MovieChat Forums > Robin Hood (2010) Discussion > Woman in the battle field? come on!

Woman in the battle field? come on!


Am I really to believe that women were allowed being at the battle field during those times?

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No, don't worry, you aren't. At least, not as shown here, fighting like a knight on horseback. That took not only physical strength but complex skills that took literally years of training to master, and women were just not trained for it.


Women did do a lot of fighting in sieges - shooting arrows from the battlements (women could and did learn to shoot), heaving rocks over the walls, et cetera. And if the enemy jumped their village unawares, yes of course they'd grab a pike or a pitchfork and do the best they could to defend themselves, same as anyone would.

Many noble ladies did command armies and castles in war - at the very time in which this film was set, the royal castellan of Lincoln Castle was one Nicola de la Haye, who defended it bravely and skilfully against the rebel barons. (I'd have loved to see her in the film.) But she and other ladies directed their troops; they didn't ride into battle, as such.

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"Am I really to believe that women were allowed being at the battle field during those times? "

You mean like Joan of Arc?

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For God's sake don't mention Joan of Arc, you'll send the resident Anglophobic nutter off on one again!

Taking painting to the pictures ...
www.thepicturepalace.co.uk

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as history is written from the rich male perspective, i very much doubt there is much in the way of recorded evidence about this, if it did happen. You would assume if it did ever happen it didn;t happen much.

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Actually, as I said in my earlier post, there's quite a lot of recorded evidence of women taking part in warfare generally. There just isn't any for them actually fighting as knights, for the excellent reason that you needed not only the physique and the equipment but years of training for that. (Not even Joan of Arc actually fought as a knight. She wore the kit and rode the horse, but she only carried a banner. And the first time any English soldiers actually came to close quarters with her, they just pulled her right off her horse and took her prisoner.)

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"(Not even Joan of Arc actually fought as a knight. She wore the kit and rode the horse, but she only carried a banner. And the first time any English soldiers actually came to close quarters with her, they just pulled her right off her horse and took her prisoner.)"

Which is pretty much exactly what happened to Marion in this film. She charged in and caught Godfrey completely by surprise and managed to knock him off his horse. After that there wasn't anything that she could have done. He would have killed her had Robin not saved her.

You guys are acting like she tore through 7 men to get to Godfrey.

We're playing house...
"But that kid is all tied up!"
...Roman Polanski's house.

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Yes, but my point is that Joan of Arc wasn't trying to fight physically herself, and nobody in the French army supposed she was; her role on the battlefield was to be a symbol, a visible sign of God's support for the French cause to inspire the men who actually did the fighting. But Marion in the film is trying to fight, which is stupid, and instead of saying 'Go home, you silly cow, and take those kids with you' Robin lets her try, which is even stupider.

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Yeah seriously, we should never let women fight for what they believe in.

You would have fit perfectly in this time. I do believe the gods have puked you out in the wrong time.

We're playing house...
"But that kid is all tied up!"
...Roman Polanski's house.

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Yes. What a great Medieval General you would have made.

You could send out all the women to fight for their rights. And the children. And demand that battlefields have wheelchair access......
and if the enemy didn't accede to these stipulations and demands...you could report them to the appropriate authority...and if they still refused to tow the line as per your demands....you could send the army out to deal with them.
The army comprised of.....................................

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"You could send out all the women to fight for their rights. And the children. And demand that battlefields have wheelchair access..."

Lol, very well said.

An army comprising women and children whose swords weigh more than they do.

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KingofCarcosa the white knight! lol

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Brendon, please don't breed. Thank you.

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Joan of Arc was indeed a symbol, she didn't engage in any physical fighting, but there must have been women fighting on the battle field, especially during sieges. Though Marion fighting in Robin Hood does seem a bit silly, i guess.

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there must have been women fighting on the battle field, especially during sieges.

Yes, there were - as I said in my first reply to the OP.

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Robin was a total loser in this movie. He never has sex with her, tells her he loves her after a couple of days, lets her fight in a battle, almost dies because she starts a fight she can't win, then forgets about the battle to take care of her. And let's repeat: this is for a woman in her 40s with whom he's never had sex!

