A Knight in shining armor is a man whose metal has never been tested.
Or one who regularly cleans it…but yeah, “Black Knights” were called so because their armor was in terrible condition, and they were usually much more experienced, so they usually won tournaments.
I’m curious mainly where you got this concept from…
“Black Knights” need to be distinguished by context. I’m on my phone right now so I can’t link you all the sources I’d like to use, so please pardon me for that.
So, the concept of “knight in shining armour” comes from the idea of the knight-errant in medieval fiction, the sort of person who is on a quest, is all shiny and new, ready to test themselves. It also is a nod to the maintenance of equipment, or the wealth of a Knight; in the late medieval and Renaissance periods, well-off knights might have a suit of armour for warfare, a suit for tournaments, and a suit for formal occasions. These being used for different things, they were meant to be maintained well and show status and wealth.
So, where does the concept of a black Knight actually come from?
Surprisingly, most cases come from the idea of the tournament. Knights were meant to display who they were, “show their colours” (ie, heraldry), and show off their skills in combat. But if course you had some knights who didn’t want to show who they were, who they were fighting for, or which lady they favoured, etc. This sounds like a chivalric fantasy, and honestly, that’s what tournaments really became as time went by and the events became more formal.
Now, early “black Knights” , were those who did not wear dark or black armour, but in fact those who did not use their own heraldry, disguising themselves. Again, they may do this for various reasons, but the concept is they hide their identity. Occasionally, they might actually paint their shields black.
We also have the examples from the hundred years war where French and English knights painted their armour different colours: black for the French, Red for the English.
Some knights actually WOULD favour black armour or heraldry to the point they got called “black Knights”, and not as a derogative. The Polish Knight, Zawisza Czarny (pronounced “Zah-vu-shah Shar-ny”, approximately) become known for his feats of arms, and by his dark armour.
Linking back to the original quote, a Knight in shining armour could well be a black knight, as such. But more commonly, it meant he was either wealthy, or highly skilled at arms.
Or both. 😛
I’ve seen enough period art to convince me that “shining armour” was often a lot darker than the chrome-plated image which the term suggests.
I’ve also long thought that the whole business of “knights in shining armour” wasn’t a medieval concept at all, certainly not the default one, but was a Regency / early Victorian fictional conceit from Romance poets and Sir Walter Scott’s historical fiction. (About 10 years ago an actual expert said more or less the same thing, leaving actual amateur me feeling rather smug…) :->
This illumination features armour that’s black or dark blue in colour, but with
the carefully-delineated highlights
of a shiny surface. There are many other like it.
Armour was coloured for both decorative and practical purposes; chemical blueing with acid produces a very dark, lustrous and effectively rust-resistant finish like the one in the medieval illustration. I once had an Arms & Armor rapier with that finish on the hilt: it looked like this…
Heat-blueing, which was more blue than black, was a popular treatment for Greenwich armour of the Elizabethan period, as was browning and russetting (all of which were and are used on firearms), processes which used heat, chemicals or controlled “good rust” to create colour and also prevent uncontrolled “bad rust”.
Here’s the helmet of Sir James Scudamore’s Greenwich harness, which was once blued and gilt.
The image on the left is how it looks now, after being thoroughly scrubbed with wire wool, sand or other abrasives at some stage in the 19th century to make it “shining armour”. The image on the right is a CGI restoration of its original appearance, based on still-visible traces of colour in the grooves beside the gold strapwork.
Here’s the browned and gilt “garniture” (armour with extra bits for different styles of combat, like a life-size action figure) of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. I don’t think grinding this beauty down to bright metal would be an improvement…
Henry VIII’s tonlet (skirted) armour for foot combat at the Field of the Cloth of Gold now looks like this:
Originally it would have been shiny black or dark blue with gilt details and the engraved panels picked out in coloured paint or enamelling – red Tudor Roses, green leaves etc., but that wasn’t “shining armour”, so…
This detail shot shows the fine score-marks left after it was sanded “clean”, with dark pigmentation in the grooves as a memorial of how it once looked.
