Making knights of peasants

As we all know, I'm sure, only three peasants in history have been made into knights, and only one of these (Huebold) is explicitly named.

The precise mechanism by which a peasant can be made a knight differs between sources. According to the WFRP2 sourcebook Knights of the Grail, it requires the agreement of the King and the Fay Enchantress. However, the tale of Huebold as told by the Black Library (in Tales from the Ten Tailed Cat and, second hand, in Tales of the Old World) has him being knighted by Lady Ariadne's husband-to-be, the Duke of Gisoreux, with no mention of the King or the Fay Enchantress. All sources are in agreement that he then failed to survive his first battle, with the Black Library adding the detail that he was probably shot in the back by his squire, under instructions from (and bribed by) some disgruntled knights.

This very, very limited opportunity for peasants to become knights raised a couple of problems for me.

The first, which is general, is that we also know one further thing from the Army Book - that peasants wish to become mounted yeomen not only because they're the best off of the peasants but also because of the tales of them being raised to knighthood. The continued existence of such tales does not sit well with the idea that only three peasants in 1500 years have been so raised.

The second, which is specific to me, is that (back in 5th ed., when commoners became knights fairly frequently) I wrote a piece of background for my character, Abbot Hugh of Cinque Damoiselles, which had him born as the bastard son of a knight to a blacksmith's daughter. This does not square with the ideas of needing noble descent on all sides in the latest background.

However, a solution struck me while perusing Knights of the Grail. The Bretonnian mentality is such that it would be inconceivable to a noble that anyone capable of knightly deeds were not a knight. It is also the case that the interference of the Fay in removing children, and sometimes returning them, could lead to a noble child ending up being 'fostered' inadvertently by a peasant family. A child thus fostered would not appear as 'noble' on the various pedigrees and family trees (which are probably about as realistic as the ones drawn up by Henry VII's heralds showing his descent from King Arthur), but would, in fact, be of noble blood and eligible for knighthood.

The question is, then, how would such a noble be recognised. To the Bretonnian mind, the answer must be that 'blood will out'. A noble, even though fostered by peasants, is still a knight in his blood and will thus demonstrate his true parentage through noble and knightly deeds. It follows quite simply from this, and the notion that only a noble could carry out knightly deeds, that any seeming-peasant who carried out a knightly deed must, in fact, be a noble who was taken by the Fay and then fostered by peasant parents. Once identified by his deeds, such a noble could obviously be knighted without any further rigmarole.

So, why was Huebold not knighted by this method? The answer is clear - his actions, while brave, were not knightly. As the Black Library accounts show, he drove off the beastmen with his bow while on foot. Had he been on horse-back and using a sword and shield he might, by my theory, have simply been recognised as a 'lost noble' and there would have been no further problems.

This theory also explains why Mounted Yeomen are believed more likely to be made knights. It is far easier to carry out knightly deeds when one is on horseback using a sword or spear and a shield!

In conclusion, I hold that while only three peasants have ever been formally raised to knighthood, there is no limit on the number of 'lost nobles' that were discovered fighting among the ranks of the peasants due to their noble and knightly deeds.

Green in Bretonnian heraldry

Green (or vert) is one of the traditional colours of British heraldry. The other three main colours - red (gules), black (sable) and blue (azure) - are all represented in Bretonnian heraldry, along with the two metals: white (argent) and yellow (or). So, what happened to green?

Back in 5th ed., green was indeed part of Bretonnian heraldry. Older pictures of the studio army show a large number of knights with green heraldry. But with the 6th ed. army book, we were told that the 'Eavy Metal team had chosen to paint the new studio army using only three colours, and green does not appear in any of the example shields. An accompanying White Dwarf article on 'How to Paint Bretonnians' told us that red, black and blue were now the only three colours used in Bretonnian heraldry, and that only the Green Knight used green.

The reason given for this was that green is a cheap colour, and knights don't want to use cheap colours. In the recent Black Library book, 'Knight Errant', this reason is repeated along with a second reason - green is the colour of the 'fay' (the Wood Elves), with whom a knight would not wish to be associated.

So what is behind this change in the background? Most of the changes between 5th ed. and 6th ed. Bretonnia are obviously linked to making the background darker and more fitted with the Warhammer World. Thus the knights are now crueller to their peasants (who are called peasants rather than commoners), the peasants worship the standard Old World pantheon rather than tha Lady of the Lake, etc. But removing the colour green doesn't seem to fit into this.

The reason, I believe, is changes to the Citadel Paints line-up. In the 5th ed. army book, the recommended colours are Blood Red, Chaos Black, Enchanted Blue and Emerald Green. Shortly after, Emerald Green disappeared from the Citadel Paints range. The recommendation at the time was to use Goblin Green instead. However, this is not as bright a colour and leads to a fairly dull green compared with the bright reds and blues. When the time came to paint up the 6th ed. army, therefore, the 'Eavy Metal team did not use this, and the background was changed to remove green from Bretonnian heraldry as a result.

So - what for those of us with older armies who have green-painted knights? The answer can be found in 'Knight Errant' - these knights (or their ancestors) have, somehow, won the favour of the Fay and wear their colour as a result. The statement that no knight would wish to be associated with the Fay is made in-character in the book, and others may well. have different opinions from the young knight speaking at the time. This would make green a rare, but not unknown, colour in Bretonnia.

Trumpet Blast!

Welcome to the Bretonnian Herald. I'll be making irregular posts here, sharing my thoughts on Bretonnia, Warhammer, and related topics.

If you don't know about it already, you should check out the Round Table of Bretonnia. This is the main website for all things Bretonnian (in my entirely unbiased opinion as one of the admins).

A bit about me:

I've been part of the on-line Bretonnian community for over eight years, and I've been a Bretonnian player for a bit longer than that. I was originally a member of Earl Cadfael's Bretonnian Army, which was re-launched as the Round Table of Bretonnia around three years ago. I was one of the Bretonnian members of the Strategic Council at the Conclave of the Light Alliance during the Storm of Chaos and I was also a moderator at Chateau Montreford, another Bretonnian site that ran for a bit over two years before being brought low by the forces of Chaos.

Before moving to playing Bretonnians, I played Eldar in Warhammer 40k for around four years. However, they didn't get used much after I got my Bretonnians, and I eventually sold them off a little over three years ago. I've also got some Battlefleet Gothic miniatures sat in a box somewhere, and I've recently acquired (and I'm currently painting) some Anglo-Dutch wars miniatures (from Langton Miniature's Anglo-Dutch series; www.rodlangton.com) and the Battle for Skull Pass set.