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Seriously?
Maybe he didnt have sex with her because he respected her, and maybe he saved her because he loved her, make sense? Not to mention, we also want to keep in mind that THIS IS A MOVIE, of coarse every male lead goes miles and forgets wars to save and take care of the woman they love. Why? Because nothing ever remotely close to this ever happens in reality, so why not go for it?
BTW - just because she was in her 40's does not make her any less charming or beautiful, or obviously captivating to a man of around the same age.

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If he was attracted to infertile women in their 40s it would be most unnatural.
His perverted breed of men attracted to 40-year-olds would die out in one generation as they would not conceive children.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/22/living/pregnancy-big-lie-tanya-selvaratnam-books/

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True...if he was a man of choice, he would want a young/fertile woman.
I suppose if he's already had his family and sown his oats,
and has a low sex drive (as Robin seemed to have in this movie)...then he could go for some conversation with a 40+ year old widow.

And it just occurred to me...Robin Hood seems to have high-testosterone in other areas, but when it comes to sex, he seems like a whipped neuter.

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Yeah seriously. This is a movie called Robin Hood. The audience expects a heroic man, not a character out of General Hospital.

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Yes, no woman ever fought on the battlefield (let us ignore Boudicca, because that was ancient history).

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We can certainly ignore Boudicca, because - although in fact there are stories in pagan Celtic legends of warrior women - there are actually no contemporary accounts of Boudicca doing any fighting herself. She raised her tribe in revolt, sure: but Tacitus's account, although it describes her in her chariot with her daughters before the final battle, addressing her men, doesn't say anything about her fighting in the battle itself. And the fact that she got away from there to take poison later, if anything implies that she wasn't in the thick of things.

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The Romans have written accounts of big Celtic women engaged in battle. The Scythians are also believed to have had female warriors, and may have been the origin of the Amazon legend.
It shouldn't be surprising. In any large enough group of people, there are going to be a significant number of physically powerful women who will be dangerous to an average-sized or smaller man on the battlefield, if trained and armed similarly. In those few cultures where there has not been a taboo against women fighting, some chose to do so.
In a few other instances, women were actually brought into the military as a matter of policy. The Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa had an army of 20,000 in which approximately 1/3 were women who fought with machetes. The massive Taiping Rebellion in China in the 1860's involved large numbers of female soldiers in combination with the men in an army of up to three million people.

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Except Boudicca was raised as a Roman noblewoman, not as a naked savage barbarian in a tribe where Women fought aside Men.

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I remember thinking "Great, now she's going to get herself into trouble and Robin will have to risk his neck to save hers." And lo and behold, guess what happened... I don't know what I dislike most: the older medieval movies in which the damsel was systematically in distress, or the more recent ones in which the women are systematically the equals of men in terms of ass-kicking, and yet still manage to get in need of being rescued so that Zorro can swoop down and save the day. It's what I call the swoop and swoon: he saves her, she falls for him. Seems it is impossible to write a love story into an action adventure flick without the swoop and swoon at some point or other. Redundant to the point of nausea. It makes me wish for more all-male movies like Master and Commander. If you can't write good female characters, don't write them at all.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Will you recommend a good movie that demonstrates your ideal?

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I'm not sure I understood your question: my ideal female character? I don't have one. I have female characters I like, and female characters I dislike. Scarlet O'Hara is not my ideal character, but she's a great one. She's not a likable person (or she wouldn't be if she were a person), but I like the way her character is written, which makes her extremely enjoyable.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Scarlet O'Hara was racist. Nice taste.

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I don't think you understood a word pol-edra was saying there.

Edited to add:

And even if she had been saying that Scarlett was the kind of person she liked, your response would have been blinkered and intolerant. Scarlett wasn't even a personally-racist character, just one who didn't question the givens of the society she was born into; as most people don't, in any society. Nothing is harder, or rarer, than to look around you and say 'The values that I have grown up with and that not only the people I love and respect the most but all my contemporaries hold as self-evident, are all wrong'. Not one in a thousand people does that, anywhere or at any time.

The great pleasure and interest of historical fiction and drama is that it allows us to spend time with people whose experiences and world-view are not ours. If characters in a historical setting have right-on 21st-century values, they aren't historical characters but modern people in fancy dress.

