What fantasy gets WRONG about medieval weapons

before I begin I actually want to give a shout out to an awesome YouTube channel and the channel name is hello future me makes really great videos about fantasy in general but also kind of diving into certain fantasy tropes writing advice and also kind of summaries and analysis of popular fantasy shows brilliant YouTube channel really cool video and Dragons look you know I love dragons so yeah please you can go check it out and now we'll get to this episode [Music] greetings I'm shad and I love fantasy I it doesn't matter what fantasy and you know if it's got good characters in a wonderful imaginative setting I will get sucked in and I love it and so I've loved fantasy my whole life and through that course of time there have been some interesting things that in a broad sense not every fantasy falls into these eras but broadly speaking many fantasy properties whatever they are get these simple facts and interpretations of historical weapons completely wrong now I've addressed actually a lot of these different kind of points that I'll be bringing up in this video in separate videos where I'll mention how they get swords wrong in one video and I mention the axes in another video and bows in another video and things like I had a knife I want to compile all that information into one concise video I'm going to be shared to help inform people and stuff about okay if you're going to be dealing with medieval historical kind of weapons or even fantasy interpretations of them these are the facts in regards to how they operate in reality and if you want to be more realistic might be good to try and pay attention to some of these things and avoid some honestly the tropes that have been established that of just their their fantasy so I'll start with swords what fantasy properties in general get wrong about swords and this is from dungeon dragons to even brain and Sanderson's the Stormlight archive ZK at one of the biggest mistakes that they made is that misidentifying them now it's interesting how words work I do generally ascribe to the fact that you use the words that most people kind of understand a comprehend with but when it's a pretty big divide where most people actually know the subject have a word that is the proper definition and then the larger kind of misinformed people using the incorrect one I think we can still try and correct it unless it becomes so stared and uncommon that the definitions actually change in regular usage the difficult one is broadsword okay because broadsword has been misidentified so much the point when you say broadsword people generally understand what you mean unless you're in a medieval enthusiast at all sort of sword enthusiasts because a broadsword isn't actually a medieval weapon it refers to a basket Hylton broadsword but I have to mention it as a basket hilted broadsword because people so often think of him the evil arming sword now if you say a medieval broadsword nearly everyone even sword enthusiasts like myself will know that they're referring to an arming sword because the broadsword isn't a medieval weapon and so if you're adding that prefix medieval broadsword it's actually kind of an accurate enough term in the sense that it is identifying the correct sword it's just that's not what they were called and arming swords aren't particularly broader than other types of swords it's a bit confusing in that regard but it is conveying a type of sword that you do know what they mean when people say it the one that they really get wrong is longsword okay longsword is identified in say dungeon dragons and even brain it says I think it's even Game of Thrones George Island first Game of Thrones well first book is Game of Thrones it's the Song of Ice and Fire series long swords I mentioned quite early in the first book of Ice and Fire Game of Thrones but nothing is identified if it's tree handed or wine hand it's I can't really say but I expect that is probably referring to Ireland because that's the strip but having said that Oh George he does his research when it comes to medieval stuff like hedge Knight one of the craters I haven't actually read the sorcerer just the comic book about that's a graphic novel and it's just phenomenal and after the research and how he incorporates traditional medieval heraldry and all that butyl that the stuff about knights and valour arrow so good so that's why it's one of my favorites so maybe actually George was doing the right definition of longsword but generally long sword is misidentified in many fantasies as a one-handed medieval cruciform sword that's incorrect okay that is what is an arming sword an actual longsword is a two-hand actual long as long as I understand it two-handed medieval sword okay it's not a great sword great swords are even bigger usually up to your armpit or taller the actual crossover point that gets a bit gray between the differences in a long sword okay so the made whole video it's an old video still a good one went on so it becomes a very sort by long sword two-handed weapon and the other thing that people generally get wrong about long swords is their contextual use in combat people generally think that long swords are a primary battlefield weapon and credit to Brandon Sanderson in the most recent storm white archives with Springer there's some flashbacks where character Dale and I this is when he uses a longsword I think he actually revert Stu using a Paul I'm at one point to cave in someone's breast plate by just beating down on it that's great okay good does he see hands Lawson that's when you see weapons used in the correct historical context that is more engaging in visceral and stuff like that because swords they on the battlefield yes they were used but rarely as primary battlefield weapons and it depends the period in which you use okay if you go to the say Viking type period and everything like that or it cuz just anglo-saxons and stuff even the Normans before the battle Hastings all the things that you go they all using the same kind of weapons and stuff the sword was a bit more prestigious around there and you'll see them