Knights

**Knighthood** is a rank and honour given to warriors who perform exemplary service for a lord or the realm in the Seven Kingdoms. Its members are known as knights and use the title "**Ser**", though this may be superseded by other titles such as "lord", "prince" or "king".

Knights are religiously influenced by a code of chivalry and honour. This code states that knights must defend the weak and the innocent, must protect women and children, must fight fairly and honourably, and obey their lieges. How closely a knight follows this code varies immensely from individual to individual. It is difficult to obey one law while trying to uphold the other.

## History and ties to the Faith of the Seven

Knighthood originated in Andal culture, and was introduced to Westeros during the Andal Invasion six thousand years ago. As a result of this, knighthood is intimately tied to the Faith of the Seven, and the ideal of knighthood is to be not only an honourable warrior but a devout follower of the Seven. And with any knight, honourable conduct and level of piety varies from person to person.

The Faith of the Seven is the dominant religion in all but two of the kingdoms: the North (whose inhabitants still worship the Old Gods of the Forest) and the Iron Islands (who follow a local deity called the Drowned God). The institution of knighthood is therefore not heavily practiced in these two regions, and very few Northerners or ironborn ever choose to become knights, even if they are renowned warriors. Sometimes, however, a soldier who does not follow the Faith of the Seven may nonetheless be rewarded for exemplary service with the title of knighthood by a lord who does worship the Seven.

Because it is tied to the Faith of the Seven, knighthood does not exist in other cultures outside of the Seven Kingdoms, either among the wildlings beyond the Wall, nor across the Narrow Sea in other continents such as Essos (though of course, a knight from the Seven Kingdoms may travel to the Free Cities).

## Becoming a knight

Typically, young men must undergo many years of extensive and expensive training to become a knight. A young knight-in-training is known as a "**squire**".

Pursuing a knighthood is one of the few ways for a member of the smallfolk to achieve rank and standing amongst the nobility. However, such a task usually involves the expenditure of significant sums of money on armour and weaponry which puts it out of the reach of most commoners. The rank of knighthood is not hereditary, and thus a knight's sons must go through the whole process of becoming knights themselves. Of course, a commoner who has been knighted will have greater opportunity to gain the wealth needed to put his sons through training as knights.

Even a common sellsword that has fought valiantly in combat may be rewarded by being dubbed a knight, though this occurs infrequently.

## Types of knights

In theory, all knights hold an equal rank, but in practice knights who own their own lands or who serve major lords are much more highly respected than a landless commoner who happened to be knighted after fighting valiantly in a battle. It is also seen as more prestigious to be knighted by a king, a major lord, a Kingsguard, or another highly respected knight. Any knight can theoretically make another man a knight if he is willing to say the vows, though respectable knights would not hand out the title lightly. A sellsword might get knighted for fighting well in a battle, and he might dishonourably knight all of his drinking companions who did nothing to earn it. They would *technically* hold the title of "knight", but no one would take their title seriously due to the low prestige of how they became knighted.

Most often, young men who have finished their training and just recently been knighted are landless and not in the service of any lord. There are three stages of service that knights hope to work their way up through:

* **Hedge knights** are typically commoners who have risen to knighthood. They have no fixed abode and wander the Seven Kingdoms looking for a cause to fight for. They are disparagingly called "hedge" knights because it is said that they are so poor that they just sleep under hedges by the side of the road as they wander from one prospective employer to the next. They frequently travel around to different tournaments to show off their prowess, in the hope that a lord in attendance will then hire them - many lords do use tournaments as recruiting grounds, though how well an individual hedge knight performs in the tournament is up to him. Many consider hedge knights to be not much better than sellswords.
* **Sworn swords** are knights sworn to a particular lord. Sometimes this is permanent, but mainly it is temporary, with hedge knights joining a lord for a particular purpose and then being released from his service afterwards.
* **Landed knights** are knights who have been rewarded for their service by a lord with land, typically a smallholding, large farm or small manor with servants. They form the minor nobility of the Seven Kingdoms. Successful landed knights who expand their holdings or continue to perform exemplary service for their liege may be raised to the rank of "Lord" in time, gaining the right to dispense justice on his lands (including executions) without consulting a higher lord.

## Practices

In wartime, mounted knights form the backbone of major armies in southern Westeros. The skill of each knight varies, but they are typically elite professional soldiers, with extensive combat training, and often equipped with the finest arms and armour available to them. Even dismounted, a single knight is considered to be worth several dozen men-at-arms, who are forced to serve and are often poorly trained and equipped. Knights are very useful for carving through and running down enemy infantry, though they are also the best weapon against the enemy army's own mounted knights. Personal combat aside, knights also serve as officers to whomever side they serve.