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Thank you Syntinen. In addition: good characters are nothing like good people. A good person is someone with moral and humane qualities. A good character (in that respect, I maintain that Scarlett O'Hara is a great character) is a fictional creation that is well thought out and executed with skill. Whether I would like to be friends with that character if it were a real person is entirely irrelevant: it is NOT a real person and never will be. I have no more reason to judge the moral virtue of a fictional character than I would a sculpture or a painting. They are to be judged on their artistic and aesthetic merits.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Duchess Gaita of Lombardy, who died in 1090AD was married to a Norman mercenary. She was a soldier who rode with her husband into battle and was described as "a formidable sight."

More is being found about early times all the time. Much that was believed about medieval people is now found to be mistaken.

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She was a soldier who rode with her husband into battle and was described as "a formidable sight"

- by Anna Comnena, who was writing her book, The Alexiad, in Constantinople more than 65 years after the Battle of Durazzo in which Gaita, or Sichelgaita, allegedly took part. So, not a contemporary account, let alone eyewitness evidence - in medieval terms the battle was no longer in living memory.

Also, one of the constant themes in Anna's book was how weird, barbarous and roughie-toughie the Normans were, compared to the civilised urban Byzantines; the notion of Robert Guiscard's wife being an Amazon who rode into battle suited this theme perfectly. And even Anna didn't state it as a fact, or even something she 100% believed, but distanced herself from the claim which she prefaced with "There is a story that....."

So, not proven by a long way.

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More likely than Robin Hood and William Tell, who have both been proved to be fictional characters.

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Actually it's just about exactly as likely as Robin Hood and William Tell. It simply isn't true that Hood and Tell "have both been proved to be fictional characters". Both of them may very well have existed - it's certainly impossible to prove that they didn't: it's just that the legends which have become attached to them are certainly not true, or at least not true of them.

The same goes for Sichelgaita. "Their women fight like men" is one of the classic ways in which one society characterises the impossible otherness and barbarousness of another that they don't know very well and don't want to get to know any better. In Byzantine society ladies mostly stayed genteelly indoors, and when they travelled they rode in litters. A noblewoman who followed her husband to the wars on horseback would have been such a mind-boggling phenomenon to them that you'd positively expect stories to spring up of how she actually charged into battle.

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I should imagine that she should have a hard time cracking on wearing all that armour etc. It is of a considerable weight, and woman do have a tendency to have less physical strength than men. Of course the amount of strength would increase somewhat I should imagine in battle when the adrenalin starts pumping but still, it would be pretty tricky.

I also don't know how she would get on, probably not having a lot in the way of battle training. I know that I would probably get wasted pretty quickly, as I have not had any training in this sort, just a little bit of fencing when I was at school for a couple of years.

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I assure you the weight is not the issue. Of course armour weighs quite a bit, but it's not something you carry in your arms, it's strapped on you and rests on many different parts of your body, so the weight is quite evenly spread. There aren't as many women as men practicing medieval fighting these days, but there are quite a few, and they manage just fine without being beefy or anything.

The lack of combat training, on the other hand, would definitely be a big problem.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Yes, I think you are right. It was only light armour after all, not the heavy duty plate armour that the knights wear later on. She was also probably quite strong as well, as there were shots of her on the plough in the field, and that would be hard work doing that all day.

It was alluded to in another thread that she was probably quite good at doing combat having to defend the castle herself, with her husband off in battle, and her father in law being somewhat poorly.

She did seem rather good at archery, doing that good quality shot at the start of the film with the burning arrow.

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"It was alluded to in another thread that she was probably quite good at doing combat having to defend the castle herself, with her husband off in battle, and her father in law being somewhat poorly."

I hadn't read that comment but I find it rather silly. Not because she's a woman, but because this seems to imply that defending a castle is a one man/one mwoman's job! In case of an attack, even if the lord of the castle is an able-bodied man, he's pretty useless if he doesn't have men-at-arms around him to hold the defenses. The lord's function is primarily that of commander/strategist. Sure if it comes to it and enemies are inside the gates, it's a good thing he can take part physically in killing the invaders or driving them out, but more than anything, what you want to do when your castle is under attack, is make sure the enemies don't get in and it doesn't come to close-quarter combat.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Absolutely so, which is why defending her castle or manor whenever her husband wasn't at home was absolutely part of the routine job description for the medieval lady.

