In this post, I’m looking at the character type I defined as a “Soldier” a bit more in-depth with the character types covered. As before, this will look at some actual examples, then some more recent examples or suggestions, finishing off with what this means from a fantasy fiction point of view.
As with all previous posts (Women’s Roles in Fantasy Fiction, Women’s Role Models: An Introduction and Women’s Role Models: Ringers), I’m still focussing on roughly 800-1600 A.D. (or C.E.). I’ve specifically picked this time frame because this tends to be the inspiration for “medieval” fantasy. This actually covers a number of loose historic time periods and a lot of things changed during it so any generalisations will be crude and possibly insulting. So, to repeat (again) my disclaimers:
- I am doing this from a (white) British point of view.
- I am not a historian.
- I may remember things wrong, particularly as I have a tendency to see the possibility of a story rather than the details.
Cleaning up My Definitions
I’m defining a Soldier as someone who is biologically female and presenting themselves as such (or “a woman”), yet is holding a position we might otherwise consider male. This position would be something appropriate to their social status – such that if they had a brother, we could expect the brother to hold the same position. We’re not dealing with people who rise to the highest ranks as these will be dealt with as Generals. Make sense?
Of course, there are a two issues with the definition at this stage:
- We’re not entirely sure what a “normal” female position is because, having little or no legal status, recorded history can be kind of vague about it.
- We’re not entirely sure what starting point in terms of social status we’re dealing with – because higher ranking people have different opportunities to lower ranking.
These hopefully will be answered and refined a bit in what follows.
Craftswomen and Guilds
Unusually for me, I’m going to set-aside the opportunity to talk about weaponry and discuss crafts first. This has been gleaned mainly from these two links: Robert G Ferrell’s Women in Medieval Guilds [External Link] and Judith M Bennett & Maryanne Kowaleski’s Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years After Marian K. Dale [External Link]
The short short version is that “women only” crafts – examples given include silkworking and embroidery – tended not to organise into guilds, with the exception of a few places in France. Terry Pratchett’s crack about Granny Weatherwax being one of the leaders the witches didn’t have probably isn’t far from the truth of how this generally worked in practice, with a local group of crafts women being dominated by one or two strong characters but without their domination being part of the law or rules. This could have benefits as well as problems, for anyone who was outside of the group.
There were guilds for some other “women’s” crafts but it seems to have been a response to having men in, or interested part of, the group. Which begs the question of who benefited from having the rules written down. If I’ve read the Bennett & Kowaleski paper correctly, women could (generally) take a controlling role in these explicitly mix-gendered guilds.
In other crafts, a woman followed their father and / or their husband into the work. Being a member of the household, they wouldn’t have had the same restrictions applied to their employment as an outside apprentice or journeyman – taxes had to be paid and only a certain number could be employed under certain working conditions. Guilds were set up to be exclusive – through controlling who could and couldn’t work – and it’s not surprising that a workforce who would be considered unstable (I assume regular breaks for bearing and raising children is a familiar argument to everybody?) should not be actively encouraged to join in. However, there are plenty of instances of widows holding together the family business on the death of their husbands and they have the honour of being named in guild and court roles – or being held legally accountable.
The thing to remember while looking at this is that marriage was the accepted social norm for both men and women. A man would be expected to marry just as any woman would have been. And marriage was a business partnership as much as it was about raising children. (We’ll ignore “love”, for the moment, because the quality of the marriage is nothing to do with history or us. We will assume that most marriages were agreed with hope that love could grow, rather than with the couple being in love (or lust) when they tied the knot.) This means that a skilled woman would not necessarily be dismissed from the marriage market as “unwomanly” and “useless”. A woman who had the possibility of becoming what we would call a manager, say, or the skilled hands that made a sellable product would be a good choice for a man who was involved in business. And don’t forget that, in having made that choice, once it becomes widely known to his customers whose hands made their product or who is organising the premises then it is the woman’s reputation that sells the business. The issue remains one of legal recognition – the works were the husband’s in the eyes of the law – rather than of actual skill.
