Does Solitude from SKYRIM have realistic castle defences?

greetings I am shad and in this video I'll be taking a very close look at the city solitude from the elderscrolls v skyrim the way I go about in reviewing castles and fortifications from video games movies and TV series is to see if these structures would be realistic and/or effective if they actually existed and how much of their design conforms to accurate medieval fortifications the first thing that I have to mention is a very first thing that I had to mention in my review of Whiterun and that is the sides realistically according to its size solitude is absolutely not a city it's barely a small village if it existed in real life this would be a secured commune or just a flat-out castle it'd be a very large castle but it's actually a good representation of a large castle because a castle wasn't always a single structure now yes sometimes they were just a single building sometimes they were a building with a wall around it and the building I'm referring to is the main livable portion which is called the keep but often times there would be many other buildings in it as well they will have a chapel they would have a blacksmith they would have stables they would have buildings for storage sometimes they would even have kind of fence topped areas to keep animals they would have vegetable gardens and just nice pretty Gardens there could be a large variety of different buildings within castle walls and I've actually no Rimet whatever the people who lived in the castle wanted to have and there was room for they would put it in a good example of this is ville Jandy castle and i know i butchered the pronunciation all right you don't need to tell me or in german ordens burg ville Jandy this is a castle that belonged to the livonian brothers of the sword which was like a crusader order of night here is a model recreation of the castle and just take a look at how many buildings are actually part of the overall structure there was a chapel and administration building a separate residence for the commander that later became a storeroom a granary a living quarters for the clergyman a stable for the clergyman a separate building for the dining room storeroom stables and additional servants quarters you see so castles could actually have a lot of buildings inside them therefore his solitude was just considered a very large castle well it would be a castle that would have it and in a couple of shops a dedicated blacksmith a full-on big barracks a cathedral a palace but that is actually all very feasible and so I actually consider the whole of solar to you a fairly good representation of a very big castle but not a city nowhere near the size of a city now size out of the way we need to address the elephant in the room and that is lifting the stone bridge in which about a third of the castle I'm just going to refer to a castle because not realistically that's what it is more like in a city but a third of the castle is sitting on this stone bridge and the palace is on the other end of it okay this thing is flat-out defying the laws of physics now some of you might be disagreeing with me because you've seen other stone like formations well I'm not saying that stone formations like this can't exist but when they do it is because they actually conforming to an archway but what we're looking at here isn't an archway it could have been it almost is but it isn't you see the compressive strength of stone is phenomenal think of all the large mountains in the world and what they're resting on it's stone and the weight that you're talking about when you look at these mountains and mind-boggling the quality in which stone really falls behind is tensile strengths so compressive strength is things being pushed together and tensile strength are things being pulled apart if you can engineer any structure that is made out of stone to rely on compressive strengths it will be very reliable but if you engineer a structure that build out of stone that relies on tensile strength you're in for a disaster and looking at this stone bridge there are so many areas in which the weight of it is not pressing down on other stone and if there is no support for that stone to rest upon well it's going to be pulling down on the stone next to it which means the stone bridge will come under tension and not compression and the people living on this thing I'm not going to be very happy but in reality it just never would have been formed for people to build things on preface this bridge would need to have this type of shape which puts all the sides and everything under compressive strength redirecting it into the side and into the ground you need a redirect to load into the ground and if that happened well it could have actually been quite stable because stone has such incredible compressive strength the more weight you put on it can actually make it more stable to a certain level so I'm not saying solitude could not have achieved a kind of stone bridge archway but it would have needed to have been in the correct shape and what we see here is completely the opposite the stone base on the other end easily looks strong enough to be able to support the weight of the power città pit we have many examples in real life of thin kind of looking stone formations in which structures have been built atop the question that would come next is would this stone base be vulnerable to being destroyed from bombardment or even the magic that exists in the world in my own opinion I think the stone base that we're looking at here if it had a proper arch and everything was stable would actually be too stable then for it to be destroyed in a practical length of time through bombardment and the spells and dragon fire that we see in Skyrim don't seem particularly destructive and that could be a limit in the game mechanics as they didn't want to do destructive environments but no you could not easily destroy this stone base or the archway if it had a proper archway because there would be so much weight pushing down and compressing on all the sides that'll actually be very very stable and if that was achieved that would have made solitudes position glorious so just pretend for a moment that the bridge had a proper kind of archway structure underneath and everything was stable this position would just be perfect a third of the city including the palace looks to be way too high for effective bombardment from trebuchet you can't get at it with a siege Tower or ladders or anything like that in fact there is only one logical direction of approach and that is the front gate spot there is a problem and that is the mountain or cliff face to its left side this really does seem to be quite popular in fiction we saw it with Helms deep in what are the rings we saw it with care more in The Witcher and now we see it here on solitude in Skyrim now I'm not saying y'all has never done pajama castle in Slovenia is a perfect example of this but I do feel that a castle being