Although the role didn't include any fighting, a lady could always have loosed off the occasional arrow or crossbow bolt, provided it didn't interfere with her command tasks; there are occasional references to them doing that. Henry I of England once besieged a castle held by one of his many illegitimate daughters, and when he rode forward to demand her surrender she simply picked up a crossbow and shot a bolt at Daddy. (It missed; whether that was due to bad shooting or she just meant to make her point and didn't really mean to kill him, is anybody's guess. She had a good reason to be peeved with him, though, as he had her her two little daughters' eyes put out and the tips of their noses cut off, so it wouldn't have been unreasonable of her to want to skewer him.)

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What a charming man... and what a doting grandfather.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Yeah, I couldn't help but laugh when she comes on the battlefield with all those little kids. It was a ridiculous sight. Everyone bringing up women on the battlefield have very few examples. Women don't belong on the frontlines. Yeah, they can pick up crossbows or rocks, but fighting close quarters is something totally different. Main reason why women can't box or wrestle against male opponents.

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A rich woman could quite easily have afforded, the armor and horse and training to fight effectively on horseback. A knight was a social class women probably were not allowed into, but that wouldn't have stopped them from fighting in a war at all.

The main reason rich women didn't fight is because they have brainwashed men to fight for them. Done through early childhood indoctrination.

So although there is an extreme small minority of women that want to fight, the majority are sitting back and chuckling at us gullible men so eager to go fight for them.

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A rich woman could quite easily have afforded, the armor and horse and training to fight effectively on horseback. A knight was a social class women probably were not allowed into, but that wouldn't have stopped them from fighting in a war at all.


It wasn’t ‘being able to afford it’ that was the issue; it was the social unthinkableness of it. Medieval women of any class were effectively minors for most of their lives, and unless they were widowed they literally didn’t own any property at all; they were property themselves – if unmarried, the property of their fathers; if married, of their husbands; and if widowed, often the property of their sons. And a medieval father or husband or son wouldn’t have dreamed of allowing his daughter or wife or mother to train (daily, and for years – anything less would have been pointless) in knightly combat techniques – it would have been seen as unnatural, and certainly a slur on his own manhood.


The main reason rich women didn't fight is because they have brainwashed men to fight for them. Done through early childhood indoctrination.

Shows how little you know about medieval society and societal roles! Medieval men put huge amounts of effort into indoctrinating medieval women in the idea that they were physically, intellectually and morally weaker than men and therefore should shelter in their menfolk’s protection and accept their natural and legal right to tell them what they could and could not do. Letting them fight as knights would have up-ended that entire social theory.

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Yeah, those terrible women of the Middle Ages, brainwashing their men into thinking women's only worth was if their wombs brought forth sons and into treating them as property to be done with as their husbands wished. Tricking the men into taking all the important and powerful roles in society while the women loafed about being powerless and little better than furniture. Damn them for chuckling away as the men controlled everything including their bodies. You poor gullible men, you've had it so hard throughout history fighting in all the wars that were almost exclusively started by men because of course, it was women that brainwashed you into it. 

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[deleted]

That's because she was at the back of her army, making sure they made a safe retreat, and not surrounded by a bodyguard like most leaders would have been. Many medieval lords were captured by being dragged off their horses. Edward II was almost captured by Scottish foot soldiers at Bannockburn who were trying to drag him off his horse, and only escaped because several knights with him convinced him to flee and fought their way off the battlefield.

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Joan of Arc..you named one girl..can you name another?


My feet smells like *beep* Its because I stepped on dog poop.

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You mean the flag carrier? Bad example dude. She was not a warrior knight like the movies make her out to be.

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well, in Islamic history ( which was in the Middle Ages ) women were participating in wars & battles and had a huge role :)

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Gwenllian, Kidwelly.

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But is there any contemporary evidence that Gwenllian actually fought at Kidwelly - as in 'drew a sword and waded in hitting people with it'? Because, as I said in my original reply to this thread back in January, it was absolutely normal for medieval noblewomen to raise and command armies in the absence of their husbands; they just normally didn't take them into action themselves, but delegated that role to a male captain.

All I can find specifically stated is that at Kidwelly Gwenllian was taken prisoner and beheaded; which is perfectly consistent with the possibility that she was watching her forces do their stuff from a convenient viewpoint, as Boudicca probably had done, but that when everything went pearshaped, unlike Boudicca she didn't manage to get away.

