By Lecherous dragons.

Yes.... but in a different castle

Surrounded by lava

bump. This is an excellent question.

Bleach Well he follows his original topic eventually.

It depends. Corpses were only left as they fell, if there's no time to deal with them, or if they are already in a state where you don't want to touch them any more. If you got the time, you would want to strip them of their equipment and valuables. Militia were easy to replace back then, but their weapons were more expensive than the poor bastards wielding them. If you had no use for them, you'd dump them into the deepest water or bury them secretly. The corpses might get buried in mass graves, or dumped into the river to prevent diseases and animals coming to close to your men (or you simply move on). Moreover, you could even get ransom from a corpse, if the corpse was still identifiable. People back then thought that you would never find peace, if you aren't buried properly. Thus they rather pay then watching your men dragging the corpses by horse around the castle or doing other grisly things...

Larry Lewis Tolkien has a short story set in the aftermath of a battle: _The Homecoming of Behortnoth_.

i'd reckon it also depended on the cultures involved in the battle's, as well as the reason behind the war, if it's a holy war, chances are your enemy isn't going to respect you enough to grant you burial, if it's more a civil war/pretender chances are after a battle both sides are going to be buried, should the opportunity be there

but what if the old lord previously conquered them by pillaging and raping their motherland?

@@ballom29 They probably will still turn on the conqueror.

Rufei I mean, the castle is generally considered to be a European creation. I don't think the Japanese "castles" actually fit the traditional definition, rather the name has been retrospectively applied to them.

Japanese castles protected a feudal lord who administered a region, loosely adherent to the dictates of the emperor or shogun (whoever was in power). They were fortified against invasion and had garrisons. Seems to walk, quack, and taste like a castle to me.

Rufei Yes but were most of them built as castles or where they fortress that were later occupied by feudal lords or, fortified cities with residences within them. Or manor houses that increasingly fortified until they resembled castles? That's my point, there is actually much debate as to whether Japanese castles fit the definition of castles, since a castle must be built to be a fortified home for a ruling Lord from the get go, not start as a fort or regular house. Look into man, it's interesting reading. As I said, castles do originate in Europe, around 9th century, if they do appear in Japan, it's not till significantly later , but again whether these actually count as castles is hotly debated, maybe not for the average Joe, but from a historical perspective. The evolution of the shiro and the characteristics of their design vs the castles of Europe and the Middle East are actually fairly distinct.

Some of the more manor-like "castles" in Japan resemble the siheyuan, the standard Chinese architectural layout of a family's residence. This comes as no surprise since Japan copied most of its cultural relics from Chinese culture, especially Tang Chinese culture. What's interesting is how walled and defensive the siheyuan already is - a typical rich siheyuan would have a main door and another internal door offset from the main door, with that area being a sort of receiving area for guests. It would be relatively easy to convert such a format into a more castle-like design afterwards. It is possible that Japan didn't have certain technologies until later in history. Through most of its history, it has been a backwater place, playing a very minor role in the region compared to the China region. I would only expect it to have European technologies if it effectively bordered it, which was not the case until at least the age of sail. Since China was imperial by 200 BC, there really wasn't any need to develop feudal defenses. What may be interesting to look at is the lack of Japanese city walls. You'd think that they'd copy that feature from Chinese cities if they wanted defensive structures. However the feudal system of Japan prohibited such construction, ergo we have to expect _some_ defensive structure for the lords of a domain. If you look south to Ryukyu Kingdom, castles were plentiful. They are all in ruins now except for one, but it definitely demonstrates that the region had feudal defensive structures designed to protect lords. If the Ryukyu kings made them and they waged war with Satsuma Domain for quite a while, you'd expect Japanese lords to do the same thing. Certainly they had novel characteristics, but they had to serve the same purpose, no?

Rufei That's what I'm saying, it's complicated. I've just found that if you look into the history of many prominent "castles" in Japan, a lot of them were actually built as military installations and then later occupied by lords or manor buildings gradually fortified as the feudal era developed. So calling them "castles" might be convenient for the average Joe, but actually applying a European label to a style of building in a completely different cultural setting with a distinct technological evolution, is somewhat lazy in my opinion.

Its not just looking impressive, its a matter of status. The new studies, at least here in Germany, tend to see castles, especially smaller castles built by the lower nobility, more as status symbols than as defence works. Not always and not solely as such but still it plays an important part. The castle shows whos the boss and it serves as an visible border of status between the feudal lord and his subjects. Besides the defence parts and other important functions like generating tax...well, im just 2 years too late for this comment :D

@@Nivalyr It's never to late. Thanks for info and ideas! C:

Could you make "best weapons for 4-handed creatures"? It would be quite nice

Shadiversity 7:09 Is it polite to pause the video to bask in the beauty of this?