built so close to a high mountain or cliff face are inherently vulnerable to certain things like Rock Falls for one I don't think it's the best choice and the fact that so few historical castles were ever built hugging tall high mountains gives me the impression that the people who built castles in the medieval period agreed with me because it could have been done there are a lot of mountains in the world a lot of cliff faces and castles could have been built right hugging them but no the first choice that I see in all the castles that I've studied is in height and elevation and not having anything nearby it that is taller than the castle and in regards to solitude specifically access to the mountain on the side doesn't seem that difficult you could easily go around which means you could engineer some kind of landslide or rock fall which could do some serious damage to the castle below the next part and I really have to give solitude a big tick in regards to this is its overall layout looking at it from a bird's eye view what do we see here we see internal divisions in fact five internal visions there are three main Bailey's with two lesser kind of inner fairies or in awards it even has a secondary outer wall or gate which is just awesome but we'll have a closer look at these at gate houses and I say that you know with great hesitation because they actually not gate houses but looking at solitudes basic layout overall it is beautiful another wonderful thing about this layout is that the barracks is completely divided and walled off there are even parts of the walls that are subdivided from other parts of the wall meaning you have to go through something like a tower which can be blocked off before reaching another part of the wall this is a very sound design in regards to castle defences and so as you does it huge tech wonderful awesome in regards to the blue you might be thinking that I have a lot of issues with it because there are no fortifications on it at all well actually don't have any issues in it because the location of the blue palace actually gives it enough of a defensive advantage that it doesn't really meet any battlements on it this can be a full-on palace as it is without having any real issues a great real-world example of a castle that has such incredible outward defenses that the main structure or building at its center doesn't need to be very fortified is hot Rostov its castle now hot Rostov it's which is as best as I can pronounce it has 14 gauge houses alright just look at the path one has to follow to get up to this incredible plateau that the castle is situated on what a location it is just stunning but what's really interesting about this castle is the main habitable building if you were to take away all the outer walls and just look at the building by itself it would be kind of hard to pick this out as a castle it has some kind of tower ish protrusions but they're not fortified they don't have any battlements atop them in fact the entire building has no battlements on it it also has very large windows that are facing the outside the main habitable part of our trust of its castle is pretty much a classic medieval style building with no actual embattlement Samet you wouldn't consider it by itself a castle but the thing is it doesn't need heavy embattlement because of all the excessive fortifications around it and its position it's so high and secluded that tribution or anything like that couldn't get close enough to bombard it which would also mean and I am deducing this from the windows because you can kind of look at the type of windows from the outside looking at it that the walls are probably not the necessary meter or 2 meters thickness at castle walls are supposed to have again it doesn't need it because of its location and all the other outer defences surrounding it so it can take these lessons from Hut Rostov its and compare it to Solitude specifically the Blue Palace the outer wall of solitude runs around the outside of the Blue Palace already so that's defences enough then its position so commanding that it is basically perfectly defended from bombardment or anything like that and regards to the layout it is one of the farthest most buildings from the main entrance and if all the divisions had proper defenses our docking GateHouse's right portcullises murder holes arrises and all that stuff it would be a nightmare to try and reach the palace going through all those defenses which means the blue house doesn't really need to have too many defenses on it it could I don't really think there such thing is overkill when it comes to castle defenses you want a castle to be as capable as possible to be able to repel attackers but that doesn't mean a castle has to have defenses on every single point it can possibly feasibly have because castle served other purposes as well they were centers of government and in that sense yeah there's a lot to like about the blue Palace solitude has an outer Bailey which is really good okay you need to get through one wall and then a secondary wall before you enter the city proper the issue here is that they actually don't have gate houses on them at all they just have gate thankfully the gates have doors one is kind of like an iron grate the other has a full on iron big door which looks very defensible but no portcullis no drawbridges and no defenses on the inside of the gate as actually going through the wall okay it's a passage of about two to three meters no defences there at all which is a huge missed opportunity because these walls are easily thick enough to have a gate on each end a front gate and a back gate and if they had that once the enemy got through the first gate they'd be trapped in the middle and this is where murder holes and arrow strips would just be perfect but they're non-existent they're not there at all the other really oddest thing about solitude outermost gate it has these two kind of stone walls right on top of the gate itself this is profoundly stupid for a very important reason when an enemy is attacking this wall which part of the wall do you reckon they're going to be most located to you guessed it the gate that'll have the largest concentration on bad guys who are trying to get in the city so therefore the best place that you could stand and try and fire down on the enemy is directly above the gate there's a wall in the wall in the way stopping you from firing down at the most likely position where the bad guys are going to be it is the worst thing you could have above a gate at the very least you will on crenellations to be able to duck behind and shoot down but these crenellations should actually be extended outwards to create matriculation which would provide openings directly above the gate that you can drop blood rocks fire arrows down right on the people who are trying to break it down so again this part not only are the proper fortifications missing they have a structure here that is serving the exact opposite to what is needed it