yournamehere wrote:Infact no army in there right mind would ever wear a helm with such easy "knock off my helmet" targets in real life. The idea that vikings and what not wearing helms with great horns in battle is fallacy, people that wore helms in battle surely did not want them knocked off.
Ceremonial garb, perhaps but like I said I don't think they are base off any real world examples, probably that way purely for aesthetics.
Army, no. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. People seem to forget that the vast majority of extant armour is (primarily later period) tournament gear, and therefore make wildly inaccurate assumptions based on the features of that armour or dismiss most of the features thereof, claiming that "that was only for tourneys," ignoring their influence on the development of arms and armour. Over-sized helmet crests were very popular for a time and specific tourneys existed where the single goal in the melee was to take the crest of another combatant (14th cent. constructions were primarily of dyed and tooled leather, after which crests were primarily decorative feathered affairs, but no more substantial than that).
Khornate helmet crests are big, showy affairs, falling into
GW's typical milieu: take something visually archetypal - whether based in history or stereotypical fantasy - and blow it up until it looks somewhat goofy but vaguely cool, then slap it on the models. Many Khornate crests (there are variations) bear less resemblance to the mark of Khorne, a skull, or Aztec, Japanese, or Egyptian helmets than they do the Von Prankh greathelm, which displays the aforementioned style of flamboyant medieval crest.
Ooh, but it's all wing-y! Isn't that the Night Lords? Yeah, it is. Just as much as their helmets also resemble Morrigan from Darkstalkers.
GW pulls from every available source without realistically emulating
anything. I love visual analysis for the sake of putzing around, but seriously attempting to ascribe any historical reason to
GW's rhyme can never extend beyond intellectual masturbation.
P.S. - The initially quoted Viking comment is valid. The closest things to horned helmets (beyond small features of the repousse present on certain 16th cent. parade helmets or supplemental crests, like the one pictured) are very early affairs from the British Isles, although the protrusions looked more like a pair of VERY unappealing breasts than they did animal horns.