Shad, try to take into consideration social reasons and not only physiology. I understand that Orcs would make an excellent heavy infantry clad in heavy plate and armed with halberds but where'd they get all these goodies and more importantly how would they be able to field and sustain all of this?

Hi Shad! Please make review of Vergen from The Witcher 2. Or La Valette castle?

it will be interesting to see what variant of orc you go for. i have seen orc that are bruisers and i have seen orc that are more goblin like.

It's a pleasure.

Same here. I've gone back and re-written a couple of chapters in the past couple of weeks because I made egregious errors in castle design. Cheers, Shad, for saving me from humiliation at the hands of my historian friends.

Good luck world builder! If you are interested, check out the world building subreddit on Reddit, /r/worldbuilding.

And /r/fantasywriters is a good place for getting critiques and writing advice.

It's funny, but as a result of all of the historical youtube channels I have been watching I've started to notice, even in writers that I greatly admire, the gross misuse of physics in fictional architecture. For example, the considerable amount of time Shad dedicates to speaking about medieval and gothic architecture allowed me to identify when authors make the mistake of describing enormously heavy upper floors - like entire city blocks - supported by mere wooden supports. Because of the low compressive strength in wood, this would of course be preposterous. Wood is only feasible as a load-bearing support when talking about discrete structures with very few additional floors and where those floors are limited in size - probably no more area than a few hundred square meters. Furthermore, if stone is used to support stone floors, any hollow volume - for example a great hall or wine cellar - has to include vaulted ceilings to avoid putting shearing force on the stone, which is dangerous. Vaulted ceilings and archways leverage the compressive strength of stone, which is enormous.

With great difficulty. I know you want more than that but it's a subject for a whole video and I can't really do it justice in a comment reply.

I was actually hoping to get a video on the subject since there doesn't seem to be one anywhere on the internet. So if you could squeeze it into your schedule i would much appreciate it if you made a video

Yes, please. I would love a video or series on that.

And turning the locals against you, making it easier for the lords of the castles to rally troops against you and even if you eventually take the land, there will be rebellion.

So it looks like Robert Baratheon had nothing to fear from the Dothraki after all.

>On why castles aren't commonly on the top of huge mountains tens of miles from large cities. Well, this one's kinda obvious when you ask MrBtongue's question.

Me to but time is always an issue unfortunately.

At the moment I'm a fulltime carer for my wife.

My pleasure mate ^_^

Makes my day ^_^

When are you planning on writing it? What will it be about

Send out a messenger at nighttime via the sallyport. Would he get seen? not really. Night provides good cover and the besieging army needs to remain at a safe distance form the castle when not launching an assault. Castles shoot arrows after all.

Bear in mind that the common folk living near the castle have fled. If they couldn't get into their own castle at least some would run to the next castle over. Armies move slower than a 'runner' as the army has to move provisions, pack and setup tents and so on. Also once the siege began we are talking days to weeks to months of the army being outside the castle. Word gets around during that time that an enemy army is there. That enemy army might be at Castle A today but the Lord's of Castle B, C, D, E and so on know that army might come for them next season. Now is a good time to group up and teach that attacker to leave the castles of this area alone.

Did they use homing pigeons in the medieval ages?

They would probably send messengers before the siege even began.

African or European?

In democracy its your vote that counts, in feudalism its your count that votes.

@Gad Yariv - I am a Brit, and I agree. Feudalism and Castles were not created or invented in England after the Norman Conquest. They were already established institutions in France that were imported into England by the Normans. You need to go back earlier than 1066 to look for the origins of feudalism and castles. Feudalism operated a bit differently in England than in the homeland of France - in England it was a more centralised system where the vassals were more clearly subordinate to the power of the King, so despite the lack of centralised standing armies and the pyramidal power structure, you still had a more centralised and unitary state. In France, many of the King’s vassals were essentially as powerful as the King, so the overlordship of the king was largely symbolic, with each major lord governing as he saw fit in his own territory. Same pyramidal power structure with military force based on the feudal levy, but more effectively implemented (at least from the perspective of the central power/the King) in England.

Thats not what I got out of it.

And sometimes you have to remind the French speaking folks to take a shower lmao.

B1 Laxson Is castellated an actual word? Honest question. 😆

Thanks mate, I'm very happy with it ^_^

Shadiversity And the big castle at the beggining is Huniazilor's Castle in west Romania ! yey !

Indeed

Sun Tsu was Chinese and didn't know castles.

Yeah, I'm loving it ^_^