makes it more difficult to be properly defended absolutely nonsensical in castle like fortifications and designs ridiculous now of course the next big problem here is the complete lack of criminal Asian in fact this is one of the lowest barriers I have seen on any castle-like structure I mean I call it out hell mercy for having a barrier that only came up to waist height yes this really comes up to your knee utterly stupid there is no cover here for defenders at all and the odd thing about this is that in some other parts on the walls they actually have Merlin like extensions that would provide cover for someone atop them but on most other locations on the wall nothing barely even a barrier to prevent people from falling off there's just hopeless so these are some pretty darn big glaring problems but largely we're not done yet the next huge problem is the thickness of the walls on the towers in my review of care more and from the wit show I pointed out how pathetically thin the walls were on some of the towers but these ones are even worse they're about half as thick as the walls I'm cam Warren and would not stand up to a single shot from a trebuchet or the like these tales would be so easily demolished now in contrast to that hours the thickness of the walls themselves are actually really good the problem is emitting that so many people miss is that the tower walls and the walls are really any other structure that is facing the outside of the castle needs to be adequately sick as well to survive potential bombardment and the minimum thickness minimum is about a meter but really most castles two meters at least now remember how I mentioned that solitudes overall layout is really really good and it is the thing that completely undermines this wonderful layer is the fact that the walls dividing each part of this castle have no gates or barriers on them at all they're just archways you can't even see provision that something might be there to nothing utterly hopeless and this glaring omission exists on every single internal division the division from the first large external Bailey to Z barracks from the first outer bailey to the noble quarter nothing from the barracks to the noble quarter nothing from the noble quarter to the palace nothing from the barracks to the Cathedral nothing at best these divisions will bottleneck an enemy if they ever breach the outer walls but that is not enough all the enemy have to do is push hard enough and they will get through these archways easy and here is another example of that mattock mind-boggling stupid design feature that I had on the outermost gate where that wall was blocking the very you know place you needed to be out of fire back on enemies well on the wall dividing the outermost Bailey to the barracks there is a huge wall blocking any type of view or anything from the gate below the wall below and the actual Bailey that extends from it you can't fire into that Bailey you can't fire down onto anyone trying to get through the gate underneath and I mean it could have worked well if they had arrow slits or something you never know I guess it's the wall blocking you off completely so yes there is some massive mistakes in regards to the finer points of solitudes defenses it feels like I'm being fairly harsh on solitude but I'm just being honest okay there are some real nonsensical parts about its design if we look at it from a realistic and practical perspective but there are things that I love about the city like this stuff I mentioned at the beginning of this video and I will say that the overall aesthetic the kind of architecture shown in the design of the buildings and the stone structures themselves I really like I particularly like the cathedral not because it looks particularly Cathedral like it doesn't but because it looks particularly castle life and it fits so well in with the design aesthetic of everything else it is just a cool looking building now having addressed all these points what is my conclusion about solitudes overall defenses well ultimately I have to read it as totally impossible because of the fact that is defined as physics in this location and that my mind makes it even worse than Whiterun but if we were to pretend that that issue wasn't there or that this stone bridge had a proper structural are check it could support itself well then that would make it much better than Whiterun because of its commanding position though it does have that problem with the side mountain its walls are certainly better than nothing but they provide basically no cover for anyone atop the walls or way too much cover to the point that anyone on the walls can't fire back and of course we have a thin walls of the towers so unfortunately solitudes defenses are quite poor they're better than nothing but because of these serious mistakes on the finer parts of its defenses it would be far easier for someone to assault this castle from engineering rock slides from the side Mountain to being able to scale the walls that are near the side mountain because the mountain provides elevation and perch to try and get atop them to bombarding the weak parts on these thin walled towers to having barely a lip at all on the sides of the walls to just rise raising ladders and other things to climb atop them and then of course not having any doors or great blocking the archways through the internal divisions of the castle all of these points are very serious issues solitude trips at the finish line it had a great foundation that could have made excellent defenses and then it just falls apart and in the end it's not that right so there you go that is my review of the city though I like to consider it just a large castle solitude from the older scrolls Skyrim thank you for watching I hope to see you again and until that time farewell

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 660,748

Rating: 4.9157085 out of 5

Keywords: skyrim, the elder scrolls, the elder scrolls 5, bethesda, video game, medieval fantasy, rpg, role, playing, game, video, medieval, roleplaying, witcher, game of thrones, lord of the rings, fantasy, middle ages, sword, knight, knight's, castle, castles, defences, review, analysis, defence, battlements, battle, blue palace, nord, impirial, barbarian, warrior, dnd, d&d, dungeons and dragons, adventure, adventurer, action, fortress, keep, shad, shadiversity, skallagrim, play, letsplay

Id: uMLfn9lNEp4

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/_-_Dan_-_]

Cool video, great commentary. Thought first "but there are dragons" but then, yeah, they were considered a legend, so no need to build defenses for an areal attack.

And yeah, having stormed Solitude -- you can run through. Even worse, the front gate wasn't even locked. I kid you not.

Hmm, and I wish there would be a really great castle to storm ... kinda like the beginning of Witcher 2.

[u/[deleted]]

I was thinking about the strange structure of the stone last night.

[u/fell-off-the-spiral]

fascinating video, thanks!