I think it is probably best to refine the definition a Soldier from “holding a position we might otherwise consider male” to someone who has public recognition of their labours. As anyone who has spent even half an hour looking after a child will tell you that, while often hugely rewarding, it’s something of a thankless task. Cooking and cleaning without charging for it also occupy a “thankless” niche. In other words, it’s assumed that mothers will mother. So, what we’re talking about is someone who shows skills other than the basics of daughter-, wife-, and motherhood and has them recognised as such. In historic record terms, this would be an individual who manages to get named in some paperwork. In fiction terms, we’re a bit more inclusive to people without legal standing.
Women in Religious Orders
Still no weaponry. Instead, we’re going to look at women’s Christian religious orders. (Other religions exist, I’m just even more ignorant of them than I am of Christianity. We’ll pretend that saying other religions were not as commonly held in Western Europe makes the issue go away. For the purposes of this blog post, anyway. We’re also going to ignore Eastern Orthodox Churches.)
Religious orders come in five flavours:
- Canons Regular – classed as priests, to the lay person these are essentially monks who are expected to minister to those who come to their communities. Women are allowed in some orders and are called Canonesses.
- Monastics – monks and nuns in closed monasteries. They live apart from secular life, so they would not expect to tend to visitors.
- Mendicants – friars and sisters who preached God’s word and lived on charity. They may or may not have their own community to live and work from.
- Clerks Regular – again, classed as priests. They would live in their own communities but they would be expected to deal with the public, preach and deal in “sacred sciences” (i.e. teaching). An example order is the Jesuits.
- Military Orders – generally organised something like the monastics with further military (who might also be lay) brethren outranking the religious monks and nuns. There were specific duties the nature of which depend on the order, such as the Hospitallers.
(If you want to know more about any of these types, I suggest copying the name into the Wikipedia search function.)
As mentioned previously, women rarely ranked as highly as their male equivalents but were generally expected to serve much the same role. The monastic life became both an escape and an exile for the wealthier and noble classes, with many girls being sent away to monasteries to be educated. It was also a good way to keep them out of temptation’s way – or stop them being a temptation, depending on your point of view.
The exact nature of the work expected of a canonness, nun or sister would depend (as it still does) on the nature of the order they belonged to. However, they would be expected to do the same work as their brethren – going out into the community, or helping in hospitals, or offering hospitality or even just tending to the convent’s business. Without the distractions of children or husbands, they theoretically had more freedom and safety than the women in the outside world. The key word here, though, is “outside” – it’s all fine if this is the place where they have chosen to be but, if they haven’t, there isn’t anywhere else they can go.
Women Knights and Knightly Orders
The Heraldica.org website has an interesting page on women’s knightly orders [External Link]. The site mentions the Order of the Hatchet (orden de la Hacha), which was awarded to a group of women involved in the defence of their city, and then a few other orders are mentioned that definitely involved noble women being inducted into (armed) knighthood.
The interesting thing about knightly orders – also mentioned on another page of the above site [External Link] – is that they seem to spring as much from religious organisations as military need. Prior to that, knighthood was received from royalty and the nobility but the connection to the font (i.e. the giver) was assumed due to oaths of fealty and any groupings were specific to a particular action (defence or attack). The Order of the Hatchet is actually example of this. Once the religious military orders appeared, the royal (to become national) orders followed. What makes this doubly interesting is that the time-frame for guilds getting organised is similar.
This is presumably an sign of people feeling the need to group together to gain political influence, be it at a local, national or international level. And, yes, the Magna Carta being forced on King John by a bunch of English nobility in order to protect the nobility’s rights slots in there, too – the Thirteenth Century. But it also reflects the Crusades (Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries) and what was happening at the intersection of the Abrahamic faiths, as Christianity and the West defined itself by what it stood against as much as what it stood for.