In peacetime, knights prove their martial valor through training soldiers as the master-at-arms in the holdfasts they serve in. Others choose to prove it by participating in contests of skill known as tournaments (although knighthood is not always a formal requirement for participation in a tournament). The highlight of tournaments is the joust, in which mounted knights charge at each other, each knight trying to knock the other off of his horse using a wooden lance. Knights at tournaments frequently fight to win the favour of nobles and potential spouses if they prove victorious. While some knights do fight for such romantic reasons, others may be more interested in the large sums of prize money awarded to the winners, often numbering in hundreds or thousands in Gold Dragons. Others fight at tournaments to win general social prestige, or for the excitement of victory, though a few, fight simply to indulge in violence.

Knights often formally swear fealty to lords by exchanging formulaic vows. In one commonly used formula, the knight kneels before a lord in supplication while holding up his sword in offering, and they give the following exchange:

**Knight**: "I offer my services [Lord's name]. I will shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours if need be. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New."
**Lord**: "And I vow that you shall always have a place by my hearth, and meat and mead at my table. And I pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you dishonour. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New. Arise."
Men who have been knighted, even those not originally from noble Houses, gain the legal right to display their own personal heraldry.

Since the Targaryen conquest, the seven-man royal bodyguard known as the Kingsguard have been considered to be the pinnacle of knighthood. In theory, the Kingsguard are the elite of the elite, more skilled at combat and more honourable and virtuous than any other knights in the entire realm. At times, this ideal has been matched, in great and honourable knights. Other times, Kingsguard members have been skilled warriors but behaved controversially. In the worst occasions, some Kingsguard members were appointed simply as political favours, and are neither honourable nor particularly talented fighters.

## Fighting style

Mounted Westerosi knights on heavy horse typically charge enemy infantry formations using war lances. Cavalry charges can devastatingly kill a large number of infantry drastically out of proportion to the number of cavalry present.

On foot, the fighting style of Westerosi knights consists of powerful slashing attacks and strong blocks using a heavy sword, alternating with quick thrusting attacks meant to penetrate armour. Westerosi knights wear heavy plate armour which provides them excellent protection, particularly against the crude weapons of basic infantry conscripts, albeit at the cost of making their movements relatively slow. The weight of their armour slows them down enough that they cannot rely on speed to win against unarmoured opponents (though the armour will keep them alive longer than their opponent), thus knights must rely on the raw power of blows from heavy swords, designed to deal damage not only due to their sharpness but their sheer weight. Broad hacking and slashing movements are not merely dramatic, but combined with the raw weight of the sword, will drastically increase the force behind the impact of the blow. A lightly armed and armoured opponent may hit a knight multiple times but for little damage. Conversely, it may take a knight some time to pin down an unarmoured opponent, but once he does, his blow will be absolutely devastating. The agility of a knight also depends highly on its wearer, as veteran fighters are often seen to be moderately unrestricted by their armour.

The greatest threat to armoured knights is actually *other* armoured knights, and their weapon design and fighting style evolved to reflect this. The best way to penetrate through plate armour is with a thrusting attack using a long, heavy sword. A curved blade could not apply as much pressure on a single point, and a thinner blade would snap under so much pressure. For comparison, the Dothraki *arakh* sword is meant to be used by light cavalry while running down unarmoured infantry, thus the blade has a curved design to provide greater reach in slashing attacks, which can be made very rapidly because the blade itself is light and thin. The *arakh* was not designed to punch through plate armour, however, and at this task it pales in comparison to a knight's straight and heavy longsword. Thrusting attacks are best at actually penetrating armour, but the sheer force behind a powerful slashing attack is often still quite useful against even an armoured opponent, as the force of the blow may stun him, possibly dent his armour, and sometimes outright cleave through weaker plate armour. Sometimes penetrating a high quality suit of armour is almost impossible, even with strong thrusts. In this case, impact weapons such as warhammers or maces are good at delivering powerful blows that can crush bones without actually having to penetrate the armour. By far, the best way of dealing with an armoured opponent is to simply attack the areas in which there is little or no armour.

Because combat between Westerosi knights is not quite as fast as Dothraki wielding *arakhs*, or the Water Dance fighting style of the Free Cities which uses light rapiers, it values not only quick reflexes but strategy. Instead of rapid attacks meant to land a blow before the opponent can react, a Westerosi knight must often engage in an elaborate series of feints, trying to gradually lure the opposing knight into overcommitting his defense to one side, then landing a devastating attack on the other side. Nonetheless, speed is still very much a factor in combat between knights, and the knight who is both physically and mentally faster will emerge victorious.