The wort choice for Arms in Westeros.

[Helman Corbray]

Including knights, Lords, Kings and etc. What do you think?

For me, it´s House Trant's hanged man.

[James Steller]

Clayton Suggs’ winged pigs rank pretty low for me. Incredibly mismatched arms with that kind of person. Though there’s also Grandison’s sleeping lion, which just seems like a strange idea.

[TheLastWolf]

Grandsons' sleeping lion

Underleaf's silver snail on green

Darry's black plowman on brown

Lipps'.... Well... lips

[Orm]

The maiden of house piper

[Aldarion]

What do we know about how technically house arms look? Because it seems that most of them are quite terrible, actually:

House Stark: Grey direwolf racing across a field of white

Baratheon: Crowned black stag on field of gold

These are kinda shit. You see, purpose of a coat of arms is to provide identification on the battlefield. This means that it has to be a) unique and b) easily identifiable. That is to say, simple yet different. But it seems to me that many sigils would be easy to confuse if it weren't for differing colours. That is why I actually prefer show designs to book descriptions.

I actually wrote about basics of heraldry for Mythic Scribes if you are interested.

[Loose Bolt]

I assume that members of house Swyft will hear many chicken jokes and they have to be really careful when they are near hungry Cleganes.

[GoldenGail3]

House Swyft.. Chicken sigil for fucks sake.

House Piper’s naked lady. Whomever designed it was drunk and horny.

Grandison’s sleeping lion. Was the designer asleep when they created it?

[Forley Prester]

Massey’s spirals remind me of a kids drawing

[Lord Lannister]

House Bolton's flayed man is kind of silly. Let's just broadcast we're the bad guys.

[BeastGuy]

House Slate's plain grey with two white lines, They Didn't Even Try!

[The hairy bear]

20 hours ago, Aldarion said:

What do we know about how technically house arms look? Because it seems that most of them are quite terrible, actually:

House Stark: Grey direwolf racing across a field of white

Baratheon: Crowned black stag on field of gold

These are kinda shit. You see, purpose of a coat of arms is to provide identification on the battlefield. This means that it has to be a) unique and b) easily identifiable. That is to say, simple yet different. But it seems to me that many sigils would be easy to confuse if it weren't for differing colours.

I don't see the problem with Baratheon's sable on gold banner. It's the same pattern than the Holy Roman Empire (and surely many others). It looks nice, and it's easily distinguishable.

I agree that many others would prove hard to identify in a field of battle. Rowan and Caswell in the Reach, Sarsfield and Greenfield in the West, Harlaw and Stonetree in the Iron Islands... A naval battle in the Narrow Sea involving Manderly, Arryn, Velaryon and Estermont fleets would be madness.

[Lollygag]

21 hours ago, Aldarion said:

What do we know about how technically house arms look? Because it seems that most of them are quite terrible, actually:

House Stark: Grey direwolf racing across a field of white

Baratheon: Crowned black stag on field of gold

These are kinda shit. You see, purpose of a coat of arms is to provide identification on the battlefield. This means that it has to be a) unique and b) easily identifiable. That is to say, simple yet different. But it seems to me that many sigils would be easy to confuse if it weren't for differing colours. That is why I actually prefer show designs to book descriptions.

I actually wrote about basics of heraldry for Mythic Scribes if you are interested.

I don't see a problem with either of these sigils in being unique or easily identifiable from a distance.

As for the others, there's only so many colors and so many, mascots? With all of those houses, it's gonna be a problem no matter what. And most people aren't graphic designers and have no sense of such things, so in that regard, I find it realistic if underwhelming.

[Aldarion]

1 hour ago, The hairy bear said:

I don't see the problem with Baratheon's sable on gold banner. It's the same pattern than the Holy Roman Empire (and surely many others). It looks nice, and it's easily distinguishable.

I agree that many others would prove hard to identify in a field of battle. Rowan and Caswell in the Reach, Sarsfield and Greenfield in the West, Harlaw and Stonetree in the Iron Islands... A naval battle in the Narrow Sea involving Manderly, Arryn, Velaryon and Estermont fleets would be madness.

It is not question of colours, it is question of sigils. Sable on gold is fine, but having an entire stag - as opposed to just head - is not. Though to be fair, it is not entirely ahistorical.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BYE6G2/historical-coat-of-arms-of-the-austria-hungarian-crown-lands-from-BYE6G2.jpg

42 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I don't see a problem with either of these sigils in being unique or easily identifiable from a distance.

As for the others, there's only so many colors and so many, mascots? With all of those houses, it's gonna be a problem no matter what. And most people aren't graphic designers and have no sense of such things, so in that regard, I find it realistic if underwhelming.

