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Putting on my pedant hat...

Well, I may have made a couple of statements that were misleading. Knights, of course, are a feudal term that isn't really fully developed in the Chanson - these guys are more on a par with, say Anglo-Saxon huscarls, Varangian guards or Druzhniki of a Rus royal household than true fuedal knights.

"Knighthood" itself, went through several rounds of re-interpretation, including the early crusading knight, the religious orders like the hospitallers & templars, ideals of Domnei & courtly love, the chivalric romances and so forth, leading up to someone like Sir Galahad in Malory's Morte de Arthur who is probably the prime example from medieval literature for the Paladin as we see them in RPGs.

Another primo read on medieval thoughts on Knighthood would be: "The Knight's Tale" from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - nowhere near as funny as the Miller's tale - but worthwhile for a fairly realistic and historically authentic depiction of a knight.

Ariosto's Orlando Furioso like Spencer's Faerie Queen are both excellent, but rather difficult reads.

Monty Python, while funny, is not strictly authentic. (Insert appropriate quote here)

Originally posted by Coot
Jan Janssen is Dutch.

Certainly not! It's as Swedish as it gets! Darn us Northern Europeans and our names...

Originally posted by Jaesha
Certainly not! It's as Swedish as it gets! Darn us Northern Europeans and our names...

If it were swedish wouldn't it be Jan Jansson? Jans(s?)en is definetely a Dutch surname.... might be taken as Norwegian or Danish, but I know of atleast 3 ppl who are Dutch and have Janssen as a surname.....

maybe those Scandinavian stole it from us.....

Originally posted by NiteWulf
maybe those Scandinavian stole it from us.....

lol..... maybe.... is it like a national tresure in The netherlands/Holland..... if it isn't then why did we steal it....hmmmm.....

Originally posted by fable
I suspect a keyphrase may be "Japanese-sounding" where Yoshimo's name is concerned, for Amero-European audiences. A friend and I differ where his personality traits (as revealed in the first chapter, at least) are concerned. He finds Yoshimo's mixture of sly competence and apparent fear resembles Jackie Chan films, while to me, that fear comes off as down-to-earth pragmatism--which along with his obvious skill and casual friendliness brings to mind Toshiro Mifune's famed samurai in Kurosawa's great pair of films, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. (Leone and Eastwood remade Yojimbo as Fistful of Dollars, but the original is so much better.)

@Fable: "Yojimbo"/"Fistful of Dollars" was also remade into "Last Man Standing" with Bruce Willis. But I'm not sure I can agree with your comparison of Mifune's character to that of Yoshimo's. In "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" Mifune is more gruff than friendly, though he is always very helpful even as he berates and scolds his adopted allies. As a clanless unemployed samurai he is bored and looking for opportunities - messing with wealthy corrupt evil doers, whether or not there's much of a reward, seems to be something he enjoys. Sanjuro/Mifune would have 5 points on katanas, 20 strength (Mifune was a large powerful actor) and 18+ dexterity whereas Yoshi's stats and skills pale in comparison. Nor was Sanjuro a dishonorable groveling thief, rather an honorable, self-confident opportunist. Yoshi seems more like one of the blow-hard samurai wannabes in Yojimbo - like those that Mifune cuts to pieces when they think they can bully him. For example, from Yojimbo:

Mifune (casually walking down street with toothpick in mouth and arms hidden inside his robes as he encounters gang of evil samurai): "What gentle faces."

Posturing thugs: "What?"

Mifune: "Anger makes you look even sweeter."

Posturing thug #1: "See this prison tattoo? I wasn't in there for nothing."

Posturing thug #2: "The law is after me! I'll hang if I'm ever caught!"

Posturing thug #3: "Me too. They'll cut my head off someday. I've done everything bad!"

Mifune: "You're all tough, then?"

Posturing thug #3: "What? Kill me if you can!"

Mifune: "It'll hurt."

Anonomous Thug: "A coward can't be no gambler!"

Mifune: "Can't help fools!"

Mifune and thugs draw katanas and with two strokes Mifune kills two thugs and then cuts another's arm off as the wounded armless man kneels on ground screaming and Mifune saunters off down the road. Somehow this doesn't evoke images of the Ever Feared Yoshimo.

Or as adapted in "Last Man Standing":

Posturing gangster (i.e. Yoshi type): "I guess, maybe, you'll have to kill me."

Bruce Willis (i.e. Mifune type): "It will hurt if I do." Followed by awesome hail of bullets from Bruce's two .45 automatics blowing gangster through the door into the street. That's just not our Yoshi.

