The Alans are horribly misrepresented in CKIII after the "Legacy of Persia" was released

[WindowMaster]

To begin, the Alans are one of the most underrated peoples in this game and get less attention than what they deserve. At first, they were associated with having a "Byzantine heritage," which did not bother me at all because we all know that the Alans diverged from the Scythians and Sarmatians many centuries ago, probably around the first century AD, and were largely Christianized by their Georgian and Roman neighbors. Thus, the Romans simply regarded them as Alans, or alternatively as Massagetae. But the Romans, namely Roman historians, always emphasized on how the Alans looked and how they lived.

Roman historians always mentioned that the Alans typically had yellow hair and their skin was white. They also always stated that the Alans were typically tall and very handsome. But CKIII has completely distorted their appearance by not only making them dress like Bedouins but also look like dark skin wandering Bedouins. This is worse than giving them the "Byzantine heritage." At least with the "Byzantine heritage," CKIII still kept their original appearance by giving them light hair and white, European features, which was very accurate of how they looked, according to Roman sources. Besides, the Alans were the original Aryans. The Byzantine heritage might have inaccurately dressed them like "Byzantines," but it still kept their original appearance.

However, the new version dresses up the Alans like Bedouins and makes them have Bedouin features, like dark skin and dark hair and big noses, something that is completely inaccurate and even misleading. Now, the Alans look like nomadic Kurds and Bedouins instead of having their original representation. And they also did not dress like Persians.

To be fair, the Alans looked more closely related to the Georgians and Goths. The Georgians have always been the neighbors of the Alans, and to this day, the Ossetians, the descendants of the Alans, still live within Georgia, and you cannot tell them apart, because they are Caucasian peoples from their magnificent Kavkaz mountains. Moreover, the Georgians and Alans have dressed up very similarly, probably since the fifth century AD or even earlier. Thus, the Alans should have the Georgian/Byzantine fashion and not the Arabic, Bedouin fashion.

Honestly, the Alans were also fine with the Byzantine fashion, and the devs could have added more originality to the Alans with the Persian and Byzantine DLCs, without dressing them up and making them look like wandering dark skin Bedouins.

The Alans were European-Iranian peoples who have originally inhabited the Caucuses and Carpathian mountains. That is why the Romans referred to their land as "Scythia/Sarmatia." That is why the Alans could forge powerful connecting alliances with the Goths, because not only they were Christians or pagans together but also they were very similarly looking: tall and handsome looking with blond hair.

The Alans were also excellent horse riders and warriors. This tells us that the Alans might have been regarded as barbarians by Romans and Persians, but they were great horse warriors and archers. Thanks to Alans and Parthians, the Romans learned to use horses in war, which is why they developed the Cataphracts. The Alans might have kept some of their elemental tribal customs, but they gradually became assimilated to the Georgian culture, hence the Romans in the tenth century and eleventh century often grouped both Georgians and Alans and Iberians.

Update: The original folks that might know me that I am dannyvader007 and have unfortunately gained a notorious reputation within the community. So those who know, you know it well. But I thank the people who agree with me and like my posts! I appreciate my supporters!

 

[Pups' Socks]

To begin, the Alans are one of the most underrated peoples in this game and get less attention than what they deserve. At first, they were associated with having a "Byzantine heritage," which did not bother me at all because we all know that the Alans diverged from the Scythians and Sarmatians many centuries ago, probably around the first century AD, and were largely Christianized by their Georgian and Roman neighbors. Thus, the Romans simply regarded them as Alans, or alternatively as Massagetae. But the Romans, namely Roman historians, always emphasized on how the Alans looked and how they lived.

Roman historians always mentioned that the Alans typically had yellow hair and their skin was white. They also always stated that the Alans were typically tall and very handsome. But CKIII has completely distorted their appearance by not only making them dress like Bedouins but also look like dark skin wandering Bedouins. This is worse than giving them the "Byzantine heritage." At least with the "Byzantine heritage," CKIII still kept their original appearance by giving them light hair and white, European features, which was very accurate of how they looked, according to Roman sources. Besides, the Alans were the original Aryans. The Byzantine heritage might have inaccurately dressed them like "Byzantines," but it still kept their original appearance.

However, the new version dresses up the Alans like Bedouins and makes them have Bedouin features, like dark skin and dark hair and big noses, something that is completely inaccurate and even misleading. Now, the Alans look like nomadic Kurds and Bedouins instead of having their original representation. And they also did not dress like Persians.

To be fair, the Alans looked more closely related to the Georgians and Goths. The Georgians have always been the neighbors of the Alans, and to this day, the Ossetians, the descendants of the Alans, still live within Georgia, and you cannot tell them apart, because they are Caucasian peoples from their magnificent Kavkaz mountains. Moreover, the Georgians and Alans have dressed up very similarly, probably since the fifth century AD or even earlier. Thus, the Alans should have the Georgian/Byzantine fashion and not the Arabic, Bedouin fashion.

