In Game of Thrones, the armies have shields with the coat of arms of their lord. For example, a soldier living under Stark territory would have a Stark Shield, a solider living under Tyrell territory a Tyrell shield, a soldier under Frey territory, a Frey shield, etc. Is this true for medieval England / Europe?
So if I was a soldier who lived in Washington, Tyne and Wear, would my shield have the coat of arms of the Washington family (as in the ancestors of George Washington), or would the Washington coat of arms be only for members of the Washington family? If it is the latter, then what would be on my shield?
Sorry if my question is kind of messy, but I don't really understand how Coat of Arms work in a battlefield sense and which soldier would have which arms, so any additional information / further reading that I didn't ask for would be great.
Thanks!
EDIT - Spelling
Okay, so you're kind of mixing two concepts up a bit here: heraldry and livery. Soldiers have basically always decorated their equipment, but after heraldry became fully established in the 13th century, to bear a coat of arms, whether on shield or surcoat or whatever, was to claim nobility. The specific arrangement of symbols signified your personal identity. Yours was slightly different than your brother's, or your father's, or your uncle's. A common soldier simply wouldn't have a proper coat of arms on anything.
Livery is another matter. We do know that lords, at least by the 14th-15th century, would often try to equip their personal retainers with matching clothing that reflected their attachment. But this is a lot less elaborate than a coat of arms - basically, it's just buying your guys red or blue or green coats. Note the emphasis on personal retainers. Most soldiers weren't directly and permanently attached to a great man's household. Mercenaries, levies (which were falling out of use as heraldry came into being, but that's another story), contracted men: these guys almost certainly would provide their own equipment and look very different from the personal servants of kings or lords. Your shield would be painted however the hell you wanted it.
It's a common trope in medieval fiction - movies and television shows, I mean - to write the present back into the past. Modern armies wear uniforms; so let's put the English in red and the French in blue, or give everybody on a side matching shields. It helps the audience figure out what's going on. But that kind of uniformity is a distinctly modern thing, a product of the nation state and the permanent standing army. Medieval armies just weren't that organized. They were, as a rule, assembled from disparate parts for a limited duration - a campaign season or a crusade - and then disbanded once they were no longer needed.
By the by, Game of Thrones is a really unreliable source for anything other than George R.R. Martin's imagination. It's about as accurate a portrayal of the Middle Ages as Animal Farm is a portrayal of the day to day working of an English pig farm :D.
Hi, here are a few posts on heraldry that you may find interesting
Did noble families in the middle ages have a family sigil and/or motto like in Game of Thrones? featuring /u/QuickSpore and /u/tim_mcdaniel
Heraldry and Livery featuring /u/deMohac
How did families get their crest's and coats of arms? and How did knights prevent copying each other's heraldry? featuring /u/tim_mcdaniel
Irish family crests/coats of arms featuring /u/The_Chieftain_WG
... and a couple on livery. There are many threads asking how armies identified friend from foe and avoided friendly fire, but these are ones I ran into while searching for the above