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Gwenllian's husband, Gruffudd, had gone to raise troops from his father in law. When she realised Maurice de Londres, the Constable of Kidwelly, would be in his path, she raised an army of villagers and set out to stop him. Her sons were part of that too. Okay, they were not successful, but she bought her husband valuable time. As she had lived a guerilla lifestyle between Powys, Dyfed and Montgomery, I think it is safe to say that she was actually the fighting type, not the standing there and watching type! She also had four sons whilst on the run, of the battle at what is now Maes Gwenllian, only the youngest, Rhys (later Lord Rhys of Cardigan castle) survived. Interestingly, Gruffudd only survived her by a year.

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No, it is not remotely safe to say that "she was actually the fighting type, not the standing there and watching type". Raising an army in her husband's absence and taking it to where it was needed was part of the ordinary duties of the medieval lady. Unless someone at the time put on record something like "and she herself took sword in hand and fought", you pretty much have to assume that watching her sons and captains fight the battle from a (not-far-enough) distance is what she did. Anything else is just romantic make-believe.

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I disagree. As history is normally written by men, the part played by women was routinely underplayed. In the case of Gwenllian, she has been romanticised, no doubt of that. However, she did not live the life of a 'typical' noblewoman of the period. She and her husband and sons were outlawed. Gruffudd herself referred to her as part of his 'teulu'.

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But outlawry was just one of life’s routine hazards for medieval aristocracy; many medieval ladies did time in dungeons. (Consider Gwenllian’s contemporaries, the Empress Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine – both of whom led armies and got imprisoned for it. ) And ‘My wife’s one of my war band!’ is exactly the sort of ho-ho remark a man makes to convey that he values her feistiness, without dreaming that anyone might take him literally. (In a similar spirit, Franz Josef of Austria used to call his horrible bullying mother ‘the only man in the Hofburg [Palace]’. He didn’t mean to imply that she wore trousers and a top hat, and you surely wouldn’t suppose he did.)

We know that, whatever may have been usual in early Celtic cultures, it wasn’t normal in medieval Wales for women to be trained as warriors. And without proper training, you couldn’t fight as a warrior in hand-to-hand battle. (Shoot a hunting bow or crossbow from the battlements or the house windows, yes, sure; women all over Europe did that. That’s another deal entirely, because upper-class women routinely learned to use bows for sport.) If Gwenllian had been a genuine female warrior, actually carrying a sword and whacking people with it, that would have been something totally weird, shocking and unnatural in her society; it would have been remarked on - to her detriment, I might add. Yes, medieval history was exclusively written by men, and if medieval women stepped outside what the men reckoned was ‘women’s role’ they were viciously panned for it. Consider, again, the Empress Matilda, who when she came to claim her throne was execrated for abandoning ‘the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex’ and actually talking and acting like a monarch. If you’re suggesting that chroniclers of the time would have suppressed knowledge of Gwenllian’s martial talents because they didn’t want to give her the credit for them, I’m afraid you’re wrong – they would have been seen as monstrous, cruel and discreditable.

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Calling someone a member of the 'teulu' meant something more than a 'ho ho' remark. The modern rendering is 'family', which gives you a clue to how important each warband member was and how they functioned as a unit. Feistiness is such an overused word when it comes to women, don't you think? Of course Gwenllian would have known how to use a (hunting) bow - she grew up with brothers, in what was a war zone. The bow was more valued in Wales than a sword, though the Normans looked down on it as a weapon. It take more than a sword to make a warrior though. I have not said it was 'normal' for a woman to be a 'warrior', by Norman standards. The Welsh and later Irish were not considered part of the warrior 'elite' but something lesser. Now the definition of a warrior might well be determined by the 'winners', I am merely pointing out that in Wales, there was a different view. As it was, both Gwenllian and her sister in law, Nesta WERE excrated in society - by a member of their own family actually, and someone who was not a warrior either. The Norman Maurice de Londres also referred to her as a 'weyve' - spefically a female outlaw, interesting as it is a Saxon term.

















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[deleted]

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Not so: I've obviously failed to get my point across at all, because 'women are physically inferior to men' was neither what I said nor what I meant.

What I did say, if you take the trouble to go back and read my original post (I know, sooo boring) is that knightly warfare on horseback was a skill that took years of specialised training which girls, even girls of the knightly class, didn't have access to. Although medieval women could and did engage in warfare in other roles - e.g. archery, generalship, and the tried-and-trusted throwing rocks over the walls on the enemy's heads - a woman couldn't simply put on armour, get on a horse, and fight as a knight. Not because she was a weak woman but because she lacked the skills and the training; a male peasant would have had exactly the same difficulty.

