Writing Horses in Fantasy: How Authentic Should You Be?

[goldhawk]

I feel compelled to point out that it wasn't Tolkien's knowledge of languages that made Lord of the Rings great. It was the fact that he served in WWI and lost all of his boyhood friends in battle. It was this that allowed him to create such meaningful friendships in his book: Frodo and Sam; Legolas, Gimli, and Aragron. And it was that that makes LotR great.

 

[sabolich]

I feel compelled to point out that it wasn't Tolkien's knowledge of languages that made Lord of the Rings great. It was the fact that he served in WWI and lost all of his boyhood friends in battle. It was this that allowed him to create such meaningful friendships in his book: Frodo and Sam; Legolas, Gimli, and Aragron. And it was that that makes LotR great.

Very true. I did say that the languages gave it a layer that other books don't have because of Tolkien's expertise. They are certainly not the point of or even the best part of the book.

 

[goldhawk]

But to get back to horses, I always wondered what the differences between the modern breeds and horses of the middle ages? Where they as capable as modern breeds? If not, how did they differ?

 

[sabolich]

But to get back to horses, I always wondered what the differences between the modern breeds and horses of the middle ages? Where they as capable as modern breeds? If not, how did they differ?

Excellent question. Modern breeds arise from horses bred for specific purposes. The huge draft breeds were not, as some believe, originally the "great horses" of the knights. They were and always have been bred for farm work and pulling big loads. They would have been much too slow to make a good warhorse. Even the destriers weren't a lot bigger or stouter than the normal run-of-the-mill horse of the Middle Ages. Lippizans and Friesians were directly bred for war, and most such breeds, including Thoroughbreds, trace back to the Arabian horses that were imported all over Europe. The Arabs had the first really organized breeding programs and produced very fine horses, but 15.2 hands was a tall horse back then. They needed speed and agility, not muscle mass, so they bred for height and good bone while retaining a certain athleticism.

As I stated in my blog post on warhorses, most horses of that era were relatively short. Most native breeds were pretty tough, much more so than some of the overbred beasts we have today. For endurance and ability to live rough, those nags probably had it all over ours. Many modern breeds have certain problems arising from breeding for conformation or speed or color.

http://blog.sabolich.info

 

[goldhawk]

Though I'm interested in warhorses, I'm also interested in horses for transportation. Although the horse wasn't used much as a draft animal until the introduction of the horse collar, I was wondering how the riding horse differs from those of today.

 

[Varangian]

Sabolich,

I agree with you, unless it's a children's book, I think it's very important to portray horses accurately.

One great example of this is David Gemmell's work. You can clearly see the time and effort he has put into studying horses by the knowledge his characters display of them in his books.

I was never a horse person until I met my now wife (who is a horse fanatic). But when I first met her horse, I knew that blowing gently into its nose was a way of greeting and that if its ears were plastered back to its skull it was either pissed off or frightened. She was really impressed with my limited knowledge. I know a little more about horses now (we currently own 4 of the buggers), but at the time all of my knowledge of horses came from David Gemmell's fiction books.

In short, portray horses well, they are a beautiful animal and deserve the respect of being represented accurately (unless it's a kiddies book about unicorns and sparkly dragons etc. etc.)

 

[sabolich]

Though I'm interested in warhorses, I'm also interested in horses for transportation. Although the horse wasn't used much as a draft animal until the introduction of the horse collar, I was wondering how the riding horse differs from those of today.

Easy-gaited horses were very popular in the Middle Ages, what were called "amblers", now known as pacers. They were the forerunners of Tennessee Walking Horses and Missouri Foxtrotters and other such breeds known for the smoothness of their gaits. Even the knights rode jennets or palfreys rather than the rougher-gaited warhorse when not actively expecting battle, to save both the destrier's strength and the knight's bones from being rattled apart. Ambling mules were also popular if they could be had. Mules and donkeys were the poor man's transportation of the four-footed variety. Supposedly clerics rode mules as a sign of humility, but some of the upper crust of the church put on fully as many airs as anyone else and rode the best horses they could get their hands on. Merchants would likely have packed more mules than horses, being cheaper and tougher and generally easier to handle in groups.

Arabs and Barbs were imported left and right to improve the native breeds, giving them height, speed, beauty and "fire". Most of the horses ridden by the Scots and Irish and likely most English before the late Middle Ages would have been classified as ponies today. Look at older breeds like Fjords and Irish Draughts and you will see they're short but stout. You would not see great big draft horses like Shires and Percherons and Belgians because they just did not exist, nor did the warmbloods and rangy, finer-boned, speedy hotbloods of today.

Does that help?

 

[Toby Frost]

So what would a knight have ridden into battle in the late medieval period? I've always assumed someone like a bad-tempered shire horse, but are shire horses a Georgian invention?

On a broader note, I do wish some military SF writers would do a bit more research on how wars are actually won, rather than "my elite soldiers are more brutal/fanatical than yours and hence we will win the war".

 

[Brian G Turner]

Since so much fantasy is built around medieval-type worlds, complete with horses, I personally believes it behooves the author to use the critters correctly.

