Subject: Some questions about medieval stuff
Author:
Posted on: 2022-01-06 17:47:52 UTC
In heraldry/coats of arms, is there a way to put a book on a sable field without breaking the rules?
Would it make sense to have a good character get conscripted by an evil army, run away, and try to go back to being one of the good guys?
I believe I know just enough to answer this question!
So, sable is considered a "color," and the rule is you can't have another color on top of it. However, you can have a metal or a fur, and you can also sort of cheat by saying your book is "proper," meaning "the color it naturally has," e.g. Sable, a book proper. Depending on the color of the book, though, it might not show up very well (which is one reason the rule of "no color on color, no metal on metal" exists). Sable, a book open [argent/proper] might work well.
As for the second question, I don't see why not, provided your character lives in a society that does conscription and has the wherewithal to survive becoming a deserter. I can't imagine an evil army would take kindly to deserters.
~Neshomeh
I'm assuming a proper book would probably have a brown cover, which would not show up well on a sable field, but it would still have argent pages. Can you put writing in a proper book?
-Claire
Blazons are ideally as succinct as possible. Presumably, it's obvious what a thing looks like in nature, so you don't have to describe it further than that. It also makes room for hues that don't have heraldic names, like the particular orange in a calico cat's fur. You could try to blazon something like a cat couchant sable, argent, and tenné, or you could just say a calico cat couchant proper and call it a day. ("Couchant" = lying down; "tenné" is the name of a stain rather than a traditional color and can be interpreted as orange, dark yellow, or brownish.)
That said, you can get more specific if the appearance of a thing proper is not obvious, and anyway, some coats of arms are very complex and require very detailed blazons, so the blazon can be as long as it needs to be. For specificity, yours could go something like this:
Sable, an open book with cover proper and pages argent charged with writing of the field.
"Of the field" = same tincture as the field, in this case sable, so basically white pages ("argent" can be interpreted as silver or white) with black text. It's considered poor form to repeat the name of a tincture, so workarounds like this are used when needed.
~Neshomeh
I've managed to track down a specific link on books in heraldry, here, which talks about the Oxford University coat of arms. Combining the two, I think an open book proper is brown leather with argent pages, while an open book bound proper would mean a brown cover and require you to specify the pages. Writing is placed as a tertiary charge 'on' or 'upon' the book.
These examples show that books proper tend to be placed on argent, so yes, a bend (or maybe a pale) argent would work well for that. A good example of this sort of thing is the arms of Imperial College, London, which suggests the neatest blazon would be:
Sable, on a bend argent an open book proper inscribed with the words [whatever].
One last one: if you want to add gold leaf, Sheffield university suggests 'edged Or'.
Classically, heraldic devices were intended to be as simple as possible - the classic court case was over who could use Azure, a bend Or - any they do tend to look better when not overloaded with charges; but as far as I can tell there's no strict rule about that.
hS
Now I think I will have to try and draw a picture of this. It will have more on it than just the book because that was the thing I was worried about breaking the rules.
-Claire