This Renaissance painting, “Portrait of Warrior with Squire”, shows black armour on the warrior and bare-metal armour on his squire, so it’s clear that armour in art wasn’t painted black simply because artists couldn’t properly represent burnished steel.
In this article, Thom Richardson, Keeper of Armour at the Tower of London and Royal Armouries in Leeds (the actual expert I mentioned at the beginning) comes straight out and calls Scott responsible for “shining armour” vandalism:
The sets of armour are not in their original black and gold because of
over-aggressive polishing in the 19th century when, said Richardson,
“they were polished with brick dust and rangoon oil to within an inch of
their life” to fit the aesthetic of what armour should look like, all
shiny and silvery. “Walter Scott is to blame,” Richardson added
ruefully.
Scott can also be blamed, according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, for creating or at least popularising that clunky, inaccurate term
“chain-mail”. It cites the first appearance in 1822 (recent when talking about mail) when a
character
in “The Fortunes of Nigel”
says:
“…the
deil a thing’s broken but my head. It’s not made of iron, I wot, nor my
claithes of chenzie-mail; so a club smashed the tane, and a claucht damaged the tither.”
Plate armour was also painted, either crudely…
…or with much more care (this style is actually called black-and-white armour); since the paint was oil-based, it also had a rust-proofing effect…
I have a notion that the more white there was on black-and-white armour, and thus the more work (by servants, of course!) needed to keep it looking good, may have been an indication of rank, status or success. Just a guess…
Armour left rough from the hammer – therefore cheaper than armour polished smooth, since every stage of the process had to be paid for – was also treated with hot oil in the same way cast-iron cookware is seasoned, again to prevent rust.
There were terms for bright-metal armour – “alwyte harness” and “white
armour” – but the existence of such terms suggests to me that they arose
from a need to describe an armour finish which needed a tiresome amount of maintenance to keep it that way. I’m betting that the last stage of a clean-and-polish was a good layer of grease, or even a beeswax sealant like the coatings used by museums today.
White armour may have been a demonstration of wealth or conspicuous consumption in the same way as black or white clothes: one needed servants constantly busy with polishing-cloths, the others needed really good colour-fast dye or lots of laundering, and all of those cost money.
One thing is certain: a knight in shining armour wasn’t the one who sweated to keep it shining. That’s what squires were for…
so, basically, European armor was subject to the same anachronistic ideals of austere cleanliness-that-isn’t-actually-clean that ancient Greek art was.
do you ever look back on a show and are baffled at some of the choices the showrunners made? decisions that make no sense unless they’re intentionally queerbaiting, but shows that were around before queerbaiting was as much of a thing? like, there’s articles every year asking why slash exists, but fic writers aren’t the one who made lex luthor buy all that shit for clark in smallville. a fic writer didn’t hire andrew robinson and let him put his hands all over alexander siddig. or invent the entire plot of pon farr??? fic writers didn’t do everything that due south did! “it’s cold out here, warm me up”??? BUDDY BREATHING?????
Well, two explanations:
gay and bi episode writers making things as gay and bi as they could get away with at the time
writers who are so emotionally starved by the hellscape of emotionally reserved straight male friendship that their imagination of the ideal deep male friendship gets A LITTLE TOO INTENSE.
i love both of these because like either
someone’s very knowingly crafting a queer coded relationship, hoping it slides under the radar of their bosses but also gets to all the baby queers out there
someone’s sitting there going: what’s a friendship like? you sacrifice your personal safety for their life all the time, right? you give each other intensely meaningful gifts constantly? you have almost no other lasting relationships? probably!
it’s time to face facts: charles xavier’s liberalism does nothing for the mutant cause.
if you didn’t know about their powers, charles xavier and erik lehnsherr would look like a pair of distinguished elder gentlemen. the difference between the two is that for as long as he’s been in the public eye, erik lehnsherr has always explicitly identified himself as the mutant magneto, while for years, professor xavier put on the facade of being a “normal” flatscan scientist.
but it doesn’t end there: as leader of the brotherhood, magneto never required his allies to wear masks or hide who they were. meanwhile, professor x almost always appears in public with only the most attractive (by conventional flatscan standards) of his students. he even goes as far as providing holographic image inducers for his less “palatable” students.