less on the battlefield but more often in later periods where armor advanced and swords become less effective and in those situations you're gonna see the average soldier using polearms a billhook being a popular and for the average guy halberd czar pole axes by knights in armor and stuff like that and the sword is a backup weapon the the realm in which swords are primarily used in medieval combat is of course self-defense okay they can be neat to carry around they're very versatile and so swords are brilliant in that regard now of course if you have a fantasy thing that changes the mix in ways it's sort of used like shard blades in store might archives and things like that or the curl or swords in Miss borne or they're just other magical swords well swords context in how their use in fantasy can actually be changed even a bit more and if you can justifiably giclee their use in mainstream warfare and combat could be far more prominent than they were historically they were prominent historically but as a backup weapon and as a weapon for self-defense the other thing fantasies often get wrong about weapons is how effective they are against certain types of armor okay a sword is gonna have a pretty hard time getting through leather armor let the armors far I made a whole video on the proper look prevalence of leather armor well those in fantasy role-playing games and applies to famousy generally as well I saw it's gonna have a lot of difficulty getting through you leather and if you want to know the prevalence see of leather watch my videos on like that and even garrison that's going to be difficult as well okay their use needs to be adapted for the armor that they're being used against and so if your yeah their main character as a sword and you're facing some of the full plate armor you're gonna bashing it on them it will do nothing okay you're going to need a half sword you're going to need to do a murder strike strike with the pummel Windom Riley and stuff try and defeat this person heavy armor if you only have a sword so these are the more general mistakes that people make with swords but I could make a whole video on it really I'm trying to keep this a more general overview on different weapons because like I said I've covered a lot of these subjects in separate videos I'm compiling it into one and so we could talk about falchions we could talk about katanas we could talk about the advantages between 1-handed 2-handed the necessity for the shield at the type of way you want to fight with them when you're in armor compared to when you're out at mama because these changes the way they're fought with all things and so if anyone's writing fantasy and if you're doing them dragons or anything like that if you can learn about these things I have other videos that cover many of these subjects they're more deeper complex issues regarding all the things I mentioned it's great because it becomes more realistic it's more engaging and stuff so now I'm going to move on to axes and the big thing that fantasy generally gets wrong with axes is these are not weapons that you would often want to use by themselves axes defensive capacities are very limited they have very little defensive ability if you try and block with an axe generally there's nothing protecting your hands and your hands get chopped off and so it's very difficult there use the axe in defense you can hold it at the base and try and slap aside strikes and stuff but that's difficult okay more often than not an axe is a one-handed weapon there are two ender well I'll get to do an 11 in a second 200 axes but profit at one end one's always used with a shield the shield gives you your defensive capacity because they acts offensively is devastating okay and if you can protect yourself while and take advantage offers of its offensive capacity axes are brilliant historically one-handed axe heads are far smaller than they're depicted in fantasy fantasy they're massive because you know he's really strong powerful guys so it depends on how realistic you want the fantasy depicted if you've got something like Game of Thrones which is a very grounded fantasy having this incredibly oversized axe head it's not gonna be releasing and what do I say when I mean oversized AHA my old god of war prop okay now interestingly has a fantasy and axe head this size is it's still a conservatively sized acts within fantasy you can see axes just of insane size all right but even this one that is seemingly conservative is ridiculously oversized for a battle axe there a number of problems and issues regarding it one the handle is generally too long for one-handed axe white handed axe is probably the handle stop there it'll be here and something about there and the axe head it's gonna be much much smaller so it's gonna cut off almost around there now this is a oversized bearded axe this you know part here is considered the beard of the axe and there are bearded axes that are a little bit being about nowhere near as big as this historically axe is that word this big actually like executioner axes where the axe heads are so big that our chop of someone in one you know clean strike and so they access like this did exist but they weren't battle axes okay now what's interesting about this they're the length of handle on a fantasy acts like this is is too long to be a one-handed one but for combat it's also a bit too short to be a two-handed one it's kind of in the middle now I'm sure of course there are exceptions where you might have found a battle axe that this head stood way to video and be unwieldy if you had an axe head this big and a small axe head with an ax on a handle that was this long yeah okay sure you can find them but generally no any of this big and this is all wood okay I actually have had some people think that this is metal and as I I tell I take it as a couple I don't think it looks too realistic but it has tricked some people it's just painted wood which is why I can hold it and swing it around so easily this was actually you know steel this would be very unwieldy because the accent is so big now we come to double bitted axes they seem