Prominence of Swords in Fantasy Settings

Magic gives the user an advantage. It allows them to attack from a distance. That creates tension, since the warriors will have to risk injury or death to get close enough to defeat the wizard. Once you introduce guns to the story, that range advantage disappears. There is no point to spend the time studying magic if a new infantry private is just as powerful as the wizard.

 

It is dangerous to the person wielding the sword. Even assuming that they don’t cut themselves, there is still a good chance that they will touch something with the blade - their hand, their clothes, their horse, their shield etc that they don’t want to accidentally wipe poison onto. For that matter, if the poison is in liquid form, just swinging the blade about might be enough to send the poison flicking about all over the place.

 

It depends on the guns and the magic. If it's line-of-sight wave-a-stick spells like Harry Potter against modern assault rifles, sure. Even then a suitably powerful and creative wizard could come up with spell combinations to render even modern gunmen useless.

 

The importance of swords is due to their association with the warrior class. For centuries, swords were the universal symbol of nobility, chivalry, and military might. Because of this, several swords throughout history have been associated with mystical, holy, or otherwise powerful properties. Such as the Sword of Giants from Beowulf or King Charlemagne's sword, Joyeuse, which was said to have been forged from the spear that Christ was stabbed by. Heck, Excalibur is so ingrained in our culture that we don't even bat an eye when we see it depicted in media. These mythical swords inspired fantasy writers like Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, and others to write about fantastical swords with mythical powers that granted their wielders untold gifts.

 

Tangent!

Which got me to thinking... what other weapon is really made JUST for killing people? A good mace. A flanged mace wouldn’t be good for shit except maybe popping open treasure boxes, heh heh. The halberd you could call crowd control, but as the sword is a specialized knife, so to speak, so too is the mace an advanced and specialized version of the club, and the halberd a specialized spear against armor and depending on design, against mounted foes. A horseman’s pick is also a specialized killer. The lance as specialized spear... don’t see much use hunting or anything else wth a lance. Sport, but many weapons have a sport version.

 

Morning Star. Barely usable as a weapon, and completely useless for anything else.

 

Though a morning star is a radical redesign of an ordinary flail.

Btw, one non-weapon use of a sword can be for cooking, shish kabob-style. Not good for the tempering of the metal, of course.

 

Because that's what Orcs do! Noble folks like Elves and civilised Men do not stoop to such low tactics.

My take on the sword in fantasy, in general, is because they are a matter of legend and mythic history.

Who carries swords? Heroes carry swords! We venerate George Washington and Robert Lee and Ulysses Grant as heroes. We have their swords that saw many heroic battles. Charlemagne carried a sword. It's in a museum. It is named Joiuse. Ogiers bore Curtana; Roland bore Durendal. It's been banged into the side of a building.

Genghis Khan bore a sword as did Caesar (Yellow Death) and Alexander and Arthur (Excalibur) and Cú Chulainn.

We expect heroes to carry swords, and so they do. When we arrive at the time when fantasy as a genre was being forged, the ideals of knights and chivalry and ancient heroes become cemented into modern mythmaking. And so we have Guthwine and Narsil/Anduril and Sting. The pattern set, later heroes in fantastic settings all bear swords too. Garion bears the sword of Iron-Grip. Martin the Warrior bears a (broken and reforged) sword. Conan bore a sword. Luke bears his father's sword.

 

Anytime I make a list of examples, I feel the twinge of guilt knowing that there will be exceptions to those cases, heh.

The "shadowy forces" could as easily be mortgage banks, insurance companies, or school boards. They could be regulatory agencies or Facebook's clients who buy the data Facebook collects from its users.

I could launch into a looooong discussion on this. Usually, I start with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as an example, for metaphor. There was a Prince (central power) who the Montagues and Capulets somewhat feared, but his fingers didn't reach everywhere all the time, so the families basically could take vendettas into their own hands. At least, some members of those families could do this until the Prince became aware of their efforts. They used swords, heh. But modern societies have organized to eliminate that sort of personal endeavor as much as possible. (Many murders and other crimes still reverberate in a R&J way....) Modern society and modern technology have led to a complexity that results in having various levers on powers distributed to such a degree, we can't always know who or what has or will cause us harm. Some unknown file clerk 1000 miles away misfiles our insurance claim and....boom! We might be negatively affected in a serious way. I think this has led to an uneasiness (at the very least) that can be exploited in fiction via the use of malevolent magic.