As with craftswomen, it’s important to remember the business partnership aspects of a marriage, so a woman born into a knightly family (somewhat equivalent to the gentry of later years) was likely to have an understanding of if not an education in weapons and basic strategy. While the husband was away, who else was going to organise the defence of the family home? Unless the husband was well enough off to afford a seneschal of some description, the answer is “his wife”. As quoted on Lothene website section on women warriors [External Link]:
From “Treasure of the City of Ladies” (1405) by Christine de Pizan : “We have also said that she [the baroness] ought to have the heart of a man, that is, she ought to know how to use weapons and be familiar with everything that pertains to them, so that she may be ready to command her men if the need arises. She should know how to launch an attack or to defend against one.”
(Christine de Pizan, by the way, was a talented woman writer. There’s a Wikipedia article here: [External Link])
I think we’ve managed to refine our definition further here: any family that has the money (and presumably status) to pay others to manage the home defences (or buy the expensive materials craftsmen make) is unlikely to be happy about their women taking up arms. So we can expect high nobility (and members of very rich merchant families) not to become Soldiers, just as very poor families will not be able to afford to give their daughters (or sons) the right education to gain these skills. With a bit of tweaking, the definition now stands at:
A woman who is of a mid-level social status where it is acceptable to acquire and show skills other than the basics of daughter-, wife-, and motherhood and have them recognised as such.
This also allows for women who were recognised as story-tellers, poets, musicians and artists – records of which do existed.
A Basic List of Soldiers
Using the same Wikipedia timelines as I did in the Ringers post (Women in warfare and the military in the medieval era [External Link] and Women in warfare and the military in the early modern era [External Link]), I’ve found references to some Soldiers who have served in combat and are not been as well remembered as my Role Model example further down the post. Some of the Lothene mentions fit in with this list. I’ve copied and pasted these bullet points from all three pages:
- 811: After suffering great human losses, Khan Krum mobilizes the Bulgar women, who then take part in the Battle of Pliska.
- Early 11th century: Freydís Eiríksdóttir, a Viking woman, sails to Vinland with Thorfinn Karlsefni. When she faced hostile natives while pregnant, she exposed her breasts and beat her chest with a sword. This caused the natives to run away.
- 1090: Norman woman Isabel of Conches rides armed as a knight.
- 1290: Manuscript I.33 is written. It depicts fighters. An illustration of a woman named Walpurgis training in sword and buckler techniques is in the manuscript among others.
- Maria of Pozzuoli, from “The Voice of the Middle Ages in Personal Letters 1100-1500” Edited by Catherine Moriarty ISBN 1 85291 051 8, Lennard Publishing. “From Petrarch to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. 23 November 1343, Of all the wonders of God,’who alone doeth great wonders,’ he has made nothing on earth more marvelous than man. Of all we saw that day, of all this letter will report, the most remarkable was a mighty woman of Pozzuoli, sturdy in body and soul. her name is Maria, and to suit her name she has the merit of virginity. Though she is constantly among men, usually soldiers, the general opinion holds that she has never suffered any attaint to her chastity, whether in jest or earnest. Men are put off, they say, more by fear than respect.
- “Agnes Hotot, (A.D. 1378? – ?). The coat of arms of the House of Dudley shows a woman in war helmet, dishelved hair hanging out, and her breasts exposed, commemorating a female champion. In the fourteenth century A.D., Agnes Hotot’s father, of the House of Dudley, quarreled with another man and agreed to a lance fight to settle the affair. Upon the appointed hour, Agnes’s father fell seriously ill. Agnes put on a helmet and disguised her sex, mounted her father’s horse and set out for the tourney grounds. ‘After a stubborn encounter,’ Agnes dismounted her father’s foe. When he lay on the ground, ‘she loosened the stay of her helmet, let down her hair and disclosed her bussom,’ so that he would know he had been conquered by a woman.”
- Pope Boniface VIII wrote several letters in 1383 in which he mentioned Genoese ladies who were Crusaders.
