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Dueling to resolve international conflicts

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I'm liking the idea, but not for humans. I've got dwarves, elves, orcs, trolls, etc. I think it would fit nicely into one of those.
 

Trick

Auror
This is not a new concept. For it to be the ruler himself fighting might be but in Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself the Northmen offer a battle between champions instead of all out warfare - it's rejected because the loss of a single bout would mean turning over the kingdom as if you'd lost a war but still.

Also, in the movie Troy, Achilles fights in this type of duel to avoid an all out battle. Shamefully, I can't remember enough of The Illiad to know if that was based on something from the book or not.
 
The Iliad did have one or two let-the-leaders-settle-it battles (including Menelaus vs Paris), but of course something always got meddled with-- usually by a god. So it came back to the armies.
 

Addison

Auror
Maybe it can depend on the source of the conflict between the countries. If one country's-let's say-carrot trade is falling adn the other's apple trade is falling, and that's the source of the conflict, then maybe it can be a duel of agriculture. Each country chooses one crop, the same crop, they must harvest and who ever makes the most and/or has the best for cooking or something, then they win not only another crop for trade but they no longer have to trade the crop in question (carrots) or they just don't have to trade so much.

Conflict settling by Gladiator battles sounds like a conflict of strength. If kingdom A was under attack and barely survived either because country B didn't help or they think country B didn't pull their weight, then they can resolve this issue by battles.

Again this is just my opinion.
 
This requires every country’s dominant culture, every last one, to have the same notions of honoring contracts. Also, consider that wars are fought over land and resources. Would downing one champ remove the person sitting on the resources?
Outlawing war could work if every last country had literal or figurative nukes. The Cold War went as it did because two powers had nukes. Proxy wars could be fought because the smaller nations didn’t, but the puppeteers did. They couldn’t fight directly. If no one could fight directly, that could outlaw war for a time.
 

Malik

Auror
Necro, but I'll play.

The world where my series is set has a very low population. They don't have the ability to field huge armies. A thousand people on a battlefield is something they'll talk about for centuries. Disputes are often settled by a dozen knights or men-at-arms, and rarely to the death. Often, these things will end with one side riding off, waving.

It's also extremely hard to kill a knight in armor, something nearly every other fantasy novel in the world can't seem to understand; swords aren't lightsabers. Armor is tough. It's much easier and historically far more common to beat the crap out of a knight than it is to kill them. Historical armored combat between knights is delineated in Fiore's texts, particularly his Abrazare school of armored grappling techniques, which my sparring partner refers to as "judo for psychopaths." Snapping a few of a knight's joints backwards will end a fight much faster than trying to cut through their armor.

When there are major fights between armies in my world, there's almost always an option for a champion's fight, because the loss of hundreds of strong men and women could cripple a region for generations.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Nothing better than undead topics. And I’ll go off topic!

That’s why I don’t have armies full of people in full plate... not enough dying! But it does lead to wonderful politics and intrigue with the taking of hostages and ransoms. I prefer the era of mail, which is hard as the hells to get through, but they leave a lot more vulnerable areas.

Necro, but I'll play.

The world where my series is set has a very low population. They don't have the ability to field huge armies. A thousand people on a battlefield is something they'll talk about for centuries. Disputes are often settled by a dozen knights or men-at-arms, and rarely to the death. Often, these things will end with one side riding off, waving.

It's also extremely hard to kill a knight in armor, something nearly every other fantasy novel in the world can't seem to understand; swords aren't lightsabers. Armor is tough. It's much easier and historically far more common to beat the crap out of a knight than it is to kill them. Historical armored combat between knights is delineated in Fiore's texts, particularly his Abrazare school of armored grappling techniques, which my sparring partner refers to as "judo for psychopaths." Snapping a few of a knight's joints backwards will end a fight much faster than trying to cut through their armor.

When there are major fights between armies in my world, there's almost always an option for a champion's fight, because the loss of hundreds of strong men and women could cripple a region for generations.
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
Nothing better than undead topics. And I’ll go off topic!

That’s why I don’t have armies full of people in full plate... not enough dying! But it does lead to wonderful politics and intrigue with the taking of hostages and ransoms. I prefer the era of mail, which is hard as the hells to get through, but they leave a lot more vulnerable areas.
I'm as big of a fan of a high body count in fiction as you're going to find, but the fact of the matter is that plate armor evolved from fairly light and easy-to-make chain mail for one good reason.

The 200lb bow and the sheer, lethal power behind it.

This video is a brilliant demonstration reenacting some armor and arrow tests against the plate and mail used at a fairly representative moment in time. (Malik, please correct me if I'm off base. This is more your bailiwick than mine.)


And more discussion of the above video.

What fascinates me about this video is what this arrow is capable of both against plate and against mail.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Plate requires more than demand, it requires supply, which includes raw iron plus the technology. There is also a common belief that plate armor ended because of firearms, but it wasn’t that plate couldn’t stop primitive firearms (emphasis, primitive) it was that it was prohibitively expensive to create the armor that would stop the balls. Men’s lives are cheaper than the armor to protect them, heh heh. Climate also plays a factor. Heck, battles in full plate have been known to kill men from heat exhaustion while it was snowing. I don’t recall which battle that was, but there’s a good reason to stay atop your horse.

I'm as big of a fan of a high body count in fiction as you're going to find, but the fact of the matter is that plate armor evolved from fairly light and easy-to-make chain mail for one good reason.

The 200lb bow and the sheer, lethal power behind it.

This video is a brilliant demonstration reenacting some armor and arrow tests against the plate and mail used at a fairly representative moment in time. (Malik, please correct me if I'm off base. This is more your bailiwick than mine.)


And more discussion of the above video.

What fascinates me about this video is what this arrow is capable of both against plate and against mail.
 
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