Women In Warhammer

No matter how hard an artist works, sometimes it is impossible for them to not reflect the age they are working in. Much like those Hollywood films they play on Sunday afternoons where no matter the period in history, every lady has a nineteen-fifties or sixties haircut. I think the same can be said for David Gallagher's Dragonslayer (see above) on the cover of White Dwarf 88, for though encased in a very serviceable suit of armour and wielding an equally serviceable sword, she has a distinct whiff of the nineteen-eighties when it comes to the hairdo and makeup. 

I love this piece of art and I find it as striking an image today as I did when I first saw it. I like the way that Gallagher presents this lady as being both very capable (not only does she look it, but she's slotted a dragon too) but also more realistically clothed. Her armour, after all, is plausible and take away the black tights, looks identical to the armour a man in her situation would wear. As an historical aside, Norman Knights wore hose under their armour and kept them secured with suspenders apparently, so perhaps we can let the tights stay. 

One thing I often find a little frustrating about women in wargames (the sculpted figures, not the players or painters) are the daft and implausible models that you see on offer, e.g. the big breasted glamour-girl type who forgot to put her clothes on in the morning when she has a dragon to slay in the afternoon. 

I am sure you can think of many examples of the models I mean, from both wargames and roleplaying games, on both paper and pixel. I am sure that there are plenty of people out there you enjoy figures like this, but I am not one of them really. I much prefer the female figures in my games to look like they are actually capable of fighting, if they are a fighter, or casting a spell if they are a wizard. 

My kind of woman in Warhammer is Julia McEwman. Realistically armoured and equipped as seen in this beautifully painted example by a chap known as Cubs. In many ways she is similar to David Gallagher's Dragonslayer. She wears plausible armour and carries a plausible weapon. Her gender is highly relevant to the McDeath scenario but not for the reason that many would think. McDeath after all cannot be harmed by any man, so Julia is one of the few options they attacking player has of felling the villain of the piece. Having collected McDeath figures for a long time and having gone as far as creating the first scenario in which she appears, Winwood Harbour, in great detail, I cannot say that anyone I ran through the game with thought any less of Julia because of her gender, she was just another powerful commander to be fielded and fought with. 

I think her equipment helped create that feeling towards her. She can be taken seriously. 

Now Warhammer, and Warhammer 40,000, has been given some flack online about being sexist. Perhaps you have seen one of the threads that occur here and there. There is an interesting article here that bemoans Slaves to Darkness as being a sexist tome for not portraying women in equal proportions to men, as well as poaching various quotes from the interviews I have done with Bryan Ansell and Tony Ackland. There are others online if you search for them, though they haven't nicked quotes from my work and not provided a link to their source. 

Gender and Representation in Warhammer's Realm of Chaos is typical of it's trope, an attempt to brand Warhammer sexist because it lacks an equal number of female characters and roles. This kind of argument is heavily flawed, as for starters Warhammer's background is based on Renaissance Europe and a period in time when women were treated very differently than they are today, hence they appear much more infrequently than their male counterparts 

The same 'logic' of a sexist agenda can be applied to almost any other toy too, just look at this catalogue page for Barbie toys that I used to buy one of my daughter's Christmas presents - she had the bubble making mermaid if you are interested - and you will see over the first two pages of products that out of forty odd dolls, only three of them are male and two of those dolls are represented wearing very little, baring their muscular plastic chests! The same trend can be seen in the other toys she is interested in, with a wealth of predominately female characters and a few male. 

I don't believe for one minute that Warhammer, Barbie or Disney Princess are in anyway sexist but it is fair to say that Citadel Miniatures, and other manufacturers, have released some truly awful examples of female models, but there have also been some really good examples though sadly, these are much fewer in number. 

I thought it might be interesting to have a look at some Citadel's lows (and believe me, they go pretty low at times) and some of the highs in the way they have represented women in the game. I am going to stick to period with this list, and pretty much focus on stuff released in the 1980s. 

