"Another WotR Rant" Topic

(This time on the right board)

I just spent 10 minutes searching for who in the heck "Dorset" is.

Turns out he was Thomas Gray, son of the queen.

Couldn't they have just said that!

What? And have all the ignorant peasants know who his mum and dad were?

If you put the title into a search engine then, usually, Wiki will tell you who they were, mate. So all you have to do is work out whether the title belongs to a duke, marquess, earl, baron or lord.

Simple, ain't it? :-)

One Hundred Years of Solitude….

I did use the search engine, but since the source just called him Dorset, I didn't know what title to check. Earl, nope. Duke, nope. It was Marquis!

It would be like reading about WW2 and learning that "Prime Minister" vowed to Never Never Never Give up! Or that "President" gave the Day of Infamy speech.

Rant over.
(For now)

It can be a pain trying to sort out who was who, what their liveries were and even what side they were on- which could change hourly, it seems.

But that's history, mate. Nobody thinks that wargamers and figure modellers are going to need all that information that wasn't "worth" putting into the history books.

<bleeped>ds.

In the Test of Resolve scenario books there is a list of all the commanders featured giving their full name, title and which battles they fought in (and for which side). Titles can be very confusing especially on change of regieme when the new lot often took over titles from their defeated enemies

Thanks. I have the 1st and 3rd book. I'll keep that in mind.

Unfortunately, I was listening to a podcast while on a walk, so I had to rely on the inter-web for info.

"Want a real rant?
"Go back to Carthage with Hanno, Hasdrubal, Mago and Hannibal. Dozens of them every generation."

Roger that; maybe the Carthaginians only used a very few different names-it was likely very confusing at High School class reunions in ancient Carthage.

On the other side how many Publius Cornelius Scipios were there? Military leaders prominent in their time probably numbered a dozen or more; off the top of my head I can think of at least three who were significant enough to merit their own agnomens, albeit it seems like some of the Scipios (Nasica or Aemilianus for example) may have used agnomens simply to tell one from another.

The thing is…

I'm talking about modern secondary sources.

At any given time there would only be one Dorset, but might be others with the same given and family names. The first Marquess of Dorset was Thomas Grey, and so was his son.
Would be even worse with Edward Plantagenet.

It is, though, awkward that Grey, Harington and Dorset are the same person depending on date.

It could be worse
Some of the German families had all male members with the same Christian name, regardless of branch. Each was given a number and these got so high that they started again in new centuries.
The men of the House of Reuss were all called Heinrich. The Princes of Reuss-Schleiz were numbered, in order, 42nd, 62nd, 67th, 14th, 27th, 45th.

The Beaufort Earls and Dukes of Somerset were also Earls and Marquises of Dorset, weren't they?