[GENERAL DISCUSSION] Army's Heraldry and Uniforms

[ccllnply]

Since I've finished reading the books, I've become very interested in the heraldry, armor and uniforms of the soldiers in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. Mainly out of curiousity and for modding and such.

From reading the books, one of main memories is of the Red Wedding when Ayra sees the Frey Men-at-Arms and notes that they have the two blue towers crest on their chest, almost like a soccer team's jersey. Now this seems to be the impression I got through the books of the men-at-arms and other troops.

Apart from that I don't really think knights did the same but I'm not entirely sure. Also, I got the impression, in the opposite way to real life, that most lords didn't where their heraldry and instead wore heavy plate or mail armour.

I was also pretty interested in the uniforms and armour of troops during extraordinary situations. For instance, Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros with less than 1,600. Did his troops display the three-headed dragon on their armour? And what about the levies he raised from Rosby and Stokeworth, did they wear their the heraldry of their lords or did they adopt the sigil of the Targaryens on their armour? That leads on to a similar point. When the lord paramounts in Westeros called their banners, was it only their personal levies that wore the sigil of their lord paramount or did other troops wear it as well?

Any thoughts on this?

[toluas]

Judging from real world history, there certainly was no uniform per se. Levies - which make up the largest part of any army - were obliged to bring their own arms (and armor). Often they fought with pitchforks, clubs or knives - farming tools. So they surely had no money for fancy (aka uniform) clothing.
Some kind of unit coherency was accomplished by banners, be they the sigil of the general or or simple designs.

Now if we talk Westeros, the richer (richest) lords certainly had their troops outfitted with uniform armor - e.g. the Freys. The levies from Rosby and Stokeworth did - I'd say - display no uniform, just the "household" troops of those lords. On a similar note, I'd wager that just the personal troops of the Westerosi lords' banners wore the sigil of their lords. And Aegon did most probably land his troops under the Dragon banner, but most did not display it on their armor - just imagine the cost of 1600 three-headed dragon sigils to be woven - painting is impossible on metal armor and pretty difficult on leather.

[Lordinquisitor]

Toluas summed it up nicely, i think.

Levies, especially if recruited on the fly, wouldn`t brandish the sigil of their lord, since they would have to use the equipment they have lying at home themselves, or if they are lucky, would be given some spare armor.

Professional men-at-arms and levies, who were lucky enough to get some equipment from their lord, would usually display their lords coat of arms on their shields and on the left/right breast of their leather armor. But not all lords could afford even this, i think, and since Soldiers often replaced the gear their lords gave them with equipment looted from the death one could expect that not all soldiers levied by a house would display the coat of arms of their Lord.

But there were hardly any uniforms at all, even if a lord did equip his soldiers with armor. That just isn`t viable- Soldiers are given what their lord has in stock and have to loot missing parts from the battlefield.

An exception are the household guards of each house, who could be expected to have at least matching cloaks and roughly the same equipment. Those would also certainly display the sigil of their lord on their armor and shields.

Another exception are especially rich houses, like the Lannisters. Some of their common-men-at-arms even wore lion-crested helmets. The Freys also were able to equip a lot of their soldiers with matching equipment. (Steel Plate, Horses and Longaxes.)

Knights would display their own, knightly, coat of arms most of the time and not the one of their lord. (Except if they did serve in their Lords household guard or something.)

When marching to war the levies, if at all, would display the coat-of-arms of their lord and not of their overlord. So, Umber levies would display the roaring giant and not the direwolf. They would march under the direwolf banner, though.

[Archon Patriarch]

Yeah I agree with this but would like to add - tabards. Many of them are reported to wear tabards (The knights would wear them and many of the Lords) which would display their coat of arms as well as on their shields. Some also have special armor - Tywins, Robert Bara. and the Hound for example. The knights would have their own hearldry clearly shown to help let people see who they were and what deeds they commit.

Most levies would just have basic equipment but I think that's not entirely right. As we see from the books the Lords and knights just liked in the medieval system give not only their service but bring so many trained troops with them (The Karstarks not only have mounted troops but also a force of pikes - this requires some training to use effectively). They would wear armor and maybe have a logo on their chest but without a tabard a jersey style one is unlikely apart from knights.

