or not. I'd like to focus on vanilla compability right now though, but at some point, I'd be glad to add arabic and turkish speaking princesses as well. But you try hunting these forums for a medieval Arabic speaking girl with good recording equipment Once translation of Arabic is complete, I guess I could tell our translators to translate some speech for the princesses as well. That certainly won't take long, it's just a few lines and could probably be taken directly from the diplomat's lines anyway. Again, this isn't on top of my priority list (but Arabic is).

[Han Summer]

yes, i'm not too sure about the historical accuracy of the muslim factions having princesses running around as envoys. i rather doubt it, but i don't really know.

i do understand about finding good voice actors. you mean none of the arabic speakers already involved don't know any women with a good voice? i do have a handful of muslim friends, and i'll ask around.

(on an unrelated note, i'm working on the english camp_map. being CA's focused faction, almost every line is different from the east european one, so it's going to take a little more time. once that's done, the mongol one should be quick because they only has lines for the AI).

[Beiss]

As I've understood it, the Arabic speakers involved have crappy recording equipment / don't feel like voice acting. I'd wait with asking your friends for now, since we, if we do record voices for Arabic princesses, will do it a long time from now.

[Thanatos]

Considering the fact that the Muslims are the greatest male chauvanists in the entire world, especially back then, I find even the CONCEPT of having Arabic princesses negotiating laughable, let alone having voices or a mod made for them.

At least in the European nations, women were raised to have some artistic or academic skills. To the Muslims, women weren't allowed to get an education, hold property, or pretty much do anything at all. To them, women are good for making babies.

What Muslim would respect some woman trying to negotiate? Give me a break.

[Beiss]

I know this was the case in Afghanistan under the Talibans, and I've seen plenty of examples of muslim women being treated horribly (for example, being killed by their own brother for dating a non-muslim, with his parent's consent, and to save the family's reputation among their relatives in their home country (what do they care about family honor when they're a thousand miles away??)) even today, but I really can't speak for how things were back in the 11th century. Even though I have doubts that they would have trusted their women with handling the empire's affairs, as the princesses do in this game... it's interesting how sending a princess to a muslim faction to negotiate seems to work though. But as even CA suggested, princesses were sometimes little more than prostitues in service of their country... hehe.

[Thanatos]

The only reason the princesses in M2TW work with the Muslims is because CA didn't finishing the code. If M2TW truly reflected the culture and accuracy of the times, the princesses would have been murdered.

No Muslim would even THINK about a woman as being his equal, let alone taking charge on a negotiation deal.

[Halie Satanus]

There is a disclaimer in the back of the MTW2 booklet which states.

'We here at the creative assembly want to make it clear that we are aware that certain game elements and events within MTW2 may take liberties with how different religions are handled.......'

The rest you can read yourself it's on page 62 under the title 'A WORD OF RESPECT TO THE FAITHFUL'

i also point to the source of CA's Islamic information, who are listed on page 64 of the booklet.

Aksaa Ltd. So if you wish to take issue with the roles of Islamic women in medieval times i suggest you try those guys.

[Thanatos]

Ah, but is taking liberty with history what gamers playing a game ABOUT history really want?

In my opinion, the more accurate, the better.

[Beiss]

But... there aren't muslim princesses in vanilla M2TW. So I don't really see a problem there. If someone wants to mod the game to include muslim princesses, that's their problem, no one has to play that mod.

[Miraj]

No Muslim would even THINK about a woman as being his equal, let alone taking charge on a negotiation deal.

He can read our minds!

Quick Ahmed! Shred the plans! Burn the schematics! Our diabolical plot has been discovered!

[Beiss]

He can read our minds!

Quick Ahmed! Shred the plans! Burn the schematics! Our diabolical plot has been discovered!

Hahah... seriously, I'd rather not have this discussion here... sure there are probably lots of muslim men who treat their women worse than most people in "the west" would treat their dogs, but there are lots of men in the west that aren't much better, too. It just so happens that many countries where islam is the common religion are poor, or the distribution of wealth is very uneven - they are unequal socities sexually as well as economically. I have no understanding for the men who shoot the women who turn them down, or throw acid in their faces for being unfaithful, but let's not discuss these things in this forum. Xenophonia focuses on languages, and embraces all of them.

Whether what the Quran teaches about how to treat women differs significantly from what the Bible does, I'm not the one to say, but I seriously doubt the islamic "factions" represented in the game used female emissaries, and even less so the daughters of the king, even though they may well have been used to "buy" alliances and stuff.

