Reconquer Design: Dezember Patreon

Diesen Monat gibt es bei Reconquer Design etwas für die Schlacht bei Muret.

Recap for December!

1. King Peter II of Aragon and Simon de Montfort

2. Knights, two versions to fit the early 13th century from 1200-1240

3. A city building. With the previously released blacksmith scene in mind (Blacksmith scene not included next month)

Next month’s models are influenced by the Battle of Muret 1213, in which the King of France takes advantage of the Cathar heresy to consolidate his power by attacking his powerful rival to the south, Raymond VI of Toulouse, while Raymond’s brother-in-law, King Peter II of Aragon, comes to his assistance. Leading the Capetian army was Simon de Monfort.

The King was pretty easy to make, there is a clear image of him in battle gear on his seal and that is what I’ve sculpted. Conical helmet with a band flowing behind him, standard full mail from head to toe with no surcoat, a pennant for his lance, and a caparison for the horse. I took the liberty of adding mail barding for the horse based on what seemed likely for the period for Iberian nobles, more likely for a king. However… while posting this and uploading the reference, I realized I missed something… *sigh* i’m not sure i’ll change it though. Depends if I have time

As for Simon de Monfort, there is no depiction of him in battle gear. His seal does not have any armor or weapons, just mounted with a horn and a hound. So I used the images of Simon de Montfort VI, dated to much later, except I ignored the one with a full helm, seeing as how it doesn’t appear to have been a common helmet for that time period yet.

And on the note of anachronistic equipment:

1. The French knights: Searching mostly through manuscriptminiatures.com, from 1200-1230, despite it being the common image of a knight from 1200 and onwards… I could not find a single image of a horse with caparison, much less mail barding, in neither France nor England. So for accuracy, I would recommend you use the horses from the 12th century Caballeros released last year, both sets of riders and horses are interchangeable. I dont doubt they were used at all. I did find a few, VERY few images of German knights with caparisons for that period, so I imagine culturaly some French would have adopted it from exposure to them or the Navarrese and Aragonese to the south, so I doubt it would be wrong to mix in a few. As for the full helms, again based off of images, I don’t believe they were common at all. Though there are images of them at that period. They seem to have become very common in Germany very early.

2. Aragonese Knights: Images of knights from that period seem non-existent outside of seals, statues and oddly, an image of a Castilian prince, Fernando, in the Cathedral of Chartres… though its more likely that he was depicted in French style since local artists would have drawn from what they’re familiar. I don’t know how common surcoats would have been in the Iberian Peninsuala at that time (firsts couple of decades of the 13th century). Surcoats appeared to be common in France and Germany, and uncommon in England and Italy. I believe Aragonese knights would have had a mixture of surcoats and no surcoats. However, since I’ve already made plenty of non-surcoast knights that accurately fit the late 12th and early 13th century, i opted to make every knight have a surcoat, and a couple have a short sleeved tunic. The bands wrapped around the helmets do seem to be unique to Iberian knights, seen in multiple seals in Aragon, and a statue of a knight in Navarra.

Quelle: Reconquer Designes bei Patreon