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

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