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Author’s Note
- Heraldry in Kadin’s World
Coats of Arms
- Aric, of the royal house of Aradan, Prince of the Kingdom of Kronar
Author’s Note
Heraldry in Kadin’s World
I have elected to represent heraldic terms here in the fragments of the Kingdom of Kronar as they are in Britain and America. In heraldic terms, azure is blue, gules is red, vert is green, sable is black, or is gold (or yellow), and argent is silver (or white). A fess is a horizontal bar through a set of arms, or a quarter of those arms. In heraldic terms, a lion (or any other creature for that matter) is termed rampant if it is standing on its hind legs, with its forelimbs held before it in a defensive posture.
Cadency marks are designed to indicate one’s place in the family pecking order. Normally, Aric’s standard would have been cadenced with an upward facing crescent moon in argent, but when his brother was stripped of his status and cast out from the Greenwood, Aric became the next in line for the throne, assuming his brother’s position, and his arms were cadenced accordingly.
The terms, despite being used in English heraldry, are derived from Old French and began to be used in England with the arrival of the Norman Queen Emma, wife of King Ethelred the Unready, and made national policy with the victory of William the Conqueror over King Harold the second, the last Saxon King, in 1066 A.D.
Coats of Arms
Aric, of the royal house of Aradan, Prince of the Kingdom of Kronar
The quartered arms of the royal house: The first quarter was gules blazoned with the emblem of the house of Aradan, the three royal scallop shells in argent, divided by a fess in argent. The second quarter, in azure, was surmounted by the symbol of the Greenwood, the linden tree in or and vert. The third quarter, in azure, held a representation of the compass, in sable, its beam pointing to the great northern star, also in argent. Finally, the fourth quarter, in gules, held the royal lion of Kronar, rampant, in argent, in honor of the old kingdom. As this was Aric’s personal standard, it was surmounted by a front-facing knight’s helm in gold, surmounted with the crown of a prince of the Greenwood, cadenced by the argent bar with three downward-facing branches, looking like an inverted crown, indicating the first born or, in this case, heir to the throne.