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[deleted]

Actually that is not true, although rare there are accounts of women who have become knights from thier own battle prowess, in fact the muslims suspected the christians of dressing up women as knights to bolster thier ranks, this paper is a pretty basic over view:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=6634

I am writing this under appreciable mental strain...

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Yes, I'm familiar with Gendering the Crusades. Rather more familiar than you seem to be, since the consensus of the authors of that book (as the review article itself makes clear) is that while Frankish crusader women certainly got involved in warfare in the ways like the ones I mentioned in my 2012 post, the occasional Muslim accounts of them fighting like knights are not to be taken literally, but - as I said further up the thread about Anna Comnena's reporting of the story that Sichelgaita of Lombardy did so - as a classic way of characterising the barbarous otherness of the enemy. (Literally 'classic', since if goes back to Greek stories about Amazons.)

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yes that is their opinion, but there are certainly accounts of women in combat::

http://www.medievalwarfare.info/#women

Look I am not saying it is common at all, but the point is that Marian riding into battle is considered strange in this text, but if we can find any examples of women actually fighting it is not so strange.

I recognise that the accounts can also be taken to critising or demonise the enemy. But give Christina de Pisans advice for women to be able to lead her soldiers in her husbands absence, the is a high chance that she would get caught up in combat, medieval combat requires that they leaders are in the same location as the combatants and therefore more likely to get caught up in it.

I think that it would be exeptionally rare, but still instances would have occured where women took up and used arms in mortal combat, disregarding duels of course which we know for a fact they had a part in.

I am writing this under appreciable mental strain...

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But give Christina de Pisans advice for women to be able to lead her soldiers in her husbands absence, the is a high chance that she would get caught up in combat, medieval combat requires that they leaders are in the same location as the combatants and therefore more likely to get caught up in it.


Why would you assume that medieval combat requires that the leaders be in the same location as the combattants? How could one possibly lead, i.e take in the global turn of the battle and give orders according to the big picture, if one were in the middle of the melee? and what do you mean by "more likely": more likely than what?

It seems to me, from all accounts, that medieval leaders are typically away from the thick of things, ideally on a high vantage point, in order to see how things evolve and to dispatch orders to their lieutenants on the battleground. Of course this doesn't mean that at some point during the battle, a leader would not join in for the fun or glory of it; my point is just that there is no reason to assume that leading and fighting go hand in hand - for men to begin with, and even more so for women, who by all accounts were NOT taught combat.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Same location in this instance meaning on the battlefield, ie within visual sight of the combat. Being in visual sight of the combat means that chances are much higher (than today) that you would be caught up in the actual fighting.

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090406/ingstrand-a.shtml


I am writing this under appreciable mental strain...

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- which, BTW, is what happened in 1071 to Richilde, Countess of Mons and Hainaut. The website you gave a link to says she "was captured fighting in the Battle of Cassel"; that's entirely untrue. The Chronicle of Hainault, which is the only source for this incident, clearly says that she - having raised troops and sent them to fight for her son - 'had approached the battle in order to encourage her men' and was captured. In other words, she wasn't fighting, had had no intention of fighting, just got too close to the action.

And that's about typical of the standard of factual accuracy of that wishful webpage.

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You people are still *beep* arguing this *beep* Find one woman who could beat the best male martial artist, one woman who could out-lift a male, or even one woman who has been written in history as an equal to Caesar, Alexander, or Napolean. Point is women are inferior in combat, period. Women are lucky for the power that males have granted them. Males gave women sufferage, remember that.

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"Women are lucky for the power that males have granted them. Males gave women sufferage, remember that."

I was speechless for a moment after reading that. Really? In this day and age? I suppose women should be grateful to men for the scraps they've received, instead of fighting on for equal rights, salaries etc...?
Your post is a perfect example of brawn over brain. Mixing together, as if they were one and the same, physical strength, historical record, and modern day political rights. Which basically comes down to "might is right": men are physically stronger than women, so it is only right that they should rule the world. Granting certain rights to women is just a token of men's largesse, they should be thankful and not quite so meddlesome...