By far the worst offender in Citadel's long history has to be the series of models released as part of the Fantasy Specials range in the early '80s, of which this example, FS10-1 or Naked Girl Roasting on Spit over Brazier, has to be the most extreme. Not only is the model very crudely sculpted, it is generally an very unpleasant concept for a toy soldier and I can see little merit in producing models like this apart to revel in their brutality. A drunk dwarf is fun, but this is not. 

There were a whole range of sculpts produced in this series and they all shared a similar theme - women without clothing being tortured on historically accurate devices. Stocks, pillories and the rack all have their examples, as does an iron maiden (the punishment, not the band.)

If having a collection of tortured girlfolk wasn't enough, you could always invest in a topless torturer herself! Though not as bad as the models we have seen so far, this girl looks like an extra from one dreadful 1970s exploitation films. But at least she has a few clothes on. This model has a number of variants but the basic premise is the same on all of them. 

Unlike this example, though at least she is just sitting down. Still, the model seems to imply that she is somehow subjugated or held captive.

Still, there were other female models about at the time which portrayed women in a more aggressive way, like this rather scary looking individual from the Fantasy Adventurers range. There are a number of variants again with this model, and indeed I have one of them. I like the fact that the ladies here and shown to be much larger than normal, reflecting different body sizes and so on. Though very different from the dragonslayer that opened this post, you feel that this lady knows her business and isn't anyone's fool. 

Looking through the rest of the Fantasy Adventurers range, there are a number of other female figures in there that fit more closely with the scantily clad cliche, particularly spellcasters, though there is an amusing model called a Seductive Wench, who though she looks harmless from the front, look behind her and you can see she is holding a dagger very firmly behind her back. But, she isn't a fighter like our dragonslayer but there are three other examples in that range alone that could easily join her. Have a look:

Sure, you could say that some of these models are a little leggy - but their outfits could be found on male miniatures in the same (or contemporary ranges) and on historical equivalents. And again, these examples portray an individual who knows their business - so I quite like them. They all have echoes of Julia (or Mace Lady) and the dragonslayer from White Dwarf 88. 

And no discussion about Women in Warhammer can be held without mentioning these two, Wanda and Kristen, two of the characters from the epic Enemy Within Campaign. They were originally villager models but were pressed into service for the miniature release of the roleplaying supplement. Again, they don't bother me because they represent real people in a fantasy world, Wanda is dressed as a wealthy woman and Kirsten in the clothes of a sneak thief - which reflects the backgrounds of both characters nicely. It is worth pointing out that these are major characters in WFRP's biggest scenario, and though there are five other male characters, these are broken down into two humans, a halfling and an elf. The human characters are presented equally - two men and two women. 

Wanda and Kirsten were not the only major female characters in WFRP's The Enemy Within either, though only one of them received a new model to represent them. That was Renata/Renate and I am lucky enough to own a painted version of this rare model.

Have a look: 

I bought her for a hefty price because she doesn't look like a ridiculous caricature of a woman in Warhammer. She wears appropriate clothing and knows how to use a bow. She is a variant of another female character, and we return to McDeath as we begin to wrap up this blog post.

I am talking of course about Sandra Prangle. Here he is:

There are slight variations between the two models, but they are appropriate and realistic - in fact the only proposturous thing you can say about Sandra, is the price tag she often sells for! While on the subject of McDeath, perhaps the single Warhammer release bar the Shrine of Rigg to have such a high number of female characters, we need to mention Lady McDeath - the evil sorceress and all round evil doer. 

Of course, this blog post has missed out a great number of female models released in the 1980s for use in Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. There simply isn't space as there really are so many of them, and yes a few of them (and I really do mean a few) are incredibly awful, but on the whole there are far more female models than I had originally expected and most of them are quite positive. Of course, the amount of them is far fewer than their male equivalents and some of them do slip into the dubious zone of implausible clothing, at least they are there. 

Which cannot really be said on the more modern ranges of Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000. A browse through the modern ranges reveals very few female characters. It seems that though the rest of the world has progressed in terms of gender equality, Games Workshop seems to have regressed significantly. 

And that is very sad. 

Orlygg