Why is late middle ages technology the most popular for fantasy settings? Why don't we see more early middle ages...

They're mostly later inventions based very, very vaguely from actual historical persons.

Charlemagne was real but I'm pretty sure that for Roland and Turpin and their buds the song writers just built fresh characters out of names that were vaguely known to have been associated with that king.

To be fair dendra panoply is probably a far cry away from elegant late medieval plate. I'm not an expert on it or anything but I imagine it would be shit to try in move in.

Fantasy realms tend to be pretty vague though. Military technology in them tends to span 1000-1500 mixed lazily together. Probably so they can have more armour and weapon types.

I feel like it's undergoing constant creep as well. Your average game of Pathfinder or whatever is going to have early modern tech and cultural baggage as a given.

Maybe there's just a natural threshold where all humans think "this is far enough in the past that we can make up whatever"

I recall some re-enactor saying it's comfortable

Lot more options.
Chain mail was more common. you cant infer that in 750AD everyone and their brother had chain mail.
That being said. Late antiquity you could have everyone and their brother because the Romans still had their armor production going and it was before it all got destroyed or lost.
Also with so much having been romanticized with jousting and knights, the audience is more familiar with that sort of stuff.
Now I'm going to use the movie Gladiator as an example. At first they set out to make it historically accurate but they fucked up in many ways, one was the armbands they were wearing. They weren't popular at all at that time. But thanks to holly wood you can't think of antiquity and not think "those guys should have armbands"
It's like that.

The fantasy default setting is 14th century europe, the era of Grimms fairytales

I wish you had used everyone and their brother in every single sentence.
>Also with so much having been romanticized with jousting and knights, everyone and their brother is more familiar with that sort of stuff.
>Now I'm going to use the movie Gladiator as an example. At first they set out to make it historically accurate but everyone and their brother fucked up in many ways, one was the armbands they were wearing. They weren't popular at all at that time. But thanks to holly wood you can't think of antiquity and not think "everyone and their brother should have armbands"

Probably because that's the most familiar setting people are familiar with. But to be fair the middle ages is pretty big timeframe. A Norman knight in 1066 is more distant to the Knight wearing Gothic armor in 15th century than a Napoleonic soldier is to a modern infrantryman. We think to think of the first two examples as being part of the same era.

I think because "medieval" is one time period to most people. After "Roman" and before "Guns."

Reality check, plate armour has been with us since bronze age.

Because most people ar eplebs who don't know the difference. I.e. the type of people who think Knight refers to a type of soldier.

My melanin blessed brother.

Thats a huge fucking time period user.

because it's the most interesting level of technology you can achieve without it feeling modern.

segmentata is not the same as the articulated, riveted plate armor of the late middle ages.

>Why don't we see more early middle ages, like when Charlemagne ruled?

You do, but the cover art turns people off.

Go too far beyond that though and you have to start slow loading, powerful guns and nobody likes that.

Alexander wore linothorax. Lorica segmentata was Roman.

>Why is late middle ages technology the most popular for fantasy settings?
Probably because it gives you the most options while still maintaining the medieval feel.

Facts were very flexible in those times dude, plus people loved to compile hearsay and legends as historical truths. Like El Cantar del Mio Cid, it has truths, legends and inconsistencies everywhere.

>Now I'm going to use the movie Gladiator as an example. At first they set out to make it historically accurate but they fucked up in many ways, one was the armbands they were wearing. They weren't popular at all at that time. But thanks to holly wood you can't think of antiquity and not think "those guys should have armbands"
They also talk about "firing" bows instead of "loosing" them:
youtube.com/watch?v=T_6oSjrpxBM

Yeah, I know, deleted scene, but it should have been in the movie. It's only about three minutes long and actually addresses a significant plot hole. I highly doubt they cut it because they didn't use the right word, because that would have been easy to fix in post-production.

Most real gladiator fights weren't to the death, either, but there wouldn't be much of a movie if they didn't ignore that.

I have to admit, though, that I don't really remember any armbands. Do you have a pic that shows an example?

this

and that is still nothing like actual plate armour of the medieval era

The only historical record we have of Roland is that he was a noble somehow associated with Britanny (Lord of the Breton marshes I think?) and died at Roncevalles fighting the Catalans. SOMEHOW this got turned into him dying while fighting the Muslims, which SOMEHOW got turned into him being the nephew of Charlemagne and the greatest knight in Christendom. Then the French decided that Arthur is the bees knees and forgot about Carolingian epics, which then moved to Italy and suddenly Roland had a whimsical childhood where he met fairies and shit.

Strange how "Oh yeah, this guy died" can become one of the greatest European epics.

That is not a Segmentatat in that image, it's a solid cuirass.

blame the italians. boiardo, ariosto, pulci, and tasso

sadly, yes

>the type of people who think Knight refers to a type of soldier
well it kinda did. a mounted soldier.

One name: Tolkien.

>Go too far beyond that though and you have to start slow loading, powerful guns and nobody likes that.
>nobody likes that.

That sure is a wide brush you're using, furfag.

Excepts it didn't. Knight is a social class that typically, but not always, men-of-arms.

More over, a great many knights and upperclass men-of-arms would dismount before battle. For every mounted combatant, you can estimate at least two or three others dismounted upon arrival. A horse will easily cost as much or more than a man's harness.

>Armor is nothing but chainmail.

Contrary to what games would have you believe, chainmail is actually very effective, just as effective as the segmented armor of the romans at least, and with far more coverage and mobility to boot. It wouldn't be until far later that the knowledge and technology to create plate armor would come, and even then, plate armor was used as additional protection to the mail armor, not as a replacement.

Have you actually read LOTR? It's pretty heavily based on Early Medieval history and mythology such as Beowulf. Mail is the main armor and Rohan are Anglo-Saxon's as a cavalry people. Charlemagne is a pretty good fit for the era LOTR evokes.