That's a nutshell of the looooong discussion I could launch.

Ah, I've always liked crossbows in fiction. In Walking Dead, they are put to use because of the necessity of stealth. Guns make loud sounds that will draw more Walkers. Or more of Negan's forces, as was the case in a military assault in at least one of the recent seasons. [Edit: I think simple bows were used in that scene.] This creeping about, trying not to draw attention, can create tense situations, and many of my favorite stories feature that kind of situation at least once. Alas, most of those examples didn't feature a crossbow, however.

But this raises the issue of balancing the various powers of Agency between heroes/protagonists and villains/antagonists. A crossbow works in Walking Dead. GRRM invented a seemingly unstoppable magical force but also introduced Valerian steel and dragonglass. This can seem too pat when first considering a story—but it's probably a good thing for an author to consider, whether guns and bombs or swords or magic is used!

 

Or bullets that go around corners.

But this is why movies often have to default to the incredibly poor training for gun wielders. I mean, 1000 misses from the blasters in Star Wars—from the bad guys at least, heh.

 

Thor's hammer is similar. If we first define the weapon as being a talisman signalling intrinsic worthiness—an outer display of inner worth—then we can easily show the wielder to be good, true, noble, etc. This was used to good effect when Vision picked up the hammer.

There may be an odd historical parallel for magical incantation. Those who could speak and/or sing in a language largely unknown to the general public might have acquired the status of being particularly good or evil. Latin was used by Catholic priests to this effect—but also, evil spellcasters, heh. At least, from the POV of the common man. I don't know to what degree earlier priests or shaman, from other cultures, used this method, but I imagine there were plenty.

 

One thing occurs to me.
At one time smiths were regarded in a way similar to sorcerers, able to turn goose droppings ( which contained iron filings they had fed to the geese in order to carbonise the metal as it went through the goose) into a blade that would cut a cloth dropped onto it.

Perhaps we are seeing the remnants of this magical aura.

 

We need to remember, too, what steel is and does. The idea that a handful of charcoal and a day-long, arcane process steeped in tradition could alter iron's properties so drastically and create effectively a super-substance can be viewed as a type of magic. Absolutely.

 

Exactly. And its not like magical or superhuman smiths are uncommon. In fact I can't think of a single craft that is as prominent in, the ones I know at least, mythology. I'm thinking of Weyland and Hephaestus and at least a few Celtic deities as I recall.

 

I agree that they're totally cool. I would add- elegant. Even the largest sword has an elegance about it, that I don't necessarily feel with guns. In my fantasy series, The Kingdom of Uisneach, the protag is a female and she carries a large broadsword type of sword made out of magical faerie steel. Automatically one would roll their eyes at a woman wielding such a heavy, large weapon, but I was determined to portray the sword as a symbol of more than just male power and dominance. Briana's sword is not just capable of lopping of a villain's head, but of aiding our heroine with its magic.

 

I would ask about the prominence of melee weapons over range weapons in fantasy settings. I think one reason is that it's easier for a melee weapon to become legendary, like Excalibur or Dragonslayer, than a range weapon. Legendary range weapons are in fiction works but they are much less frequent. This can be because range weapons are always going to leave something out, that is, the projectiles, so they can never be so valuable or close to the wielder. Instead a much more intimate relationship can be established between a melee weapon and its wielder, making the weapon legendary.

Then the prominence of the swords concretely, I do not have it clear, it can be because swords are more balanced than other melee weapons.

 

Range weapons also don't work in one-on-one combat, which is a huge component of heroic legends.

There's a whole thing about flight times and arrow speeds in the Ask Me About Archery thread. The short and nasty of it is that an arrow isn't a bullet. They are comparatively very, very slow. Even at rock-throwing distance, you can't hit someone with an arrow if they see you pointing it at them. As soon as you loose the arrow, all they have to do is take half a step to the left. I've had deer duck under an arrow from a recurve bow at a few yards' distance just from hearing the string.

And a spear? Forget it.

You're not going to get the whole, big, heroic champion battle if you have two people running around a field shooting arrows or throwing spears at each other. They'll be there all day.

"Dammit! Stand still!"
"No!"

 

I remember reading that archers were not considered honorable because they fought from a distance and did not put themselves at the same risk as the swordsmen. I don't remember what culture that was from, though.

 

To be honest, this kind of thing bores me. I mean, great job for all the people who are into move-by-move fight scenes but I just skip over them. In general, I hate reading any lengthy fight scene.