Of course you don't find female Caesars or Alexanders or Napoleons in history books! You're pointing to past societies in which it was simply impossible for a woman to become a leader! So what is the point you're trying to make? And are you under the impression that Napoleon became a great leader because he was physically superior in combat? Please.

Try and sort out your "ideas" before engaging in an argument.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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Wow... just ...wow. Women forced men to give them sufferage, they fought for it with their bodies and souls and they willingly died for it, remember that. Men gave women sufferage because they had no other choice.

And remember that this ridiculous and arrogant attitude (that you inexplicably have in an age where available learning should counteract it) is exactly what drove them to it.

Women have a different skill set and are suited to different types of combat to men (ie they probably wouldn't win in a boxing match against a heavy weight man) if you want to generalise but that doesn't mean there aren't women who are proficient and skilled fighters. And FYI the celtic cultures had plenty of renowned warrior women in their legends, they didn't have this stupid 'well women are physically weaker so that makes them worthless in a fight' rhetoric, everyone had to be ready and able to defend their land if some neighbouring tribe/clan/invading somebody can looting and burning. The idea that women belonged only in the house persuing 'womanly' hobbies like weaving and music came in with Roman culture. So if people that actually fought in hand to hand, life or death combat didn't sneer at the idea of female warriors and actually revered them in their mythes then what business have you saying otherwise?

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It does seem realistic to presume that women would have had to take up arms to help defend their land but that isn't the same as women actually going into battle. In the film the villagers are mostly shown simply trying to evade the invading force not taking up arms against them, yet she is the one woman prepared to enter into battle. It is all about her depiction not women's.

Presumably Ridley Scott did remember the legend was based in Nottingham since he bothered to have a few scenes involving the Sheriff of Nottingham, yet he had her fighting a D-Day like French invasion 100's of miles away. Somehow the fact that Marion had travlled with them is something no one was aware of. Her involvement had nothing to do with the fact that she might have fought in battle than as you put it not depicting her as belonging in the home.

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I'm not saying that's accurate or representative of all women because it's dubious and kind of ridiculous and sort of ripping off the more accurate idea from robin hood prince of theives where Marion is disguised as a knight when he goes to visit her and he wins the fight because he's a seasoned crusader and she's basically bluffing and hoping the outfit and the sword will be intimdating enough to scare away suitors along with the less comely servant posing as her. Really I was taking on a misogynist who doesn't know his history, I was talking about women because he was insisting on showing his stupidity by claiming they can never be good soldiers and that men have never allowed them to step onto the battlefield or respected them if they did. I'm not trying to put a feminist slant on things I'm trying to put it in a proper historical context.

Marian is from a completely different time than I was talking about, she's from post roman britain where women were expect to help defend but were not allowed to be any of the professions that dedecated their lives to warfare. They were expected to be wives and mothers and stand in their husband's stead if they were noble which is where you can see the examples of women being proficient in leading campaigns and fighting off attacks. If they put on armour and announced they were off to become a mercenary or something similar they'd probably be accused of being mad or possessed by the devil.

And lol, that's exactly what I thought when I saw the French boats, it looked so much like footage from D-Day I almost thought I'd changed channels by mistake. I think this Marion in armour on the battlefield owes more than a passing thanks to Eowyn from Lord of the Rings, she's got a very similar character when you think about it.

Oh and two last thoughts for Mr Misogyny (not you, the guy I was originally replying to), there were female gladiators in Rome... and they were just as respected as the males. They found archeological evidence of them being protrayed with the same honours and then same respect given to the best male gladiators... so if even the Romans with their patriachal society admitted these women were great warriors and top gladiators then you can take it that they could fight with a high level of skill.
And secondly, all men didn't always have the vote you know, at first only certain people (rich landowners) were 'given' that right.

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I read the article, senua. The "female gladiators" are depicted holding tools not weaponry. Pretty much today's biased, politically correct anthropologists are forcing history through the mindset of the 24th century. Yeah, women can be in combat as cooks and nurses. If a woman fights a man with equal training, the man would win. It isn't a debate, just a fact of life. Men allowed women sufferage. You're going to argue and say that women had a say? Look at countries in the Middle East and tell me that women have power. Men are caring creatures, and have given women sufferage based on pity.

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Your ignorance is showing in all directions.

1. 'Anthropologists don't dig up or identify Roman remains; archaeologists do.