Reading history always inspired my writing with detail. I went to a number of live re-enactment events as research.

I also learned to ride a horse for about 8 weeks, got a hernia, and had a horrendous operation for it.

Will probably still get some horse details wrong, but as a reader, I figure so long as mistakes are minor and not a distraction, then no problem. It's when general historical errors throw themselves in your face all the time.

Started a thread a while back pointing out how I couldn't get past the first page of an historical fiction book I bought set in ancient Greece. The first scene began in a tavern: a man sat in a chair, drinking a glass of wine. Those two elementary mistakes on the first page meant I couldn't face the likely mess in the following pages.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Well, I think the wine part could have been right, Brian-Greece does have its grape vineyards.


But a tavern? That would have been quite a stretch. That probably would have been like having him making whole wheat bread.

 

[goldhawk]

It's got me confused too. The ancient Greeks had wine, they had chairs, they had glass, they even had places that sold alcoholic beverages though they weren't called taverns back then. But I would allow the author creative licence to call a drinking establishment a tavern.

 

[The Judge]

Would they have been chairs, or stools? And although they had glass, would an ordinary inn use them for drinks? I've no idea about tavernas in Ancient Greece, but just because a place sold alcohol in the past doesn't mean it was always an inn -- it might be the equivalent of an off-licence, so people would take their own jugs to fill and then return home to drink their wine/beer/whatever with their meal.

 

[HareBrain]

Brian will have to specify what he found unlikely, but certainly wine glasses wouldn't have been known in Ancient Greece. Glass-blowing wasn't developed until the first century BC, and before then, glass would have been much more expensive than pottery. It wouldn't have been used as tableware in a tavern.

 

[Peter Graham]

It'll be the whole thing about table and chairs too. The tavern in the book was presumably organised like a 20th century British pub.

This is what I was getting at when I was talking about painstakingly researched horses turning up at yet another pastiche inn. The history of the pub is a fascinating - and very complex - subject, yet most fantasy authors just serve up a slightly reheated version of the Prancing Pony.

This is the problem with sabolich's argument - the level of research needed to keep everything at a cosnsistently high level of verisimilitude is, for the vast majority of us, simply going to be impossible. It'll get harder still if we actually get published and have to knock out a novel every 18 months or so.

So, if I am reading a book in which gallons of ink have been spillled telling me about how the hero is riding a destrier rather than a palfrey and precisely how the rigging is set up and how long said destrier can bounce along before needing X amount of hard tack (because, of course, they won't be put to grass during the winter months or whatever), I'm going to think - "narrative realism - here we go!". So when the hero turns up at a remote village (alarm bells already ringing) and stops off at the village pub which, despite the lack of any infrastructure, is kitted out like a 12th century Little Chef, I'm going to be very, very disappointed that the author has been unable to maintain their chosen narrative style.

Regards,

Peter

 

[Brian G Turner]

Well, I think the wine part could have been right, Brian-Greece does have its grape vineyards.

Indeed, but chairs were reserved for lords with everyday folk sitting on benches or stools, and glass was so expensive to make that it remained available only for the rich until recent times.

 

[Toby Frost]

So, if I am reading a book in which gallons of ink have been spillled telling me about how the hero is riding a destrier rather than a palfrey and precisely how the rigging is set up and how long said destrier can bounce along before needing X amount of hard tack (because, of course, they won't be put to grass during the winter months or whatever), I'm going to think - "narrative realism - here we go!".

I would argue that at this point - unless the story is very closely linked to horses, beyond the usual level in a fantasy novel - something is up. This detail may well be the sort of thing the writer ought to know, but whether it ought to be put on the reader will surely depend very much on the sort of story and the circumstances.

If the hero is struggling through a snowy mountain pass, wondering whether is better off riding his horse or eating it, that sort of detail seems right. But unless the horse is in the foreground of the story, I don't see the need to describe it as though it is, in the same way that a story about a murder won't describe the victim's clothes in intense detail unless it's of relevance to the murder (but still shouldn't get the clothing wrong).

 

[goldhawk]

Indeed, but chairs were reserved for lords with everyday folk sitting on benches or stools, and glass was so expensive to make that it remained available only for the rich until recent times.

So our would-be hero is standing in a wine shop, drinking wine from a ceramic cup.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Have edited the original post with an updated link.

For more on horses, she wrote a few more interesting pieces, which can be found here:
Words from Thin Air: horses in fiction

 

[JoanDrake]

In re the Tolkien inconsistencies, just about all of them can be handwaved away by pointing out that magic works and is a pretty big part of Middle Earth. Gandalf could easily make Shadowfax unable even to see the orkish spears as he flew over them and Sauron would find feeding his armies from thin air to be chlld's play. (I still can't explain the hobbit's clothes and Dymaxion housing though. Maybe it was just fashion and hobbit's were actually very cutting edge?)


I think the OP's problem is mainly with historical fiction and fantasies where magic is not that big of an element. As I've never read much "realistic" fantasy beyond ASoIaF I've really never seen the problem that much. Martin does go out of his way to make his horses defecate realistically on occasion, and I think that's quite enough.