[Hello everyone! Welcome to the anthro bunny reboot of Bedeviled Derpy! Thank you all for staying around to see what will unfold!
There is a 10 page intro comic before asks open. I’m going to update two pages a week, adding each page to this post and reblogging each time it updates until all 10 pages are together.
Big Horses are a Very New Thing and they Likely Didn’t Exist in your Historical and/or Fantasy Settings.
You’ve all seen it in every historical piece of media ever produced. Contrary to popular belief, a big black horse with long legs and long flowing mane is not a widespread or even a particularly old type of horse.
THIS IS NOT A MEDIEVAL THING. THIS IS NOT EVEN A BAROQUE THING. THIS IS A NINETEENTH CENTURY CITY CARRIAGE HORSE.
All the love to fancy Friesian horses, but your Roman general or Medieval country heroine just really couldn’t, wouldn’t, and for the sake of my mental health shouldn’t have ridden one either.
Big warmblood horses are a Western European and British invention that started popping up somewhere around 1700s when agriculture and warfare changed, and when rich folks wanted Bigger Faster Stronger Thinner race horses. The modern warmblood and the big continental draught both had their first real rise to fame in the 1800s when people started driving Fancy Carriages everywhere, and having the Fanciest Carriage started to mean having the Tallest and Thinnest Horses in the town.
Before mechanised weaponry and heavy artillery all horses used to be small and hardy easy-feeders. Kinda like a donkey but easier to steer and with a back that’s not as nasty and straight to sit on.
SOME REAL MEDIEVAL, ROMAN, OTTOMAN, MONGOL, VIKING, GREEK and WHATEVER HISTORICALLY PLAUSIBLE HORSES FOR YOU:
“Primitive”, native breeds all over the globe tend to be only roughly 120-140 cm (12.0 - 13.3 hh) tall at the withers. They all also look a little something like this:
Mongolian native horse (Around 120-130 at the withers, and decendants of the first ever domesticated horses from central Asia. Still virtually unchanged from Chinggis Khan’s cavalry, ancestor to many Chinese, Japanese and Indian horses, and bred for speed racing and surviving outdoors without the help of humans.)
Carpathian native horse / Romanian and Polish Hucul Pony (Around 120-150 at the withers, first mentioned in writing during the 400s as wild mountain ponies, depicted before that in Trajanian Roman sculptures, used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in the 19th century)
Middle-Eastern native horse / Caspian Pony (Around 100-130 at the withers, ancestor of the Iranian Asil horse and its decendants, including the famous Arabian and Barb horses, likely been around since Darius I the Great, 5th century BC, and old Persian kings are often depicted riding these midgets)
Baltic Sea native horse / Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Gotland and Nordland horses (Around 120-150 at the withers, descendant of Mongolian horses, used by viking traders in 700-900 AD and taken to Iceland. Later used by the Swedish cavalry in the 30 years war and by the Finnish army in the Second World War, nowadays harness racing and draught horses)
Siberian native horse / Yakutian pony (Around 120-140 at the withers, related to Baltic and Mongolian horses and at least as old, as well-adapted to Siberian climate as woolly mammoths once were, the hairiest horse there is, used in draught work and herding)
Mediterranean native horse / Skyros pony, Sardinian Giara, Monterufolino (Around 100-140 at the Withers, used and bred by ancient Greeks for cavalry use, influenced by African and Eastern breeds, further had its own influence on Celtic breeds via Roman Empire, still used by park ranger officers in Italy)
British Isles’ native horse / various “Mountain & Moorland” pony breeds (Around 100-150 at the withers, brought over and mixed by Celts, Romans and Vikings, base for almost every modern sport pony and the deserving main pony of all your British Medieval settings. Some populations still live as feral herds in the British countryside, used as war mounts, draught horses, mine pit ponies, hunting help and race horses)
So hey, now you know!
I love this so much - and now I know why Tall Lanky Thin horses have a terryfying vibe to them, and the “primitive” native pony-like breeds awake in me only hope and trust.
such valid historical finger-eaters here
So what kind of horses carried the occasional metal-encased dude (and probably a handful of other unusually heavy things)?
Also, for that matter, what’s a “palfrey” look like? I’ve never known what to picture for that.
I believe a “palfrey,” or horse for medieval women, was distinguished not by breed or bloodline but by its ability to amble, which is a specific gait. I recall anecdotally (but cannot cite) that the ambling gait was once highly developed in England, although today it’s mostly preserved in Icelandic ponies. So perhaps picturing a small, comfortable pony - light but not delicate, and a bit friendly and tubby-looking? Like a Paso Fino, but not so extreme?
As for medieval European warhorses, the Great Big Horse that carried an armored medieval knight was called a destrier, as distinct from a charger, courser or palfrey. We also know that like the knights of their time, they probably weren’t physically BIG so much as they were STRONG for their size - but that’s where my own knowledge of it ends.
Wikipedia suggests that it is a topic of frequent discussion but no particular consensus? Again, it appears to have been a general description of a type of horse, rather than a breed. I really like this piece of evidence, though:
An analysis of medieval horse armour located in the Royal Armouries indicates the equipment was originally worn by horses of 15 to 16 hands,[7] about the size and build of a modern field hunter or ordinary riding horse
So maybe we could picture something like this Upstanding Trustworthy Citizen??????
okay but for fantasy settings, if hteres giant wolves, giant spiders and giants, why cant there be giant horses?
listen. it’s 2018. it’s time to admit, finally, that bbc sherlock is, in fact, bad, and was only good because we watched it when we were 15 and didn’t know how to dismantle scripts that SOUND clever but are really just gold-flake covered shit
*angry and annoyed asexual agreement*
what’s this mean
It means they agreed but weren’t like, horny about it i guess
everytime i plug my phone in in the dark i remember how goddamn stupid sherlock was