As I see it, Martin based designs on later-period coats of arms which did not serve the purpose of battlefield identification, yet used them for a period in which they did. Though it does appear to be questionable whether they ever served purposes of identification, so....

[Lord Lannister]

3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

I don't see a problem with either of these sigils in being unique or easily identifiable from a distance.

House Stark's sigil would have problems. A gray icon on a white banner could easily be misconstrued as the white flag of surrender or truce flag in poor visibility or if the wind wasn't blowing strong enough.

A historical example of this being a problem would be during the American Civil War. The Stainless Banner the Confederacy used during the later stages of the war was mostly white with the more well known red and blue battle flag in the canton. There were numerous incidents of it being indistinguishable from a white flag and by the end of the war it was modified with a bright red stripe. Though the war was basically over by that point.

So that House Stark hasn't had similar problems over their supposed thousands of years of history is somewhat surprising.

[Lollygag]

4 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

House Stark's sigil would have problems. A gray icon on a white banner could easily be misconstrued as the white flag of surrender or truce flag in poor visibility or if the wind wasn't blowing strong enough.

A historical example of this being a problem would be during the American Civil War. The Stainless Banner the Confederacy used during the later stages of the war was mostly white with the more well known red and blue battle flag in the canton. There were numerous incidents of it being indistinguishable from a white flag and by the end of the war it was modified with a bright red stripe. Though the war was basically over by that point.

So that House Stark hasn't had similar problems over their supposed thousands of years of history is somewhat surprising.

I see the point of a white or whitish flag. Adding to that, it would be problematic for other reasons with just a light dusting of snow. Same for any greenish banner in better weather or a blue or gray flag on the sea.

I think it's up there with his lack of world-building when it comes to law, economics, distances, army technicalities, etc. Better to focus on the story - characters, themes, plot, whatnot. Only so many hours in a day and only so many brain cells.

[Ran]

GRRM's aware of the rules of tincture and why they existed, but he just wanted it to be really colorful and so tossed them out, so a little suspension of disbelief is needed here.

That said, tincture rules were not universal, as with the or cross on argent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They made a lot of sense, but there were exceptions even in the era where they played more of a battlefield identification role.

[Lord Lannister]

47 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I think it's up there with his lack of world-building when it comes to law, economics, distances, army technicalities, etc. Better to focus on the story - characters, themes, plot, whatnot. Only so many hours in a day and only so many brain cells.

Oh I definitely agree. Nitpicking the little things can be fun, but if the characters, theme, plot and what not hadn't drawn us in, we'd probably not be here on a message board almost a decade after his last published book in the series. World building has always been the frosting and not the substance of the story to me.

[Lord of Brewtown]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

GRRM's aware of the rules of tincture and why they existed, but he just wanted it to be really colorful and so tossed them out, so a little suspension of disbelief is needed here.

That said, tincture rules were not universal, as with the or cross on argent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They made a lot of sense, but there were exceptions even in the era where they played more of a battlefield identification role.

And I'm glad he did make them more colorful.  That's one area I actually wish the HBO show would have kept closer in line with the books as well  - as opposed to 'dulling' down the colors for realism and changing some (Arryn, Bolton).   Yes, the HBO show's arms were generally more gritty/may have added to the atmosphere/believability some.  But, I enjoy the brighter colors, and think greater use of the arms may have made it easier for the more casual viewers to identify characters faster  - particularly if they needed actor changes (like the Mountain).  

[Loose Bolt]

18 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

House Stark's sigil would have problems. A gray icon on a white banner could easily be misconstrued as the white flag of surrender or truce flag in poor visibility or if the wind wasn't blowing strong enough.

Actually people of Westeros seems to use rainbow banner instead of white flag. In fact https://asearchoficeandfire.com/ gave me "no results found" when I was looking for "white flag". So using white banner for asking truce seems to be very rare in the books.

Naturally it is almost certain that rb became with the Faith and Andals and so b4 their coming to Westeros first men had to use something else when they surrendered or send ambassadors. But we cannot know what symbols they used for that purpose. So it is possible that people living in Planetos has never used white flag for surrendering.

[The Green Bard]

 

 

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wort

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noun

 

1. used in names of plants and herbs, especially those used, especially formerly, as food or medicinally, e.g., butterwort, woundwort.

 

To this definition, Houses Blanetree, Tyrell, Fenn, Hawthorne, Kidwell of Ivy Hall, Meadows Musgood, or Norrey might fit.  I'll go with Fenn, and cranogmen house.  they ought to know a fair bit about worts.