to be very common in fantasy everywhere now of course they did exist historically there are woody cutting access that have double you know double didn't mean double-headed okay oh there's a blade on either side yes and there are even some historical battle axes that would double headed but thinking that's in these are more the exception in the norm okay there are kind of interesting issues that come with it because when you're you're always gonna be striking one end and axe heads can be hit hurts the other thing that I should really point out historical axe heads thin ok battle axe is like these are not wood filling axes where you want a lot of weight to bite into the wood really heavily and you're not really worried about combat and recovering strikes and other things like that okay combat axes the axe heads thin alright they were as heavy as they you could get away with but nowhere overly heavy where they've become unwieldy and they were able to manage that weight distribution by making those axe heads thin and then going back to her all saying before you're only gonna be striking with one end and so even though these axe heads were thin you're still essentially nearly doubling the weight it's not a complete doubling of the weight because the actual central part so it's like you're increasing it by three-fifths and that's not exactly necessary these things are already heavy enough generally as heavy as I mentioned as heavy as you could get away with and so if you're gonna increase the weight that's much more significantly it's gonna hinder yourself in combat they're gonna be a detriment not a benefit so and the other thing is to make it more versatile put a spike on the other end not nearly as heavy okay there's actually increases the weight only marginally and it gives you more options in regards to combat okay you're coming up against some armor where you need to jam a spike through mail or something like that well of course having a spike is more advantageous and having a double axe head in which you're not really gonna be using much okay in my opinion the ones that were made historically are a bit more for sure not for actual combat if you were just and of course aesthetics actually were adopted historically in many circumstances and some people would still use them in combat because they did wanna fight and look cool and intimidate their enemies and all that stuff but if you were just after you playing utility I think you would never go for a double bitted axe so that's my thoughts on the double bidded axes now let's go to two-handed axes because to your handed axe is the great axe okay let you see in fantasy usually they're two-handed and they are double bidded as well like we see Gimli in Lord of the Rings Tianna a and I old for battle no no two hundred axes did exist okay but the examples of them of course the axe heads are much smaller far more conservative and actually made with a lot of technical you know intention behind their design I'll give you a first example classic Dane axe the real two-handed great axe you could say from history they're never double bit it for one okay the axe heads are very very thin and then they kind of flare out towards the edge so the angle of the edge can be a bit more a bust and a little bit more damaging you know get a good strike on or all that stuff but there there's that's a lot of sophistication okay behind these designs they're not just these hulking lis thick insane unlifted ball to you handed axes like you see in fantasy one bigger culprits is the Dane axe from the video game for honor there you see how thick that thing is oh my goodness so accents really double bidded always thinner and the two-handed ones I've never seen a double bit of G hand attacks they might exist link in the comments if you know one I'd like to see it their shots are usually much longer than what you'll see on a saying I wouldn't filling X because these are pole arms okay and then if you go later on in in history the two ended axe is what we would call the pole axe people really consider it just a plain axe we call it a pole arm okay this thing is a viciously I like that cost the halberd okay any type of pole and that has an axe head on it well that's where you will find the two your handed battle axes of history the actual two-handed double bitter great axes that's more a fantasy invention in reality and if you're wanting your fantasy to be more realistic the you know double bitted great axe fantasy thing yeah you might want to get rid of it the next weapon that I want to address and by the way I should have kind of mentioned this at the beginning I'm gonna be mentioning the more classic weapons you see not the obscure ones there and because there are very obscure ones that are still misrepresented in fairness yourself alright the classic the bronze hitting this in a broad manner and so the next weapon on urges are of course war hammers cuz baby war hammers compared historical ones Wow is there a difference okay so it's funny I actually think that any fantasy war hammers are getting a bit confused between the difference between war hammer and what is historically known as a mall okay a mall which you can kind of call a war hammer in a sense they have huge you know heads that's cuz they're made out of wood not metal okay so they're these huge hammer heads that are wood and yeah big swing stuff like that they exist historically but in my opinion they're not as effective as a true war hammer and a true war hammer the hammer heads are smaller they're not Mjolnir okay like we see with for anything like that he actually made me all near real solid be unlivable in fact Michael Cthulhu which I love his videos he made a Warhammer from what happen okay I wasn't used by one of the races will have a and so he made the real thing and it wasn't like I'm young sighs warhammer I was just really hefty and I was big and stuff like that and he can barely lift it this thing is insanely heavy so warhammers they were made as heavy as you could get away with because weight is significant and it's going to add a lot of power but as soon as you cross the line where