- Defenders of a bulwark in Prague in July 1420 included two women and one girl who threw stones and lances at the attacking army.
- During the siege of Orléans, France, in 1428, townswomen hauled buckets of boiling water, fat, lime and ashes to be poured them down on the English attackers.
- 1429: Joan of Arc leads the French army. Yolande of Aragon supports her. Pierronne, a contemporary of hers, also hears voices and fights for the king of France.
- Margret Paston took charge of the defence of her home in her husband’s absence during the Wars of the Roses, she asked him to send crossbows, poleaxes and iron spikes in a letter in 1448.
- June 27, 1472: Jeanne Hachette rips down the flag of the invading Burgundians at Beauvais, inspiring the garrison to win the fight.
- Hernan Cortés’ army in Mexico in 1521 included Spanish and Mayan women some of whom fought with the army.
- A group of 350 girls constructed and defended fortifications for the Protestant Garrison in Guienne, France in 1518
- Ameliane du Puget, the governor’s daughter, led a troop of women who broke a siege at Marseilles in 1524 during a war between the King of France and the Constable de Bourbon. They dug a mined trench known as the Tranchee des Dames which became the modern day Boulevard des Dames.
- There is a story from the era of Henry VIII that a servant called Long Meg, employed at The Eagle in Westminster dressed in mens clothing and fought a duel with sword and buckler against a knight called Sir James of Castille. On another occasion she challenged a customer who had not paid his full bill to a fight with quarterstaff.
- February 12, 1545: Scottish women fight in the Battle of Ancrum Moor. Among them is Lilliard, for whom Lilliard Edge is named.
- Marguerite Delaye lost an arm fighting in the battle which lifted the siege of Montelimar in 1569.
- 1572: In defence of the city during a siege of Haarlem by Spanish troops, which lasted from December 1572 to 1573, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer (1526-1588) supplied the Dutch forces with wood. She owned a wood company at Haarlem. Myth says she led a force of women defending the city and ever since “kenau” has been a Dutch expression for a harsh woman.
- 1584: Mary Ambree participates in the fighting against the Spanish for the city of Ghent. A ballad is eventually written about her.
- 1587: Catharina Rose commands a women battalion at the Spanish siege of Sluis in Flanders.
The first thing that springs out at me is the use of a woman model in I.33 – the earliest surviving (medieval) manual for swordplay. If the compiler(s) of this manual thinks that a picture of a woman is worth including (or, conversely, not worth removing) then it’s probable that fighting women, or at least training with them, was not an unusual thing.
The second thing is that women were obviously acceptable as fighters on the battlefield. Most opportunities – if it can be called such – would have been in local defense. The number of references in the list above and in the knightly orders section, it’s fairly clear that women were expected to defend their places and their people just as much as men were. While we can’t say that every woman fought in such action, we also can’t say that every man fought.
With the lack of reference to women being involved in attacks, we can assume that issues arose when a woman wanted to go beyond local defense, as the role model shows. This is not to say that women would not or could not have been involved in long-term military campaigns, it just means there are no records of it. There are records of women going on crusade with their husbands or travelling long distances with them, and I would suggest it’s not safe to assume that they never defended themselves, fought alongside their husbands or were all camp followers. It just isn’t recorded and can therefore not be relied upon.
Role Model: Joan of Arc (also La Purcelle, Jehane, Jeanne d’Arc)
(Wikipedia: Joan of Arc [External Link])
A lot of the markers that Joan’s story gets reduced to make for a good, basic quest and there’s no doubt that she has inspired many biographic works as well as fantasy and historical fiction. So, here’s what I think I know.
Joan, while a peasant, was not poor or poverty stricken. Her family owned about fifty acres of land (a large plot in those days) and her father was a village official, so not without influence. Joan made full use of various family connections – none of them grand compared to the nobles she mixed with but all very useful, none-the-less – when she left home. Eventually, she got permission to travel to the royal court. She went in a man’s clothes (for safety) and begged a knight’s equipment from the mother-in-law of the Dauphin. She got them, if only because the Dauphin’s regime was failing and he needed all the help and signs from God he could get. And that, as they say, is that. With a little bit of discreet coaching, Joan showed herself to be a competent captain and had a high success rate – close to if not actually 100%.
