Half-swording is the practice of gripping the blade half-way down in order to deliver a more accurate and powerful thrusting attack or to use the sword as a club, as seen below:
Given the prominence of plate armor in Westerosi warfare (46 results for plate armor across ASOIAF), I would expect half-swording techniques would develop in order to deal with opponents in full plate.
Incidentally, GRRM, if you wanted a better way to depict the Bronn/Vardis Egan fight, you should have gone with half-swording rather than the old canard about the weight of plate armor…
Is that a canard tho? Didn’t a full suit of plate wear about forty pounds?
That’s a non-trivial amount of extra weight to haul around during a period of intense, adrenaline-pumping, life-or-death activity.
The protection it provides is worth it in many situations, of course; I’m not sure Vardis Egan would have done better against Bronn without his armor simply because it seems likely Bronn is simply a better swordsman. So the armor actually probably kept him alive longer.
Yeah, I think it is a canard.
Yes, a full suit of plate weighed a bit (although it could go as light as 33 pounds), but it distributed the weight much much better than chainmail, and so it wasn’t as tiring to wear. I can testify from my own experiences here: chainmail feels way heavier than it actually is, because the metal is hanging down off you from every point. By contrast, plate armor that’s been properly fitted is distributing the weight across your entire body.
Look at the video I’ve linked to here, or the video linked to in the Catelyn VII chapter essay – you can be very agile and active in plate armor, especially if you put in the kind of training that someone like Vardis Egan would have done from an early age.
RFTIT Tumblr Backup 