No not the book or film, the actual colour.
A friend visited fairly recently and on showing him the completed Soldier King armies, he remarked "you like the colour purple in your armies, don't you?"
My response was that if you couldn't make use of it in Imagi-Nation armies, when could you?
His observation was based on Hrvatska; the main colour is red and I made use of an old Citadel / GW paint - "Worm purple" for facings and on general staff ( influenced by a throwaway remark in Knotel that in the Saxon - Polish army the Poles substituted purple for red for generals). The colour itself is a paler lighter purple shade.
At the time of his visit, I had not started the Estavian guard some of whom are resplendent in Vallejo "Violet" (with a touch of Oxford blue) a much deeper shade; one line regiment has worm purple facings, so this may have influenced his remark. As I have been painting the aforementioned guard, his remark has been close to my thoughts.
I used it predominantly as it complements red nicely; as Hrvatska are the "red" game army and Estavia is the "Crimson Throne" , it follows from that. In the real world it was a rare colour, especially in military use.
The preserve of Roman emperors and Persian King of Kings due to the expense of manufacture (decomposing Murax sea snails does not make for an abundant dye) one would not expect to see wide use in the age of pre-industrial dyes (although the Osprey book on ancient Persians suggests otherwise, coupled with Saffron produced yellow for an eye-watering colour combination).
That said, ancient Spaniards produced purple from a mix of indigo and madder; Republican Romans dyed feathers purple and even the ECW had "purple coat" regiments (who may not have actually worn purple, certainly not with yellow breeches as in the first ECW Osprey - there's that combo again). Of course, when referring to "purple" we could be referring to a wide spectrum of colours - I'm thinking here of shades such as Murat's " Polish Crimson " which is rendered in a variety of pinks, crimson and "Amaranth" another odd and elusive shade. I have a nearly expired jar of "Minature Paints - Ruby" for which I have never found a substitute, for that sort of colour (works well with purple as well!)
Aside from Imagi-Nations, I've used purple on Romans; 15mm Late Roman decoration and my Pompaian late Republican legionaries (to distinguish them from Caesarians in red) coupled with the aforementioned Ruby for their shields (which colour also features on the Late Romans), in this case the washed out worm purple. Aside from that, ancient Spaniards.
So while I do like it, it's been the SK Imagi-Nations which have seen most use.
Just depends on how historical accurate you care to be. Purple shows up sparingly in my dark ages just to break up the browns. But really, it’s not my favorite color anyway. 😀
ReplyDeleteI've remembered why I never finished my Austrian army; white is a horrible colour to get right.
ReplyDeleteI think the Warhammer Dark Ages book suggested mixing flesh into most colours for dark ages so they look washed out. Never tried it.
Neil
Interesting, and a good point that with 'Imagi-nations' one should avoid using colours which were difficult or impossible to manufacture at scale until later. Sort of like equipping your Grenadiers with Tommy Guns! Though as I think you say, 'purple' might be a sort of faded red/crimson - another feature of the pre-industrial age being quite wide variation in quality of dyes, I assume...
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, until the late C19th colour dyes were produced from natural sources and were not especially colour fast; after exposure to the elements and washing, they tended to fade, some colours not being particularly strong in any case. To obtain deep colours, it was necessary to dye the cloth multiple times, at greater expense.
Some dye sources were available in particular geographical areas, Prussia were also the source of a synthetic blue dye. Little wonder undyed wool was common, as it could be whitened by chalk!
I've opted to try and have vague colour associations for the SK world, tied to the various coloured countries, rationalised by access to particular colours. The north has green, the south blue, east yellow and the west red. So Estavia has red associated with the Hereditary Lands, green with the Midlands and blue with the Bravacian March. The line regiments tend to follow this pattern. The use of purple was to have something different from guards in blue faced red or red coat colours (Hrvatska and Arcadia having such red coated guards).
I also want one of the smaller states to have salmon pink coats. It's a homage to Otto Schmidt of the Society of Daisy. To rationalise it, I intend to have a back story of the ruler being sold a dubious quality red dye which rapidly fades after a rain shower! The troops vow to dye their coats red in the blood of their enemies......or so the official propoganda would have you believe!
Neil