they become unwieldy that's too much so as heavy as they can be but as light as you can also get them to be to be effective usable and functional and in my opinion these classic war hammers are much more effective than a mall because a mall has a larger surface area and that disperses the force over that area where a hammerhead if a mat is just you know about as big as a large coin it's far broader than say the edge of a blade okay so the force is still dispersed but that means it's not going to get stuck in everything and is very effective in transferring blunt force through your armor and stuff and so that's why they're very very effective but there's a difference okay historically there were never any war hammers that were made out of metal that had a huge hammer hit on the end you can't lift them it's too heavy okay because that's what people do in fantasy they usually give their characters war hammers malls that are made out of metal now out of the shape okay you would never actually correctly identify a hammer that looks like this that's that's got a huge head is made out even's made out of metal you wouldn't call it a war hammer that is a mall all right and a true war hammer is a true war hammer there we go those are war hammers next weapon their bow but it's an crossbows actually as I've mentioned before I cover a lot of this information just my video best weapons for women okay because the bow has been misidentified to think that it suits people who has let have less strength regardless of women just men who are also weaker than the average guy the bow is good for them because it's you don't need much strength to the user man and your fighters no no no the boat requires a certain amount of strength to use effectively especially the high powered war bows you need to be built to shoot those things okay when you get up to 150 pound draw weighting these things yeah and you see the strain weren't like the reenactors that use real war bows the strain on their faces where they pull this thing these things are heavy and they can't hold it for long okay they pull back you know probably going in just a second or more and then let loose because holding it for longer than that my goodness it's difficult and so in actual fact these war bows would suit big muscley burly characters so much more not the you know kind of agile graceful weak characters and they often given to elves and elves depending on their strength figures you know how strong Isles sometimes they're stronger sometimes they wake up but they don't look as strong because they're so graceful and slender usually and Denari big old war bows suit muscley burly character I'd love that a fantasy that has like a conan barbarian honking you know beast of a character who uses about funny thing the only time I've seen this portrayed accurately to even a single like a small level of accuracy thattaboy ISM as a weapon for muscular character is in one of the worst movies ever made the Scorpion King with seriously the Scorpion King has his favorite bone and there's a part in a movie where the bug gets taken from him and the bad guy lies and this is his little boy and he can't pull it back because the boy is actually properly made with soul of full strength and look I'm gonna spoil it because it movie sucks anyway you haven't watched by this time you probably never gonna watch it anyway but he actually defeats the bad guy with this bow cuz this bow is so powerful and you know only the Hulk but not the Hulk the rock only the rock couldn't pull it back right that this guy usually can block arrow shots and everything but it's so so powerful that the arrow is moving so fast the bag I can't block it and he dies to it like that and say out of all the floors in that movie I liked that part okay and I actually liked this idea to be represented more in fantasy that bows can be hugely a nice suit hulking muscular and pair they can be insanely powerful proper war bows okay because that's just cool it's interesting and it's a more accurate application of how you both can be used in fantasy and of course when it comes to cross bows crossbows are the perfect weapon for people their lack strength the Miata use heavy powered war bows crossbows can be deadly okay a suit you know characters are less strength whether they're male or female so much more but oftentimes crossbows are given to like you know either make like girls get the bows guys get the crossbows don't know why maybe because they resemble God and I should really give a shout-out to Brandon Sanderson because in his store my dark eyes he has a thing called shard bows which are met boughs of such insane size and strength that only people wearing their special char plate which it gives enhanced superhuman strength of people only they can use them so shad bows are made for people who can use shard plate and these things are insanely it's basically a portable ballast start right and then the arrows they launch of these big long shafted Spears essentially yeah that's great sorry Renan love your work I love how you employed boys being reflection off greater strength and stuff so my archives good stuff and those are the weapons that I did want to cover okay these are the broad ones compiled into one video but there's still far more that we could a talk on so if you want me to address other weapons that are misrepresented in fantasy share them in the comments below if you want to share how they are misrepresented and I haven't covered anything again I want to read what your thoughts are so do share them in the comments I hope you've enjoyed thank you for watching and of course I hope to see you again so until that time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,008,104

Keywords: medieval, history, historical, fantasy, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, middle ages, weapon, weapons, sword, swords, longsword, arming, bow, bow and arrow, crossbow, warhammer, axe, hema, dane, roleplaying, novel, mistborn, rpg, role, playing, game, video, skyrim, game of thrones, lord of the rings, for honor

Id: _6_dmFDU7C0

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2019