She liked shiny things and gathered new swords and banners in a manner I envy. Despite the collection, she never drew her sword in battle because she served as standard bearer as well as captain to the troops she was allowed charge of. This takes a special kind of stupidity bravery, because in carrying a rather large flag on horse back, she was marking herself out as a target while leaving herself unable to defend. From the statements at her trials (one post-humus), no-one ever doubted her courage.
But. She only served for about two years before getting captured and she was nineteen when she ended up in English hands and on trial. Rough edges had begun to show in her performance – she hadn’t had any real failure by which to learn humility, she’d never had much time for caution (perhaps realising that she had a finite amount of time allowed to her, in the circumstances), and she was probably too young and naive to realise just how badly things would go with the now King when she outstayed her welcome. She had also insisted on turning the French / English conflict into a Religious War.
This was, in part, a way of giving herself some authority because a girl should and would not do these things in typical society. In saying that it was God’s command, she borrowed from the ultimate (male) authority. In order to get away with this, she had to prove her soul whiter than white and she was examined on the Dauphin’s orders before being allowed to lead. She passed the examination and was granted leave to wear men’s clothing for as long as her quest lasted – to set the future Charles VII on the throne and secure it for him. The issue of God’s authority, however, would be the thing that turned round to bite her in the butt.
Jeanne was tried for heresy. The main reason to do so being that questioning her legitimacy as a French hero questioned the legitimacy of the King she had helped crown, but this was only possible because she had declared her deeds God’s will. Along with ten other points, the heresy included wearing mens’ clothing when not necessary for her safety. Jeanne agreed to give up men’s clothing and returned to the “true faith” while maintaining she had never left it. Then a few days later she was back in men’s clothing following an (alleged) attempt on her virtue by an English noble in her prison cell. For this, effectively, she was burnt at the stake.
In terms of being a Soldier, Jeanne knowingly took on a quest that she and her society viewed as “men’s work”. She even got dispensation, following the examination at the Dauphin’s order, to wear men’s clothing suitable for the task. Although uneducated, she was clearly intelligent from the trial transcripts and letters left behind. The fact that she was learning to write (evidenced by her signature on her letters) shows that she was working to improve herself and achieve what she could. That she was in a hurry to do everything may not have been just the impatience of youth but also a sign of self-awareness – that she knew this dispensation could not last. This is without going into her visions, which either speak of her devoutness and / or of a certain canniness.
More Recent Examples and Modern Equivalence
The Wikipedia and Lothene pages have more examples of women in the early modern and modern periods of women involved in warfare. Without thinking too hard, I’m sure most of us can name a handful of women who have had a career rather than “just” being a wife and mother. That’s because, I think we can safely say, that almost everyone in modern life is a Soldier of some kind – we all go to work, most of us have responsibilities – whether that’s a family (or child-replacements) or not – and we all like to have our labour recognised.
The access to skills is still somewhat restricted – if you haven’t even heard of, say, nature conservation, how can you expect to know it’s available as a career choice? – and so there is still the allowance for our starting point in terms of social status and thus available opportunities, and most of us have an expected route through education into work. Few of us buck the trend – otherwise millionaires (and absolute poverty) wouldn’t be as rare and these things wouldn’t be a trend. At least, that seems to be the way in the UK.
Putting That In Writing
It would be Sod’s Law (Murphy’s Law to those less inclined to swearing) that bumping the numbers of active women up in a fantasy world would get dismissed as “unrealistic”. The response to such objections can be chosen from:
- “Unrealistic”? I thought I was writing fantasy, or,
- “Unrealistic”? Have you actually read any historic records? (I type, having done nothing but read tertiary sources – i.e. people writing about papers that mention original sources.)