[donions]

Cool topic.
You're far from alone in being interested in the "pageantry" of war. I think that's what Winston Churchill called it; he even describes in his early years how exhilarating it was to see all the banners and colors facing each other on opposite ends of a battlefield, he actually thought fondly of war at that time, obviously a couple world wars stifled that feeling. I think he was referring to this battle; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Omdurman

As for Westeros, I kinda consider it on steroids when it comes to the pageantry of war in Medieval times. Love the detailed descriptions GRRM gives. I say it's on steroids cause it seems like everyone has heraldry. For example, I'm just reading AFFC again, and in the 2nd Brienne chapter she's in Duskendale talking about the battle that happened there, describing all the stolen arms and armor being sold in town, and it seems all of them have a house sigil on a badge or pauldron's and helmets, and lots of painted shields. It also seems every time Tyrion's in a battle he's able to identify his opponent's heraldry pretty quick. Many examples like this through-out the series.

I suppose it just seems that way cause GRRM focuses so much on the lords and nobles and kinda ignores the small-folk in the storytelling. Obviously there's thousands of levies in the various armies, we just don't hear much about them. But the nobles and knights certainly don't cheap-out on heraldry in this series.
And like others said, rich houses can afford to armor their own household guards, and if you're gonna armor your own men you certainly wanna show everyone who's men they are.(Lannister's, Tyrell's, Manderly's, Freys, King's Landing, etc..)

ps. Damn I wish they had photography back then. I dont need to go back in time, I just want some HD footage of 20'000 uniformed Legionaries deployed in battle order. Or a shot of the crusaders marching east with the hundreds of different noble houses and thousands of minor houses with different sigils and banners.

[ButtSwag]

Would their have been a lot of friendly kills then? Bescause if the only thing that disitinguished one group of levies from the enemies was their banner, wouldn't they get mixed up in the heat of battle and end up killing each other?

[toluas]

That happened a lot. Exactly the reason why clever quartermasters developed the idea of uniforms to better distinguish between friend and foe. Banners and yelling the name of your general also helped not being killed by your own...

[Mikail Mengsk]

Bands of a distingushed colors and crude paintings on wooden shields would have helped too, and were probably used.

[Badger-dude]

We can all agree that what we see in W:TW, let alone the Game of Thrones TV adaption, is pretty much exactly the opposite of how things would have been in a 'realistic' Westeros or medieval setting.

However, this is a (very low) fantasy setting, and to be honest I quite like the 'striking' look we have with some of the factions. The Targaryen skins Prophet has made for Fire and Blood, for example, are VERY striking with the red-on-black. Red was historically quite an expensive dye until later in the 1500/1600s, but in this setting the legions of men carrying the Red dragon is pretty striking!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[jomas]

We can all agree that what we see in W:TW, let alone the Game of Thrones TV adaption, is pretty much exactly the opposite of how things would have been in a 'realistic' Westeros or medieval setting.

However, this is a (very low) fantasy setting, and to be honest I quite like the 'striking' look we have with some of the factions. The Targaryen skins Prophet has made for Fire and Blood, for example, are VERY striking with the red-on-black. Red was historically quite an expensive dye until later in the 1500/1600s, but in this setting the legions of men carrying the Red dragon is pretty striking!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For the second part you could say that the landscape is different from ours enough that dyes were far more easy to gain, although I remember that barefooted septon saying that most common folk had actually nothing other then kitchen knives and random items used as makeshift weapons, I suppose it's possible to assume they had stuff rubbed on them to mark which lord they followed, like a Bracken could just smear some red paint/mud on them to recognize them, they are peasants after all.
Or maybe they used flowers or something like Highlanders did? A simple thing like that wouldn't be so hard to find.

[Jake Clarke]

With more and more tournaments and the advancements in armour design and form the knight was soon able to protect his face with well armoured helmets and visors. This meant that his face was covered and so gave rise to the need for identifying symbols. This became part of the Heraldry system.
With knights encased in armour, it was clear that symbols on the armour would be both useful to their enemies and their allies. The armour and the need to identify the wearer were therefore directly involved with how heraldry evolved.

It is therefore important to see that heraldry was very much an individual identifier from it's early days but evolved to give that persons family symbolism and identity.