2. And finds are over-enthusiastically identified as 'female gladiators' not out of political correctness but because 'female gladiators' are sexy and newsworthy; saying you've found one is guaranteed to generate newspaper coverage, visitors, further funding for your excavations. Often it's not even the archaeologists but their PR officers who make the claim in the press release.

3. Men 'gave' women suffrage when they could no longer keep it from them, and not a moment sooner. As for 'caring creatures'; tell that to the suffragettes who were imprisoned, force-fed, clubbed, beaten, stripped in public, had their hair torn out, and were kicked to death, on both sides of the Atlantic, for demanding the vote.

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[deleted]

1. It proves that not only do you not bother to check what other people are saying, you don't even notice what you're saying either. Which kind of undermines the credibility of anything you say.

2. You were the one talking about how they had medals and all kinds of *beep* equal to males.

Nope. Is it that you can't read properly, or just that you don't?

You read one article, and you are already the expert on Roman customs

As it happens, I have a BA in archaeology.

4. Dude, you sound like your chick has taken your b@lls.

No: I sound like a woman who knows something about the history of female suffrage, which, not coincidentally, is what I am.

Seriously, I don't have any respect for people like you.

And the feeling is entirely mutual.

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(And the feeling is entirely mutual.)

Why? Is it because he shares a difference of opinion with you on a subject?

Curious.

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No: it's because he -

(a) is sounding off in a ludicrously inaccurate and prejudiced manner on subjects about which he knows nothing;

(b) doesn't bother to notice who wrote which post, so accused me of saying stuff that I not only didn't say but is diametrically opposed to what I did say;

(c) on the entirely irrational supposition that I was a man, chose to make cheap insults about lack of masculinity.

Those are three good reasons not to respect anyone, no?

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[deleted]

even one woman who has been written in history as an equal to Caesar, Alexander, or Napolean[sic]

You fail to realize that that is a compliment.

My vote history
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21237198

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The helmet she wore in this movie was also very un-authentic. Anyway, many film-directors these days seems to have some kind of fetish for armored women.

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Well, if you're going to look at the pieces of costumes, whether martial or otherwise, from a historical POV, then the helmet was just one tiny detail among many other things the movie got "wrong". There was nothing 12th century-like about Marian's costumes in general; in fact, it was more a question of here and there, a tiny piece of something did look more or less right for the period, but mainly it was bits and pieces from diverse centuries brought together by the costume designers (with a lot of 15th century as the basis for most of the inspiration, apparently). Not a small proportion of the clothing was also entirely modern in its inspiration (I particularly remember one or two cardigans on Marian that have no equivalent in any medieval clothing that I am aware of).

I choose to smile at such things in medieval movies now; it doesn't influence my enjoyment or lack thereof of a movie. The only thing that does sadden me is that there are tons of very talented, devoted, well-researched and penniless reenactors out there, so why does no director ever think of asking them for a piece of advice about costumes, furniture, etc...? The only possible answer is that historical accuracy is not the point of movies, even historical ones, which is perfectly fine and acceptable to me. Now if they could just stop pretending that they're aiming at accuracy, "the true story of..." etc, it would even make sense.

"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."

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I know it was 1100+ years early but Boudicca. Pretty sure they were other women in her army. I'm sure they are plenty of women who were decent warriors. However the whole Keira Knightley thing in that Clive Owen film does piss me off. Seriously waifs like her wouldn't win a fight against me let alone a dark ages warrior. Cate Blanchett is a little more convincing, a sportswoman type like Kate Hepburn I'd be less sure of tackling. I remember a scene from that Galactica prequel series when a schoolgirl leaps on and pins down a male class mate at least 50% heavier than her and I thought he's only being pinned down because he wants to - if it's serious she's on her back in seconds being lectured on the fact that guys are not allowed to attack girls and its unfair to take advantage of that.

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I know it was 1100+ years early but Boudicca. Pretty sure they were other women in her army.

Thwere were women with her army, sure - but the only accounts we have, which are of course Roman sources, are quite clear that they were sitting in the wagons which were drawn up behind the army, so that when Suetonius' forces started to push them back they had no way to escape. There is no hint of any women actually doing any fighting alongside the men - and that includes Boudicca, as I explained way up this thread.

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Cheers - there's a lot of thread. I better go and read some early British history.

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