Conratulations, you have found a TerraGenesis Easter egg page.
As you may have gathered from some of Gary James' articles one of the armies he collects is a Bretonnian one, for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. On this page he tells us a little bit about his Bretonnians and the heraldry he uses.
My Bretonnian army is a romantic one, with lots of heroic, colourful knights and damsel Sorceresses in white robes fluttering in the wind...
I admired Nigel Stillman's White Dwarf articles outlining his approach to army collection. However, Nigel has gone for a realistic, battered look for his army where as I prefer the romantic, fantasy/Arthurian aspect. My miniatures therefore tend to be clean, bright and colourful.
This chap is a Standard Bearer. He has a simple heraldry of black ermine on a yellow field. Contrary to the approach adopted in WHFB, where the most revered knights have the most complex heraldry, in 'real' heraldry the most ancient families are likely to have the simplest heraldry.
It can be difficult to think up a lot of different heraldic patterns. My favourite resource, is a book called 'The Dictionary of Heraldry' by Joseph Foster, which (I estimate) illustrates over 2000 arms.
Each page illustrates a number of coats of arms and links them to a description of the men who bore them, and at what event they were seen. Mind you, the only link between the picture and the text is the hand-written name, which can be a bit difficult to decipher. The coat of arms in the bottom left of the picture was the inspiration for Hungerford the Bastard's arms, one of my Grail Knights.
The Dictionary of Heraldry is published by Studio Editions, 1994, ISBN 1 85170 309 8. The price, I think, was about 15 Pounds Sterling, which I think is excellent value for 220 oversize pages.
In keeping with the approach used by Games Workshop I have given my Grail Knights the most elaborate heraldry. I still have one knight to do, but here are some pictures of those I have completed so far (I'll not even attempt to give you the official description of the arms) :
![]() | This is a quartered pattern of red and green alternating with black and white stripes and plates. It was used by Walter Hungerford K.G., a baron, at the siege of Rouen in 1418. |
(Oh, alright then. It is sable, two bars argent, in chief three plates, quarterly with per pale dancett�e gules and vert a chevron or. Satisfied?) A variation on these arms was used by Hungerford The Bastard, slain at the seige of Calais, which I think is a much more interesting name and one I might use for this knight! Maybe it'll have to be Hungerford Le B'stard...
![]() | This was the first Grail Knight I painted and is much simpler than Le B'stard's arms above. I intend adding a charge (icon) to the red quarter but haven't yet decided what to use. |
![]() | These arms were inspired by one of Games Workshops paintings of a charger - the one they used on the 'open/shut' signs that they hung on shop doors. The original painting had the yellow bar with stars crossing the white quarter which I think, strictly speaking, is incorrect - yellow would not be used on top of white in heraldry. |
So, being a pedant, I moved the yellow bar to the blue quarter and added some grail transfers to the white quarter instead (the yellow-on-white is OK for charges).
![]() | I think I must have been drinking when I decided that I would use a fret (knot) device in this knight's arms. It is based on the arms of John de Eyton, 1394. The original also had an ermine pattern in the white bars. Sod that for a lark though. |
| Actually the fret pattern wasn't too difficult to do. basically it is just a blue cross pattern and it is the black-lining which gives the illusion of fret work. | ![]() |
So there you are. A little hidden information on my Bretonnian figures. Have you found all the other TerraGenesis Easter Eggs?