God, I love that line. I don't remember whether Leone/Eastwood incorporated this scene, but if they did and anyone knows the dialog please post it.

Originally posted by UncleScratchy
@Fable: "Yojimbo"/"Fistful of Dollars" was also remade into "Last Man Standing" with Bruce Willis. But I'm not sure I can agree with your comparison of Mifune's character to that of Yoshimo's. In "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" Mifune is more gruff than friendly, though he is always very helpful even as he berates and scolds his adopted allies.

This is something so tenuous, so personal that it has to be left up to the individual. I would say in my defense that the nameless samurai hero in Yojimbo hides his heart and good nature behind a mask of gruffness, but Gonji, the old sake seller, has his number: "You just act that way to fool people." The samurai *has* to act that way in Yojimbo, because he can't afford to let the mask fall in a town divided completely between two gangs, where only the sake seller and coffin maker remain unbought. In Sanjuro--a much more "talkie" film, that friendliness is more apparent. If our hero weren't good-natured, he wouldn't congratulate Iori Izaki and his friends (they take the praise very much to heart) after the latter agrees to stop judging people and situations based on appearances (which of course becomes one of the major themes of the film). In fact, one of the elements of character that leads Izaki and his friends to repeatedly distrust the samurai is his lack of haughty reserve. He is continually down-to-earth, conversational, treating them as younger companions in need of guidance. Just as with his willingness to accept money, this horrifies the earnest, traditional young men, who expect a distant, frowning figure that ignores "mundane" matters, and probably quotes Musashi constantly. A sort of sane Tatewaki Kuno.

In retrospect, you (and my friend) may be right about our samurai in Yojimbo, but I think I'm right about him in Sanjuro. De gustibus.

Re: Putting on my pedant hat...

Originally posted by nephtu
"Knighthood" itself, went through several rounds of re-interpretation, including the early crusading knight, the religious orders like the hospitallers & templars, ideals of Domnei & courtly love, the chivalric romances and so forth, leading up to someone like Sir Galahad in Malory's Morte de Arthur who is probably the prime example from medieval literature for the Paladin as we see them in RPGs.

An excellent summation. I would only add that some orders of knighthood were created strictly in counter to the semi-sacred character of knighthood, which was seen in certain quarters as an attempt by the RCC to encroach on royal privileges.

The book I was thinking about, above, is Maurice Keen's Chivalry, available from Yale Press, and well worth it for its annotated, thorough research and articulateness. He begins the work by noting the sources of notions of chivalry (which subsequently fed into our ideas of paladinship). The Libre del Ordre de Cavayleria of Ramon Lull (latter part of the 13th century), for example, is described at length, ending with the ideals of knighthood: "He will be a man courteous and nobly spoken, well clad, one who holds open house within the limits of his means. Loyalty and truth, hardiness, largesse and humility will be the principal qualities that we ought to expect in him," and again, later, "Courtesy, loyalty, hardiness, largesse, franchise." Lull himself was a likely catalyst for the whole paladin mythos, being a wealthy, philandering nobleman of some attainment who Got Religion. he developed an elaborate, mystical concept of the universe (which would have gotten him burnt at the stake three hundred years, later), and decided that his mission in life should be to personally convert every follower of Islam to Christianity. He saw knighthood from the perspective of what it was, and tried to make it into something else, again.

Another influential author of the subject of chivalry was Geoffrey de Charny. His battlefield knighthood credentials place him at the right hand of the French monarchs. He was a member of the knightly and new Order of the Star, created by the French in opposition to Edward III's Order of the Garter, and was appointed bearer of the French king's royal standard, the Oriflamme of St. Denis. He died guarding it at the battle of Poitiers in 1356--talk about romantic.

De Charny wrote three texts on chivalry. They focus on the entire structure of knighhood as a class and an attainment. Keen notes one essential distinction with Lull, whom he says de Charny obviously read: "He is indeed concerned with the tinernal world, as we have seen, but the indices of chivalrous achievement that he suggests are external acts and the repute that has attached to them. In this way his book offers a kind of identikit picture which will assist us in recognizing one who has achieved great things in chivalry by the pattern of his experience and its range, without having to probe for subjective reactions which are unverifiable. He will be a man who has been at jousts and tournaments and at war in other lands beside his own, who has served his lord in arms and has crossed the sea in quest of adventures and fame."