A fair example of this is Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion [External Link]. Moon evened the odds slightly by referring to background women as something other than daughters, wives and mothers but the story starts when her main character, Paksenarrion (a woman), signed up with a mercenary company. At some point, Paksenarrion mentions that something like a quarter of the company were women. There are more individual women mentioned as knights and members of religious military orders but that’s the only “statistic” mentioned in the book. Having listed out a handful of the named characters, I’d say the odds there’s similar probability any given character in the books will be a woman – but they are well represented. (And there are several cultures represented, some of whom don’t let women fight and so their women don’t really turn up in the story.)
The result of this? I’ve seen the Deed of Paksenarrion listed as an “alternate history or world” where women are not smaller and weaker than men. In not quite those words but close enough. I’ve never had the guts to ask Ms Moon how she feels about this description but I consider it borderline nonsense – particularly when considering my own range of interests and the reading I’ve had to do for these blog posts.
So, back to our “standard” story roles. The main difference that will be seen is in the background characters – there are greater odds of a bit player turning out to be a woman, for example the guard that threw the hero out of the tavern could be a “Long Meg”. In terms of a main character, it will depend very much on the author’s choice of casting and it shouldn’t, probably, make a huge difference to how the story plays out. The thing that prevents an individual being picked to become a main character is the same as ever: Do they have the mobility (social and geographic) to achieve whatever it is the writer is asking of them?
In a moment of comparing against real life (historical or otherwise), we can assume that women will have less freedom that their men if the call to arms goes out to people with families. Women, as a general rule, are the primary care-givers. While this doesn’t stop an individual being kick-ass, it does stop that individual charging off after fame and glory, unless the decision to leave children behind in the care of other family members is going to be a key plot point. This also happens to a man because he gets to think happily of the wife and kids left behind, unless he’s a bastard who ran off and left them – for a woman, it’s more likely to be a case of angst versus no angst to show whether she’s a good or bad person.
- Protagonist – The end may be uncomfortable for the reader if the woman doesn’t go home to her children or end up secondary to her (male) love interest. A woman who doesn’t will be assumed asexual / not interested – and may need clues to that effect putting in the text. (“Unrealistic, you say?” Yes, this one’s going to keep coming up.)
- Antagonist – Given that we’ve tied Soldier-hood to social status, a Soldier villain is likely to be taking part in a local scale story. We’re not talking plans to take over the county, never mind the kingdom or the world. More likely, a villain would be someone with more impact, like a General or a Politician.
- Ally – People tend to assume that long-term platonic relationships between the genders are not possible, which would line this relationship up as part of the love interest angle. However, a Soldier would be a lot more than “just” a love interest. They would be capable – although not necessarily victorious every time – and this should show through.
- Advisor – Typically, a woman advisor would be expected to be more… spiritual, but there’s no reason why they can’t be military or skilled in a different craft – older mythology has examples of this.
- Unexpected Ally – There shouldn’t be anything different in how a female unexpected ally is won over from a male counterpart but it is fairly typical of what the audience expects to do so by appealing to her “feminine qualities”. i.e. the use of (potential) love as a daughter, wife or mother.
- Henchman – In order to underscore the “evil”, a henchman probably doesn’t care about their family life – this may be implied by a lack of mention rather than actually stated – and a too healthy interest in sex (because women just shouldn’t actually want to have sex, you know), possibly with the protagonist. This is not to say this is what should happen but it would be expected and makes for an easy summing up of the character.
- Traitor – As the inverse of the Unexpected Ally the same thinking applies.
The Women’s Role in Fantasy Fiction Blog Posts
I thought I’d make it easier to jump from post to post so the series is now linked at the bottom of each post. The six posts are:
- Women’s Roles in Fantasy Fiction
- Women’s Role Models: An Introduction
- Women’s Role Models: Ringers
- Women’s Role Models: Soldiers (this one)
- Women’s Role Models: Generals
- Women’s Role Models: Politicians