Collection
- Aug 15
- United Kingdom
- Deviant for 15 years
- fanfiction.net/~awdures
- She / Her
Enjoying doodling and slowly improving my art but still do words better. Those stories are over at FFNet - probably even a cursory glance at my galleries tells you who I mostly write about!
Found in Attic...
Profile Comments 165
Hey Awdures, I am helping someone by making some medieval armors, and one of the factions I have to do are based off the Welsh soldiers in real life. Is there anything iconic I should know about you think less studied people on your culture like myself should be made aware of?
I'm using that dragon as this the main symbol for this fictional faction. I know the Welsh had very good longbowmen too. Think you have any information that could help me out?
Let’s see..
Are we fantasy medieval-esqueue or historical fiction?
The red on green and white is comparatively recent. Tudor-ish.
Going back further you have the golden Ddraig Aur or the red and gold lions of Llewelyn and Glyndŵr.
There‘s the structure of the ‘teulu’, the household force - rather than a large standing army meaning that any given group of Welsh warriror would likely be more mismatched than and equivalent group of Normans or Englishmen. More small units with mishmash of alloances.
Generally more lightly armoured overall - arising from Welsh terrain! Some manuscript evidence has archers running around barefoot.
Ballads full of gold and red as signifiers of high quality clothes and equipment.
Much given to rousing songs and epic poems as inspiration to gee people up to the fight.
Refs, Gerald Cambremsis for outside observers viewpoint , and Y Goddodin for own viewpoint. Some grabs of translations attached. Links below.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1092/1092-h/1092-h.htm
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9842/9842-h/9842-h.htm
Oh, yes! This is more than I ever could have asked for!
Hmm. . . so in this project is a mod of a popular game called Mount and Blade Warband. The game is well known for it's historically accurate items, but it is also fantasy (The factions are all made up. They often mix a few different real life cultures and the map is different too). All the technology and equipment in the game existed in real life in the 12th century. When people make mods of the game though they like to do all sorts of different time periods. The mod I'm helping with has technology from the 12th century and goes as far as the 14th.
In this game. . . there are a few factions I need to tell you about, because we don't want this Welsh faction to appear too similar.
The largest faction on the map is called Swadia. Their heraldry consists of a red field and a black lion. Because of this. . . I really did not want to make the Welsh based faction use a red field and a yellow lion. This is simply too similar to an existing faction, and I want people to see that clearly I based these soldiers off the Welsh. I don't want them to see heraldry that is commonly associated with British forces and then assumed I just made them based off the British!
Two other factions that use symbols I hope to avoid:
The Rhodoks, they use a black bear on a green field. And the Nords--they use a black crow on a blue field.
So, the red dragon is a rather new symbol. How about that gold dragon then?
I could make the uniforms red with a golden dragon on them perhaps? That would separate them from the British inspired Swadians.
I could make the uniforms red with a golden dragon on them perhaps? That would separate them from the British inspired Swadians, If you need more information. . . British. But we already have a huge faction that is based off the British, and that's why I knew I wanted to make them Welsh instead. Especially since I could probably get a lot of good pointers from you if you happened to catch my message!
Is this golden dragon accurate should I choose to use it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/8s1g5h/battle_flag_of_wales_known_as_y_ddraig_aur_the/
I will see what I garner from the two poems you linked at the bottom. This is a long read but I think I can make time to at least get the jist of it.
Since this is a faction based on Welsh, but not actually the Welsh IRL we should and can change things slightly, to give the new faction a unique identity, if you have any suggestions for that as well.
I thought about making the Welsh faction using a gold dragon, like the Welsh IRL for example, but giving them a blue field for their heraldry. (Blue is not a color any factions in the game currently use, so it would be a good choice.)
I can also fit in smaller symbols if there is anything prominent in Welsh culture that would work nicely. Like maybe there is a flower or a type of bird I could put on the belts or something?
Daffodil and leek are the national plant-type heraldry (almost certainly stemming from a translation error somewhere historical because they are both “cenin” in Welsh!) Supossedly stemming from a battle where-in the sides where so mucky and confused that a certian amount of “friendly stab” was occuring and the Welsh seized upon the nearest plant as an ad hoc emblem to carry/wear!
Perhaps the “awen” symbol would be interesting to incoporate as a visual nod to the music and poetry inspiration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awen
Pick a variant you like! I write it with a single dot to the three bars but variations exist.
The red kite is probably the most closely associated bird, although that’s a modern affectation. As is the eryr wen ‘white eagle’ which is EXTREMELY turbulent politically and probably best avoided by anyone not Welsh themselves.
If no one has corned the market on the broader more panceltic symbology then there’s always triquetras and triscelions and ring-crosses. They are bit tourist cute and you might get mistaken for Irish or Scots instead since Wales is the slightly more invisible relation though!