what all this tells us is that charles xavier only cares about you if your powers and appearance wouldn’t cause a stir at the country club, while magneto fights for the rights of all mutants
now, more than ever: magneto was right
this is a blatant oversimplification. and just plain wrong in most parts.
magneto is a radical. he is a terrorist. whether or not you agree with him doesn’t change the fact that he KILLS people. magneto’s goals do not require him to have a public image other than Magneto. professor x run a school. a sanctuary for mutant children and teens and adults. he requires a certain amount of social capital in order to run this school, in order to convince the parents of closeted mutant teens to allow their kids to come there. he SAVES CHILDRENS LIVES. while still allowing them to retain contact with their families and outside society. magneto is HATED. that’s why he can walk around with an entourage of people who look like they do. that’s why he can wear a cape and a helmet and bright red everything. people look at him and they see a freak and he allows it because it provokes a reaction that he’s looking for. he proves people are prejudiced with his presence.
professor X can’t do that. he cant risk KIDS AND TEENS getting hurt or attacked because of the way they look. he can’t risk being labeled a freak and an outsider and he cant risk his teachers and staff doing the same because then everything he ever worked for would come crashing down.
let’s equate this to something real. imagine this is all an allegory for queer people (it is) and imagine professor x ran a school for queer kids (he does) and his whole job was to convince super uptight conservative and religious parents to send their kids to his school. you bet your ass he’s gonna show up in his most christian clean pressed suit with a cross necklace and a rosary in his hands clutching a bible and wearing a ten gallon hat if need be. he’s gonna bring the masculine gay teachers and the feminine lesbian ones and he probably won’t bring trans teachers and students if they don’t pass because the parents will SEE that and go “hmm i dont like this guy’s looks”.
he SPECIFICALLY plays off people’s prejudices. purposefully.
and then? when he gets the queer kid safe? when they’re out of their parent’s grasp? he hands them a rainbow scarf and a bottle of hair dye and tells them to go wild. he helps the trans kids get hormones and binders and makeup if they need or want them. he introduces them to other queer teens and adults and lets them live the life they want to live, an authentic life, and a safe one.
but in public? wigs go on, disguises are in place, and pride pins and rainbow thongs are hidden. not because he’s worried about his own image or that he thinks everyone SHOULD look and act a certain way, but because he KNOWS that society is still grossly judgmental and if a kid in a mohawk and sparkly eyeshadow goes waltzing around the city they’re going to get bottles thrown at their head.
dropping the metaphor now; if they need to go out in full mutant form, they get disguises. uniforms. armor. they get trained on how to protect themselves and CONTROL THEIR HORRIFICALLY DEADLY POWERS THAT THEY OTHERWISE COULD HAVE KILLED THEMSELVES OR OTHERS WITH so they can be safe and be authentically them and OUT if they want to.
i side with magneto on a lot. but shitting on professor x? NO. BAD. and entirely missing the point. magneto has shown time and time again that he’s willing to let other’s die for his cause. kids and teens and humans and mutants alike. professor X is not willing to let a child die for him. period.
back to the metaphor; if you’re a trans person you worry about passing. if you dont pass you could get attacked, assaulted, raped, murdered, etc. there are certain areas of the world and times and spaces where you can be as out as you like. pride is a good example of this. drag queens will be out in full makeup and costumes. but no queen or king or trans person or queer ANYONE is going to advise you to walk down the street in Alabama at midnight in the same outfit.
professor x and magneto are both violently aware of societies’ prejudices. professor x was able to hide his existence as a mutant due to his privilege as an upper class white boy who’s power didn’t manifest in a visible way. he has used this privilege to help people. magneto, growing up during the holocaust, was targeted for being jewish AND targeted for being a mutant. due to this, he has chosen to make himself as visible as possible. he was tattooed with a string of numbers that will forever mark him as “other” and he decided to fully embrace that and challenge society to do the same. he thinks that the loss of a few, or many, lives is worth pushing for change. professor x’s focus is on protection and change in subtler ways. he uses his privilege and hidden status as a mutant to sway people’s opinions in other ways.
