i did a tier list video a little while back where i reviewed the armor for the witcher and when i
got to Calanthe’s armor i said there was something about it that bugged me but i didn't know what it
was did i appreciate that they put her in plate armor yes did i appreciate the lion motif and
the actual helmet yes did it look weird to me also yes also i asked my commenters what they
thought the problem was and that my friends was in education all on its own so we're going to
do some completely unnecessary nitpicking this is going to be a long video and we're also going to
contrast Calanthe’s armor to some other women in plate armor i've been asked to look at to see if
we can do better this isn't to pick on Calanthe in particular it's just an illustration of the kinds
of problems that you might run into when you're designing armor particularly when you also have
to budget for yennefer's dresses the categories of problem most commonly identified were character
material and of course CONTEXT! AHH! yes indeed uh context but they do intertwine so let's get into
it let's start with materials because they're the most straightforward i tend to go very easy
on material in armor when it comes to live action media because i understand that metal is expensive
and harder to work with than say plastic and also they have a lot of people they need to outfit and
also lighter is better because actors get tired but if we're going to be thorough and i hope that
we are then there is a somewhat insubstantial look to Calanthe’s armor the breastplate looks
very thin um it's got kind of weird edges the spaulders look kind of plasticky there's kind of a
larp armor feel is what i'm saying not that larp armor can't look really good but you know what i
mean also the color in the pictures particularly looks a bit off and the gambeson looks like it's
made of non-natural fibers and also looks thin just insubstantial now again i do get time and
budgeting constraints but all of these things together sort of contribute to the feeling
of ehh and particularly because of the thin gambeson and the small spaulders she doesn't
look balanced or of a size with the rich Cintrans who are in plate armor particularly her husband
if you look at alice in alice in wonderland in the context of the movie when you're watching it you
know doing its job it looks good it looks really good i would rank it i'd wear it or for those of
you who watch the witcher video uh toss a coin to your designer the shiny fabric which i'm not sure
if meant to be gambeson or magic metallic fabric does look kind of thin also gorget where helmet
existing question mark but even in the picture of the costume where you can clearly see that it's
not made of metal the silhouette looks balanced it is sort of aesthetically appealing the besaugues
and the pauldrons give you wider shoulders and a sort of bigger chest which gives you that more
imposing look and there's plenty of coverage of the whole body so even though it looks a little
bit off materials wise aesthetically you know the shape looks balanced so the combination of
Calanthe having spaulders instead of pauldrons and a lack of upper arm protection and wearing a thin
gambeson sort of comes together to give you a kind of strange silhouette like her arms contrast badly
with the breastplate which is quite boxy actually the breastplate is a whole set of issues in and
of itself being ill-fitting by being both too big and too small at the same time albeit in different
dimensions now zac evans is a subscriber of mine and also a jousting and reenacting type and he
made a response video to mine where he said that Calanthe’s breastplate looks to be inspired by
a sort of late 15th early 16th century gothic armor and he based that on the fact that it has
the tassets which are sort of segmented that's the upper thigh armor which actually looks pretty
good you know credit where it's due well it looks pretty good in the silver armor i'm not
entirely sure about the gold but never mind and he also based that impression on the fluting on
the breastplate which i also like because i just like fluting yeah sue me but he said that the big
problem is that the front is really really flat and it's flat to the point that it looks almost
exactly like a back plate instead of a breastplate he was not alone in that opinion so there were
people suggesting that it looked exactly like a backplate which it does and then other people were
saying no no it's just because you're used to boob armor that's what the problem is but no that ain't
it because even men's breastplates have a curve because you know breathing and blow deflection
and force redistribution we'll come back to that in a sec the we took a backplate and stuck it
on the front impression is also strengthened by the fact that the armholes are just a little bit
small and restrictive often with something like this you have mail underneath so you'd either
have voiders which sort of cover the underarm area or you have a full on hauberk which is like a mail
shirt if you're going the whole hog but even if you only have a gambeson underneath like
the regular Cintran soldiers then you can see that their armholes come in further to give
them more mobility on the subject of mail if we look at snow white in snow white and the huntsman