Honestly, the Alans were also fine with the Byzantine fashion, and the devs could have added more originality to the Alans with the Persian and Byzantine DLCs, without dressing them up and making them look like wandering dark skin Bedouins.

The Alans were European-Iranian peoples who have originally inhabited the Caucuses and Carpathian mountains. That is why the Romans referred to their land as "Scythia/Sarmatia." That is why the Alans could forge powerful connecting alliances with the Goths, because not only they were Christians or pagans together but also they were very similarly looking: tall and handsome looking with blond hair.

The Alans were also excellent horse riders and warriors. This tells us that the Alans might have been regarded as barbarians by Romans and Persians, but they were great horse warriors and archers. Thanks to Alans and Parthians, the Romans learned to use horses in war, which is why they developed the Cataphracts. The Alans might have kept some of their elemental tribal customs, but they gradually became assimilated to the Georgian culture, hence the Romans in the tenth century and eleventh century often grouped both Georgians and Alans and Iberians.

What preposterous claims are these?
Everyone knows that everyone east of Slavs is black haired and monolid eyed and everyone also knows that everyone to the south of them monolids are different shades of black.

 

[treb]

The Alans were European-Iranian peoples who have originally inhabited the Caucuses and Carpathian mountains. That is why the Romans referred to their land as "Scythia/Sarmatia." That is why the Alans could forge powerful connecting alliances with the Goths, because not only they were Christians or pagans together but also they were very similarly looking: tall and handsome looking with blond hair.

No they were not native to Caucuses and Carpathian mountain's Alans were a subgroup of Sarmatians. The earliest possible records of them place them somewhere in central Asia in the 1st century bc also "European Iranian" is a linguistic classification not a genetic group or set of phenotypic traits. A Chinese person can speak fluent English(Indo-European language) as much as an English person can speak chinese(sino-tibetan language).

 

[tilly]

Roman historians always mentioned that the Alans typically had yellow hair and their skin was white. They also always stated that the Alans were typically tall and very handsome.

i have no dog in this race. i dont know jack shit about the alans. what i can tell you, though, is that this specifically is a heavily employed historiographical trope known as the noble barbarian, and it tells us literally nothing about the actual physical makeup of the group being described. fair hair and/or complexion i could grant you, no reason to disbelieve that, but everything else is just indicating to the reader theyre a bunch of savages in dire need of civilising

tacitus employs it speaking about the germanic tribes, anna komnene employs it speaking about the sicilian normans, and ibn fadlan employs it speaking about the volga vikings. its imperial propaganda. the romans especially were uniquely fond of it, which tracks given that im p sure they invented it. as funny as it is to imagine all these people were just unspeakably horny, i fear they were in actuality just being so racist they accidentally started writing gay porn

 

[treb]

as funny as it is to imagine all these people were just unspeakably horny, i fear they were in actuality just being so racist they accidentally started writing gay porn

Now that is one hot take on Roman ethnography lmao

 

[Willy Waggler]

tacitus employs it speaking about the germanic tribes, anna komnene employs it speaking about the sicilian normans, and ibn fadlan employs it speaking about the volga vikings. its imperial propaganda.

I'm sure you noticed a common theme amongst them.
Now i have never read romans calling arabs, subsaharans, or picts tall or handsome.

 

[tilly]

I'm sure you noticed a common theme amongst them.
Now i have never read romans calling arabs, subsaharans, or picts tall or handsome.

yeah, the common theme is people they wanted to conquer. the noble barbarian is savage but has a certain impressiveness that indicates theyd benefit from the gift of roman rationality. theyre practically animals but they have an innate value. anywhere they really dont want to expand to that also isnt actively causing them any trouble is an abject shithole filled with barbarians on speed, so theres no reason to go there or care about it

compare the descriptions of the brythonic celts to the descriptions of the irish. long, loving descriptions of the britons as tall and handsome and extremely nude on the battlefield, while the irish are incestuous cannibals that live on an insane fantasy island where cattle explode from grazing themselves to literal bursting. they did not WANT to go to ireland. ireland was too damp to grow wheat on and useless for the roman economy. i should not have to tell you the irish did not have exploding cows, that was just some shit they said, and we probably werent incestuous cannibals either. the romans were just dealing with an already massively overextended empire so they were looking for any reason to not overextend it further

now, this becomes less about imperialism and more about shorthand the more its employed, but that doesnt stop it from being fully unreliable as a physical description of people. im actually not fully certain what point youre trying to argue here. id have figured you were implying they only used it for white people but then you threw the picts in there. im not arguing the alans werent white, i neither know nor care particularly, im saying tall and handsome doesnt necessarily mean they were actually all of them built like that russian dude who became the gigachad meme. genuinely, what are you getting at? what common theme are you thinking of?

 

[Delterius]

as funny as it is to imagine all these people were just unspeakably horny, i fear they were in actuality just being so racist they accidentally started writing gay porn

that said this thread's focus on how tall and handsome the alans and their magnificent mountains were is quite something

 

[treb]

that said this thread's focus on how tall and handsome the alans and their magnificent mountains were is quite something

Tall blond Alan bussy got the Imperator acting unwise...