there is NO side that is without it’s flaws. but saying “professor x does nothing for the mutant cause” completely ignores the fact that he is doing everything he can to protect vulnerable groups like MUTANT CHILDREN and flat out RESCUES them from homes they might have or HAD been abused in otherwise and honestly makes me question if OP has ever experienced what it’s like to be attacked just for LOOKING a certain way and living in FEAR that any moment you’re going to be outed and discovered and killed for it. if 5 years ago someone had offered me a watch to make me look like a cis dude? i would’ve taken it and pledged my life to whoever had given it to me.
and yeah hiding SUCKS but so does DYING. and if you have to pick one GUESS WHAT??? most people go for the first. for those ok with the risk of the second there is the choice of magneto’s side.
Y’all might wanna read this ^^^^ Dude has a point
Hot take: Professor X and Magneto are fighting the same war on two vastly different fronts, and as such their methods, tactics, and priorities look extremely different.
Hotter take: they are both extremely important and neither of them would make anywhere near as much progress without the effects of the other. (Magneto’s course would likely lead to all-out war between mutants and non-mutants due to his willingness to accept “normal” humanity as an enemy and destroy them rather than risk having to depend on anyone’s acceptance, and Professor X’s would likely lead to a tiered social hierarchy where normal-presenting mutants with socially-acceptable abilities are accepted and cherished while those of strange appearance or maligned abilities find themselves marginalized, excluded, and suffering the brunt of those hostilities that the mutant acceptance brigade has made unwelcome in polite society but cannot eradicate.)
Hottest take: that the comics and other media choose to make them fight each other far more than their common enemy of anti-mutant bigotry and the people that directly wield it is lazy writing and perpetuates the malignant divide-and-conquer strategy of goading peripherally-aligned groups to fight each other over ideological differences rather than their common enemy over more life-and-death issues that has been wielded against all manner of marginalized peoples throughout history.
cut to Sam and Dean eating on the impala outside a food truck
Sam: so get this a random person across the country died
Dean: ok but it’s probably not our thing
*it is their thing*
Scene change: Dean and Sam walking outside
Dean or Sam: hey do you really think we should be taking this case, considering the season’s overarching plot line?
Dean or Sam: we’ve got no leads so I’ve got to work or I’ll go crazy
Dean: hello sheriff pay no attention to the fact we look like supermodels, have ridiculous names on these clearly fake FBI badges and my brother has the same hair style as Jackie Kennedy and give us all the info on this case
random sheriff: this case? Why you FBI boys are wasting your time. There isn’t a case here.
Visibly shaken white woman holding baby: this isn’t like (random person) I just can’t believe it
Dean: did you hear or smell anything weird? Sulfur? Cold spots? These are very official FBI questions.
Visibly shaken white woman holding baby: Of course, agents. Look I’ve told you everything I know, except for this mysterious hint.
*Sam swallows and looks at Dean*
*Scene change*
*Impala pulls into motel*
*research*
Sam: I think it’s this thing
*it’s not that thing*
Sam: get this, I think we’re dealing with this thing.
Dean: That’s great Sammy but I think I know where the thing is going to be
Monster: attacks visibly shaken white woman holding baby
*Sam and Dean arrive just before visibly shaken white woman holding baby passes out
Monster: *chokes Sam*
*Camera shot of Sam’s face as he is being chocked*
If only Sam could reach the phone/ knife/ gun!!!!
Sam: *eyes roll back into head*
Dean: arrives in the nick of time and kills monster
Visibly shaken white woman hugs baby, she is teary-eyed: “so you’re telling me monsters are real??? Thank you for saving us!!! If only you could have saved that random person. I guess I’ll have to move on now.”
*scene change, Sam and Dean in Impala*
Dean or Sam: that was the right thing to do
Dean or Sam: but was it
Dean or Sam: sometimes you can’t save everyone.
*implication that story of random person is the same as Sam/ Dean’s season plot line issue
Dean and Sam look at each other
Sam is clearly nervous
Dean is stoic
Impala drives into rain
Fade to black
I can’t stop laughing this is literally ten years in a nutshell
missionlameturtle 