Hello! First of all, I hope it's the right subreddit for this. I'm writing a fantasy/medieval story and I need information about some armor. The societies I'm writing about are not 100% accurate historically but I'd like for the tools, armors and weapons to be accurate.
I'll link some pictures of armors I would like to describe in my books. Could you tell me if it's efficient/realistic,its flaws and what century it was used in?
Some of the armors I'm submitting are leather plus chainmail. Is it any good?
Last point: I'd like my armors not to be full plate as it seems it's really hard to kill people wearing them (from what I read/watched on the subject). I guess what I'm looking for is the time/era just before that? It's a bit hard to explain and I'm sorry I can't be more accurate.
armor 1 armor 2 armor 3 armor 4 armor 5 armor 6 thanks for your time!
The first photo is an attempt at scale or lamellar armor (I can't tell if it has a backing or not) made from boiled leather. We do have evidence of boiled leather armor, but it's pretty much entirely from the 14th century and was used to supplement or sub in for plate, especially as arm guards. Those samples that do exist are shaped pieces, often richly embroidered. I'm not aware of any reason for wearing scales of leather over mail. We do have strong literary evidence that thick cloth or felt armor was worn over mail as early as the 12th century, and it was apparently capable of absorbing arrows.
The second photo is just a fanciful type of plate armor, created for the Lord of the Rings movies. I thought you didn't want to use plate?
Photos three through six, as far as I can tell, depict lamellar armor, which is composed of small pieces of leather, horn, or iron stitched together and worn in addition to or in place of mail. Obviously, the iron would be more protective than the others. Lamellar was most popular in the east. There is some evidence for its use in western Europe, but it probably wasn't nearly as common as mail and cloth armor.
In general, armor was pretty good at its job. Cloth, mail, lamellar, and plate were all good enough to stop a sword slash cold. There is some evidence (I go into it in this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5h1vqo/how_much_protection_would_chainmail_give_a/dawsnn6/) that mail in combination with padding was proof against most weapons save for a heavy bow/crossbow, a polearm like a halberd or a poleaxe, and a couched lance. As a general rule, you want to either hit where the armor isn't, or try to hit somewhere that the armor isn't as effective (head/collarbone/elbow/knee/shin), or with a weapon like a mace or a hammer that will bruise the living shit out of the person even if it doesn't defeat the armor.
what century it was used in?
Most of the pictures are fantasy or reenactors, so I wouldn't try to date them precisely, but armour 3 depicts Tibetans of the 17th and 18th centuries. It's from 'Late Imperial Chinese Armies 1520-1840' by CJ Peers and illustrated by Christa Hook. There's an explanation at the back for what the plates are based on, but I only had it out from the library, so I couldn't tell you exactly what they are, other than the horse armour, which is this. The horseman's armour strongly resembles this guy, but I don't know if that's what it was based on.
