Armor & Heraldry

Green and gold for the Commander, crimson and gold for the realm — and a star that means "follow me."

The Commander’s arms

• The coat — dark forest green, gold-trimmed, cut for riding. Green is the Commander’s personal color: the realm’s banners are crimson, but the figure at the front of the army wears green, so there is never any doubt who she is or where she stands.
• The star — an eight-pointed gold star worn at the chest and flown on her personal banner. To the army it has one meaning: follow me. Recruits are taught that wherever the star flies, the Commander is — because she would never ask it to fly where she won’t go.
• The sword — gold-hilted, plain-bladed, kept sharp enough to shave with and plain enough to use. She has refused jeweled presentation swords three times. “A sword is a tool,” she says. “Decorate the scabbard if you must. The blade is for work.”
• The braid — silver-white, worn long and braided for the field. Court rumor says she has never cut it since taking command. She declines to confirm this, which the court takes as confirmation.

The heraldry of Valdris

• The realm’s banner — crimson, a gold lion rampant. The lion is the Queen’s beast; the crimson is the realm’s blood, spent and unspent.
• The Commander’s banner — crimson, the eight-pointed gold star. Flown only where she is in personal command. When the star banner goes up over a camp, the camp straightens its tents.
• The Dawnmarch towers — each watchtower flies a crimson pennant; the tower the Commander is inspecting flies the star beneath it. Tower crews compete for the honor the way other armies compete for medals.
• The war-tent standard — a small star banner on a spear, planted outside her tent wherever it stands. It marks the place where decisions happen — and where the Commander can be found, day or night, by anyone with business urgent enough to knock.

What the heraldry means

Valdris heraldry is deliberately legible: a child can read it. Crimson means the realm. Gold means the standard. Green means the Commander herself. The star means follow me. There are no quarterings, no augmentations, no mysteries — she had the college of heralds simplify the old devices on her first year of command, saying, “If a soldier can’t read it at a hundred paces in the rain, it’s decoration, not heraldry.”

Source notes

• All heraldry here is creative interpretation of the public character art. See methodology.
• For the Code the star represents, see The Commander’s Code.