i was initially quite confused by the mail in this armor i mean materially i'm not sure how
much of it is actually made of metal but again movies ask me if i care no not really my actual
confusion stems from the fact that this arm mail and down here greave and this arm no mail and down
here no greave i think that the reason for this is that she has a relatively large shield and
i'm always happy to see a shield shields are relatively rare in visual media so you know
yay for that but i guess then it makes more sense because your arm has already been protected by the
big shield you don't want to double up on weight and protection shields are already heavy so
okay i kind of get it it does look a bit weird when you just see her walking around without
her shield though but the other problem that is created by not having mail on that arm is that
we can see that that's not a gambeson that she's wearing it's just like a thin kind of leather-ish
shirt i mean there's also no throat protection and no helmet but how often do i get these things
snow white's armor as a whole is serviceable i'd say it's pretty good but i do hope that she has
that shield on her at all times otherwise it's just gonna be like hey come and attack
my unarmored left side on the subject of the gorget which is the throat protection
if you look at galadriel in the new rings of power screenshots i guess uh she has one it's very tight
though i'm going to assume this is just because elves are really magically amazing at making
armor i believe that tolkien was more into mail than plate armor but i get why you might have to
change that up because audiences have been trained to think that mail armor is absolutely useless
don't get me started anyway back to Calanthe and breastplates interestingly aside from that looks
like a backplate the most common other kind of comment i got about the breastplate was
that's giving me 19th century cuirassier vibes as opposed to 15 16th century gothic plate vibes so a
cuirassier is a cavalry soldier whose main form of armor is the cuirass hence the name i think they
first appeared in the mid to late 16th century and that was also when they were most heavily armored
and their thing was sword plus pistol plus horse i don't believe that the witcher universe
has pistols and so from an historical perspective you might think well that's a bit of a mismatch
which isn't necessarily a deal breaker but given how tightly arms and armor are
tied together in terms of capabilities that might have made them more historically minded among you
look at it askance luckily for me i'm not particularly historically minded so
these cuirassiers of count pappenheim have some similarities to Calanthe including
those tassets but they have much more substantial shoulder and upper arm protection and so they look
more balanced and so we're back to aesthetics and not just aesthetics but aesthetics and looking
like the people around you and the later ones skip upper and lower arm protection almost entirely and
also do away with the tassets so there really are just cuirass sword pistol horse and helmet
obviously here's a napoleonic cuirassier and his epic facial hair in 1809 for example and please
note that even on monsieur french cuirassier’s cuirass you have a much more pronounced curve at
the front of the breastplate men's breastplates have it snow white has it galadriels has it
alice's has it it's a unisex thing breathing is a unisex thing i'm not sure why they did this
either as several people have suggested they mixed up a breast plate with a back plate or
they deliberately put on the back plate because they thought boob plate is silly we must have
something flat i mean it's true you don't need two separate breast holes for women that's silly
i made a whole video about it all breastplates sit proud of the chest both so there is room for the
chest to expand to breathe and also so that the force of blows isn't just transmitted into the
body when you get hit versus there's more on that in Zac’s video i'll link it in the description
excessively booby breastplates are indeed quite silly but breastplates that are so flat they look
like backplates are an over correction and not a comfortable one either contextually speaking in
the show Calanthe in armor looks different to her husband she looks different to the royal guard or
whoever these guys are she looks different to the season two nilfgaardians the combination of the
unpadded arms and the lack of upper arm protection and the breastplate mean that the spaulders just
look like decorations as opposed to actually being in any way protective and she and her soldiers
look like they're from a different time period to everyone else although it has to be said that the
season one nilfgaardians look like they're from a different planet to everyone else so
what can you do that being said the witcher show as a whole doesn't have a particularly cohesive
aesthetic or style so that's not just a Calanthe problem that's an issue with
everybody and related to context the last category of comments i got about Calanthe’s
armor were related to character and why they didn't feel like the armor fit with Calanthe’s
character in the show whether or not it fits with her character in the books i would not know