Between the two--Lull on the innate qualities, de Charny on the external actions--we have a pretty good measure of what became the concept of knighthood at its height in the early Renaissance of the 15th century, and the paladin-like qualities in modern AD&D. We can see both sides, Lull and de Charny, in Keldorn, who is first found questing and battling evil, and who later bores everybody with his moral sententiousness. By contrast, Anomen knows how to fight and wishes to quest, but he lacks the Lullesque, inner qualities of the paladin when you first him.

Wow!

Gotta check that out, thanks for the info, fable

Ah, i hope it is not redundant, but Yoshimo is most definately Japanese, he speaks Japanese in some of his lines, when you click on him and give him orders. "so desu ne" and "yokata" are two examples.

Originally posted by fable
This is something so tenuous, so personal that it has to be left up to the individual. I would say in my defense that the nameless samurai hero in Yojimbo hides his heart and good nature behind a mask of gruffness, but Gonji, the old sake seller, has his number: "You just act that way to fool people." ...

We all tend to see different personality attributes in the NPCs depending on our predispostions. It's nice to meet another fan of Kurosawa and Mifune. My favorite Mifune role has to be that of Musashi in the 3 part epic of his life (even though the "Samurai" trilogy are not Kurosawa films). Though much of it has been romanticized at least the last dual is particularly faithful to the historical accounts. I've toyed with the idea of playing BG2 with a Musashi type protagonist, possibly a kensai dualed to mage or cleric, wielding a custom made two handed wooden katana (patterned after one of those staff spears or staff maces). A kensai mage with 4 or 5 points on staff instead of katanas is extremely effective, especially if equipped with the Staff of the Magi.

... In retrospect, you (and my friend) may be right about our samurai in Yojimbo, but I think I'm right about him in Sanjuro. ...

That may be. I won't belabor it, but I will opine that Yoshi is certainly no Jackie Chan character. IIRC, Chan's characters are usually portrayed as naieve, loyal, honest to the core, likeable protagonists. The only similarity I see between a Chan character and Yoshi is the "likeable" part. Other than that Yoshi is a miserable, cowardly traitor. Had Yoshi any honor or courage at all he would have committed sepaku (or whatever they call it in Kara-Tur) rather than submit to his geas and betray a friend.

Originally posted by UncleScratchy
It's nice to meet another fan of Kurosawa and Mifune. My favorite Mifune role has to be that of Musashi in the 3 part epic of his life (even though the "Samurai" trilogy are not Kurosawa films).

Agreed: you don't find many people who know about the great films in Japanese cinema. My favorite Mifune? Maybe Drunken Angel, or Yojimbo. Both allow him to show his extraordinary range. My favorite Kurosawa? Without question, Ran. I'm also very partial to Mizoguchi's films, particularly Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, and Sansho the Bailiff.

Though much of it has been romanticized at least the last dual is particularly faithful to the historical accounts. I've toyed with the idea of playing BG2 with a Musashi type protagonist, possibly a kensai dualed to mage or cleric...

Fascinating. I wish you the best of luck with it. If you're at all inclined towards fiction, I'd really enjoy reading a "journal" of this character's inner responses through BG2, up in this forum.

Other than that Yoshi is a miserable, cowardly traitor. Had Yoshi any honor or courage at all he would have committed sepaku (or whatever they call it in Kara-Tur) rather than submit to his geas and betray a friend.

In justice to my friend, I think he viewed Yoshi's humor, mock fear and agility as being the characteristics that brought out his "Jackie Chan-ness." That's the extent of my defense for him, though, since I disagree.

My 2 gold on this one...

Uncle Scratchy, I think your view of Yoshimo is, perhaps, excessively harsh. I liked Yoshimo a lot as an NPC, and the Spellhold betrayal struck me as a really effective & rather poignant piece of storytelling.

However, an apologia for Yoshimo is just a little silly, so I'll forego that.

Now I need to go out & rent some Kurosawa films.

Hey, for anyone who's interested in reading about how paladins should act, Geoffroi de Charny's The Book of Chivalry is now available at an extraordinarily reduced price. It's a modern translation by Kaeuper and Kennedy, and the publisher in the University of Pennsylvania Press. It's a hardcover book that retailed for $45; until the end of June, the publishers are offering it for $5.50. That's a bargain, if this is something you think you might like. Bear in mind, it is not written in "medieval lite" as some books in modern games. Though thoroughly modernized in language, the book is a serious discourse on what could and should be expected in the way of actions from knights, by a man who himself was considered the epitome of knighthood under the early Renaissance French kings. (He died protecting Oriflamme, the supposedly sacred and magical banner of France, in battle against the English.) Worth considering, at least.

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