Put simply, no more religion bashing in this thread, please. Also, Thanatos, you'd better watch what you're saying, or rather, how you're saying the things you say, because I've received moderator reports on your above posts, and I think you would do well to calm down a little, or you might get in trouble.

[Miraj]

Never intended a discussion or make historical claims. Just thought there was some pretty good comedic material being produced and I couldn't resist.

But if you guys ever manage to get together Persian/Arabic/Turkish voices for the armies and such I would really love to use it for the Broken Crescent mod.

Have you tried posting "ads" on ethnic forums? You know like Cafe Arabica ( http://cafearabica.com/nuke/ ) or other popular english turkish and iranian american sites?

[Beiss]

No, but if we're ever gonna get this done, we'll probably have to. I'll let the translators finish first.

Also, I've recently run into problems with this mod. It looks like we won't be able to give each faction its own "language", as I'd hoped, because of a hard-coded limit. We can have people yell things in battle, but I'm not so sure about the rest... we'll see how we can solve this - I'm still waiting for a reply from Caliban. Arabic should definitely be in though.

EDIT: Nevermind, there is no limit.

[mkrbu50]

I don't have concrete evidence that medieval Muslim princesses ran-around acting as emissaries. However, sultans did marry them out to establish alliances to Muslim factions. They married princesses out to non-Muslims on a condition that he would convert to Islam and serve the ruler as one of the Sultan's own family.

This was practiced in principalities and emirates but was not commonly practiced in the Caliph's state where matters were much confined to princesses. This was due to the fact that the Caliph not only had the position of a ruler/king but also represents a religious successor of the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) and thus, should be much more coherent in his actions and conducts in accordance to Islamic traditions, though it was not the case for most of the Caliphs.

The Turks started as a principality and then assumed a Caliphate governances. The Fatimids (Egyptians in Vanilla) had a principality. Fatimid traditions demonstrate a relative openness towards woman.

The name"Moors", is ambiguous to me. If the term refers to Almohads then those guys don't have active princesses because they have Pro-Taliban opinions.
If the term refers to Andalusian Umayyah (Amawi) then they have a high degree of openness towards women.

In general, I would imagine, If an affair of the Islamic State requires the services of a princess and the benefits out-weighs the "perceived" damages, than the ruling family is obliged to answer.

[Beiss]

So you're suggesting princesses for some but not all of the islamic factions? Sounds reasonable.

However, sultans did marry them out to establish alliances to Muslim factions.

Oh, I don't doubt that at all.

[mkrbu50]

It appears to me that only Egypt qualifies to have princesses. The time period of the game is the period when Almuravids (followed by Almohads) ruled Spain. These two groups are fundamentalists so I'd rule them out.

Perhaps hogofwar has more input on this!

[Beiss]

Ok. I don't really care what factions should use them and which shouldn't, but I'd like to know if any of them should.

Meanwhile - http://www.thehumorzone.co.uk/taliban_singles.htm

Haha. Talibans deserve to be made fun of. I recently found out that there was this fishing village of fundamentalist christians in southern Sweden (yes, one of the most equal countries in the world!), who until about 50 years ago had about the same views on women as the talibans do. They had to cover their faces when outside, weren't allowed to speak to unknown men etc. Crazy!

[Zephrelial]

Might I join the discussion if I may? The basic and the foremost reason I'm modding mtw2 and my basic aim is to enhance the game.
Basically looking for the answer of the question how the game could be improved?What could be added?
As we all know the vanilla has princesses only reserved for catholic factions.There are about correct me if I'm wrong there are 13 catholic factions including the Papal States and 2 orthodox factions,so a total of 15 christian factions have princesses.
And with it the option of seducing generals,and cementing alliances with other factions etc.
There are a total of 4 islamic factions including the Timurids.These factions don't have princesses.They can't have princess agents.So the people choose to play with them are missing this important princess feature of mtw2.
We can't deny that there is a certain flavour we enjoy by having a princess.When a little girl is born we can think that she is going to grow up to be a princess and be useful for us.
On the otherhand when we are playing with the Ehypt for instance,we glance at familytree and when a girl is born we just know that she will never become useful.
And as historical accuracy,the Islamic factions indded had princesses and they were married too.I hope I could eloborate about my motives of this mod.And I'm a little bit offended,Beiss because of what you said "Noone has to play that mod."

[mkrbu50]

Ok. I don't really care what factions should use them and which shouldn't, but I'd like to know if any of them should.

I guess your right, the task it to translate not to mod!