but character is always important to consider when you're designing clothes for people and
that includes armor if Calanthe’s soldiers look like relatively lightly armoured cuirassiers and
everybody else is wearing full plate then that you can kind of get away with poor soldiers being less
well protected than rich soldiers is not going to raise too many eyebrows even if they do look a bit
temporally shifted it's a fantasy show you can kind of fudge it but Calanthe is the queen she
should have access to the best stuff she should have armor that looks exactly how she wants it to
within the bounds of physics obviously some people didn't like the color of the gold
breastplate which i thought it looked okay in the show when i look at pictures of it it does
look a bit strange but you know i can see why you wouldn't like that some people seem to think that
the gold breastplate was actually made of gold as opposed to just being sort of coated in gold don't
worry about that that would not be a thing but uh i'm really posh and rich and i'm going to put
gold over the top of my armor that was definitely a thing historically whether or not Calanthe in
particular would have chosen a gold breastplate as someone whose very practical kick-ass warrior uh
you could debate that i would say probably yes she does have some very ornate looking dresses
so having slightly fancy armor doesn't seem like it would be out of character for her as long as it
didn't actively impede her obviously again you can nitpick like this for any costume and as in this
case it is absolutely overkill there is no need to think about this this hard and it's also true that
there is a world of difference between drawing a picture and designing a video game where you have
a reasonable amount of control over what things look like versus having to come up with thousands
of costumes for a variety of different things and you're on a budget so you have to either make or
source them and you have time constraints etcetera etcetera but regardless i hope that this deep dive
into Calanthe’s armor has been entertaining or educational or hopefully both armor doesn't have
to be perfect to be non-distracting to the vast majority of your audience given how dumb a lot
of women's armor designs are in the first place the fact that they put Calanthe in armor which
isn't really obviously terrible is already enough to mean that most of your audience will be like
yeah good but in this case i feel like it looks uncomfortable for the actress to wear like she
seems uncomfortable moving in it and i feel like just a couple of changes would have made
a big improvement in that area and also made it look better and there are levels of this
obviously from let's tweak this thing to make it a bit more comfortable and
nice looking all the way up to we're going to make this completely accurate but our actress might
not be able to move in it so you have to balance these things with that said if i had to be like
quick and dirty fixes to make this a bit better uh there are two main things i would have done
one find the chest plate that that back plate came with and swap it over or at least hammer out some
more space in the chest plate for actual breathing and maybe try and shorten it a bit the chest plate
will have more room for breathing it will also probably have better segmentation that's designed
for the front of the body feel like that would be helpful and two replace those spaulders with
pauldrons because that will cover a multitude of sins with pauldrons which are designed to
cover a bit more of the upper arm and the upper chest and the armpit you won't be able to see
those joins in her gambeson you won't be able to see the armholes of the breastplate and so
if they're still looking a bit dodgy that will cover that up and the fact that her upper arms
and shoulders will have more protection on them makes her look more balanced silhouette wise and
also makes her look more like the other rich Cintrans if you have more time and money then
one suggestion i saw was half rerebraces and voiders on the arms which would definitely make
her look more protected i would add to that some mail which actually covers her crotch uh because
it looks a bit unprotected at the moment and maybe just change up the gambeson entirely just
go find her one that is thicker of course the problem with that is the more armor you add
the heavier it is for the actress and the more difficult it is to swing a sword and also it'll
take more time to put on and take off again and so while i sometimes get a bit of flack for going
too easy on armor in fictional settings like i feel there's a balance to be struck between
looking nice and looking protective and looking realistic and real people have to wear this for 14
hours a day so if you enjoyed this video and would like to listen to me waffling about boob armor for
17 minutes then there should be a video up here for you if you'd like to watch my
extended videos on the topic of armor this is not a video which has an extended version this
video is long enough already then you can join my patreon or you can become a youtube channel
member by clicking the join button down below and regardless hope to see you soon