The movies are of course standard pseudo-medieval costume with plate everywhere. However since FotR came out in 2001 I'm pretty sure it's a symptom of the focus on a garbled version of the Late Medieval period rather than the root cause.

So how exactly is it Tolkien's fault?

Roland did not die fighting the Catalans, but the Vascones (ancestors of Basques and Gascons).
The Catalans live on the eastern part of the Pyrenees mountains (the side that borders the Mediteranean Sea), while the Vascons (and now the Basques and Gascons) lived in the western part of these mountains, which borders the Atlantic Ocean.

>More over, a great many knights and upperclass men-of-arms would dismount before battle. For every mounted combatant, you can estimate at least two or three others dismounted upon arrival. A horse will easily cost as much or more than a man's harness.

Citation needed.

Why spend a lot of money on a horse that keeps you mobile and maybe saves you from harm if you won't use it.

I have a pricelist in a book here that states the total armour of a knight at about 17 pounds, his horses (probably 3-4 horses including his war-horse) are valued at 10 pounds.

From 1374 by the way.

The Rohirrim, barring the leaders such as King Theoden and Eomer, are mostly armed with either scale or mail armor in the movies.

My setting has the locals as iron age and the invaders are renaissance level with firearms.

Yeah, you're right, my bad.

Valid points, but as said, its about what 'most people' know. And many more people are familiar with the LOTR movies than are willing to read the book.

That is true, but Gondor is plate central, the High Elves are in some shiny golden banded thing, the Nazgul have articulated gauntlets and sabatons under those robes, Rohan's finest have breastplates as you say, Uruk Hai are all in munitions plate except for the naked beserkers and the Orcs wear anything and everything. Not to mention Sauron himself.

I'm sure I've forgotten other examples but the point was not that the movies featured no mail, but that mail is the exception rather than the almost universal armor used in the books. It also makes sense for Rohan to be the ones wearing the most mail since they are meant to be archaic in comparison to Gondor, and the costume contributes to that feel.

While I have several typos from being too early in the morning to be up, I am saying Tolkien is the reason its all early middle ages because that was his own area of interest historically and professionally. Its his fault that the majority of the genre is fixated on it, as he set the archtype.

>Citation needed.
You're joking right? Go ahead and read any call of arms from between 1200-1500.

The English were especially famous for it, especially at Crecy and Agincourt.

*A Knight and His Horse, Ewart Oakshot

*The Reign of Chivalry, Richard Barber

*Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1453. Desmond Seward

*The Medieval Horse and its Equipment, John Clark

*The Warhorse 1250-1600, Ann Hyland

>I have a pricelist in a book here that states the total armour of a knight at about 17 pounds, his horses (probably 3-4 horses including his war-horse) are valued at 10 pounds.

You're only taking the purchase prices into account. Stabling, feeding, upkeep, training, tacking.... A harness is a purchase. A horse is an investment.

It should also be mentioned that its been long accepted in official art, as OK'd by Tolkien, that the orcs do wear armour of higher technology than man. Part of their whole "industrial evil" schtick.

>English sources, English sources, English sources

Source bias might be an issue, what with the English being specifically renowed for fighting on foot and all...

Yes, they are in English, because this is an English speaking board primarily.

Go read them, and it will go into great detail of the German and Italian tradition of mounted heavy infantry.

A trained warhorse is vastly more expensive than a riding or draft animal, and will still quickly mobilize an armoured man to where he needs to be.

Clownfag is right though. Franks, Burgundians, Swiss, Germans, Italians all did it. Read a book nigga.

Hate to admit it, but Gropey is right.

we dont?
i see it mostly as a mismash between early and high medieval with some renaissance thrown in.

LOTR is in many ways early medieval depending on the culture, with some cultures beeing high which is kind of responsible for fantasy beeing a kitchen sink of all time periods that involved swords.

>Tolkien is the reason its all early middle ages

But it's not. The thread is specifically about the fact that the majority of so-called medieval fantasy is based (however loosely) on the late middle ages, and how refreshing it would be to take, say, the time of Charlemange as the inspiration.

Tolkien may be the big name of the fantasy genre but a vast swathe of the trappings we associate with medieval fantasy simply are not found in his work (even the movies of his own books are guilty of this as mentioned).

If you know of lots of good early-medieval inspired fiction then we'd love to hear, but I'd be staggered to learn that it made up more than a tiny fraction of the genre.

Your argument is good, but you're also satan.

Im conflicted.

Modern fantasy has slipped further down the timeline, but pretty much all early stuff is chainmail and broad swords.

>You're joking right? Go ahead and read any call of arms from between 1200-1500.
Since when do the Call of Arms lists list the to-follow instructions when in the field?
>The English were especially famous for it, especially at Crecy and Agincourt.
Yes, two famously defensive battles for the English. Both were deploying cavalry would have been detrimental to the plan of the commander.
>You're only taking the purchase prices into account. Stabling, feeding, upkeep, training, tacking.... A harness is a purchase. A horse is an investment.
A harness is an investment in ones life, so that's maybe a lot more important then the horse. They are like horses, not immune to wear and tear and also need looking after (not as much as a horse though)

I do not dispute that yes heavily armoured soldiers dismounted on the regular to fight on foot but I don't think it was general practice to do it on the regular with more then half of your heavy cavalry force. Especially not in Burgundy and France as tries to assert

Mail gets boring real fast

I like you. Personally, I prefer the range of bronze age to the migration period.I would love to play a copper/neolithic age game, but sadly the few I've played have not been that good.

>Go too far beyond that though and you have to start slow loading, powerful guns and nobody likes that.
Up yours

I think his insinuation is that a field of guys wearing head to toe chainmail is boring.