A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
This is the fourth part of a four part (I, II, III) look at the Dothraki from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of Thrones. We're looking at, in particular, if Martin's claim that the Dothraki are “an amalgam of a number of steppe and plains cultures” can … Continue reading Collections: That Dothraki Horde, Part IV: Screamers and Howlers
This is is the fifth part of a series taking a historian's look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. VIII) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of the same name. In our last two parts, we looked at the organization of … Continue reading Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part V: Ladders are Chaos
This is the second part of a series taking a historian's look at the Battle of Helm's Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. VIII), from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of the same name. Last time, we looked at the operations which led up to the … Continue reading Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part II: Total Warg
A look at the tactics of the 'loot train' battle from Game of Thrones (S7E4), in which it turns out, everyone is the fool.
This week, the part you have all been waiting for - we're going to look at how the Spartans fought. This is part six of our series (previous parts I, II, III, IV, V, VII) looking at Sparta and its place in cultural memory. As we discussed briefly before, there are two core myths in … Continue reading Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VI: Spartan Battle
Today we're starting the first part of our three part series on War Elephants (by reader request!). In this first part, we're going to talk about how elephants performed in battle: how did they fight and what was their battlefield purpose? The second two parts will focus on the (as we'll see) far more important … Continue reading Collections: War Elephants, Part I: Battle Pachyderms
This is the fourth part of a six part series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) taking a military historian's look at the Siege of Gondor in Peter Jackon's adaptation of Return of the King. Part I, II and III can be found here, here and here. Last time, we looked at Mordor's siege tactics … Continue reading Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part IV: The Cavalry Arrives
This is the second part of a six-part series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) taking a military historian's look at the Siege of Gondor in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Return of the King. We discussed the operational objectives and logistics of the Army of Mordor last time. This time, we're looking at what Gondor's … Continue reading Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part II: These Beacons are Liiiiiiit
