Woman Knights/ Explaining my choices

Why am I choosing to research Female Knights?

When writing the blog post about Medieval times, I came up with an idea for the backstory of The Warrior when reading about knights. She could be a knight, disguising herself as a male. Her goal could be to become Grand Master. (I learnt about the different ranks from this website: http://getasword.com/blog/608-knights-templars-ranks-and-organization/)

Mulan was another thing that came to mind when figuring out this idea alongside Female Knights. When first thinking about female knights in the middle ages, I really didn't think that there would of been any. I was wrong.

There was a whole Order of Knighthood that was exclusively female. The were called "The Order Of Hatchet". It was founded in 1149 by Raymond Berenger, count of Barcelona, to honor the women who fought for the defense of the town of Tortosa against a Moor attack. The dames admitted to the order received many privileges, including exemption from all taxes, and took precedence over men in public assemblies.

http://www.heraldica.org/topics/orders/wom-kn.htm

I found this to be really interesting, and could use this research to develop my idea. My world is not historically factual obviously, but it is inspired by the middle ages (like most RPG open-world adventure games). An all female Order of Knighthood didn't even come to mind when thinking of ideas for The Warrior, but now that I think of it, it would be really cool and fit the theme of the game.

I haven't really explained why I'm having the main characters be female. The obvious answer it that they're magical girls, and in the majority of magical girl anime, the magical girls are girls. But the underlying reason is that I am fed up of seeing women being overally sexualised in video games. There's distinct difference in how many male and female characters are presented. Men often tend to be relatable, while women are ‘perfected’. I admit that it's gotten better over the last few years, with games such as Tomb Raider drastically improving their character design over time to make her seem less sexualised and more realistic.

Here we see Lara Croft go from having an impossibly small waistline with the main focus being her breasts to a more proportional and realistic character.

This all relates to the male gaze theory.

https://www.slideshare.net/fleckneymike/the-male-gaze-laura-mulvey

The male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. A scene may focus on how men with muscles are interpreted as good and strong and attractive. Also slim women with a small waistline and curves, it puts you in the eyes of a male. The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance. Also how woman can more often than not only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only view themselves from a mans perspective.

However the presence of a woman in mainstream film texts is something that is vital. Often a female character has no real importance herself, it is how she makes the male feel or act that is the importance, the female only exist in relation to the male.

All this leads to my final points. I will be designing characters with a "womans gaze", making my characters realistic and not overally sexualised (as much I can in the art style that I've chosen) this means that giant breats and a tiny waistline wont be the main focus of my characters. I want my characters to be respected and not seen as a sex object, just like how things should be in real life.

So that is the underlying "moral" to why I've chosen all female characters. I want to create characters that don't have "the male gaze" to prove that female characters don't need a tiny waistline, huge breasts and be practically naked to be liked as a character. I will be making them diverse with different body types, skin colour, hair types and so on.

I just want everyone to respect one another no matter what gender/race/beliefs/ect are.