 

[Delterius]

Tall blond Alan bussy got the Imperator acting unwise...

There's an ancient saying in the middle east: why did the horse nomad cross the road? Because there were slavs past the greeks.

 

[WindowMaster]

What preposterous claims are these?
Everyone knows that everyone east of Slavs is black haired and monolid eyed and everyone also knows that everyone to the south of them monolids are different shades of black.

Preposterous claims?
Erroneously generalizing the Alans as dark and monolid is the most stupid thing to come from someone that plays a medieval game. Alans were and Iranian tribe, not Turkic or Mongol. They were the original inhabitants of eastern Europe and Central Asia. More precisely, the Alans inhabited all of the Caucuses. So they were not Slavs or Gothic, although they did ally with the Vandals and other Gothic tribes such as the Kerchen Goths.

Scythians and Sarmatians were both European and Iranian.

 

[WindowMaster]

No they were not native to Caucuses and Carpathian mountain's Alans were a subgroup of Sarmatians. The earliest possible records of them place them somewhere in central Asia in the 1st century bc also "European Iranian" is a linguistic classification not a genetic group or set of phenotypic traits. A Chinese person can speak fluent English(Indo-European language) as much as an English person can speak chinese(sino-tibetan language).

The Scythians, Cimmerians, and Sarmatians were the original inhabitants of both Central Asia and eastern Europe. Just because today there are Turkic, mongoloid people in Central Asia, does not mean that the Alans were Turkic and mongoloid. They were Iranian both linguistically and genetically, and they had their unique way of dressing unlike the Persians and Greeks.

Moreover, the Roman sources emphasize that they were typically handsome and blond, not mongoloid and dark. And even if they are not directly Scythian, Sarmatian is still the closest related tribe to Scythians and Cimmerians. Alans did not speak Persian not Greek or Latin because they had their own language that is unique and to this day, they speak forms of Iron Ossetic, and Ossetic is a language that is unlike Georgian, but still similar to Persian and Kurdish.

 

[DiabloDeVille]

i have no dog in this race. i dont know jack shit about the alans. what i can tell you, though, is that this specifically is a heavily employed historiographical trope known as the noble barbarian, and it tells us literally nothing about the actual physical makeup of the group being described. fair hair and/or complexion i could grant you, no reason to disbelieve that, but everything else is just indicating to the reader theyre a bunch of savages in dire need of civilising

tacitus employs it speaking about the germanic tribes, anna komnene employs it speaking about the sicilian normans, and ibn fadlan employs it speaking about the volga vikings. its imperial propaganda. the romans especially were uniquely fond of it, which tracks given that im p sure they invented it. as funny as it is to imagine all these people were just unspeakably horny, i fear they were in actuality just being so racist they accidentally started writing gay porn

Do the romans use it for non germanics thhat often? As germanics, normans, and volga vikings are all in some part germanic

 

[DiabloDeVille]

Preposterous claims?
Erroneously generalizing the Alans as dark and monolid is the most stupid thing to come from someone that plays a medieval game. Alans were and Iranian tribe, not Turkic or Mongol. They were the original inhabitants of eastern Europe and Central Asia. More precisely, the Alans inhabited all of the Caucuses. So they were not Slavs or Gothic, although they did ally with the Vandals and other Gothic tribes such as the Kerchen Goths.

Scythians and Sarmatians were both European and Iranian.

Hes being sarcastic, as paradox makes all turkics look extremely mongol even in 867, when the avars and khazars would have admixture

 

[WindowMaster]

i have no dog in this race. i dont know jack shit about the alans. what i can tell you, though, is that this specifically is a heavily employed historiographical trope known as the noble barbarian, and it tells us literally nothing about the actual physical makeup of the group being described. fair hair and/or complexion i could grant you, no reason to disbelieve that, but everything else is just indicating to the reader theyre a bunch of savages in dire need of civilising

tacitus employs it speaking about the germanic tribes, anna komnene employs it speaking about the sicilian normans, and ibn fadlan employs it speaking about the volga vikings. its imperial propaganda. the romans especially were uniquely fond of it, which tracks given that im p sure they invented it. as funny as it is to imagine all these people were just unspeakably horny, i fear they were in actuality just being so racist they accidentally started writing gay porn

Very silly but I don't think so!
There are cases in which Roman historians, such as Prokopios has to diverge from writing important history to express how beautiful Slavic women were. But I would not justify your case to say that historians were always horny when they were writing, even though Slavic and Sarmatian women were very attractive at that time.

 

[WindowMaster]

I'm sure you noticed a common theme amongst them.
Now i have never read romans calling arabs, subsaharans, or picts tall or handsome.

No why would they call them sub-Saharan when they can call them "wretched Bedouins"!

 

[tilly]

Do the romans use it for non germanics thhat often? As germanics, normans, and volga vikings are all in some part germanic

i suppose its a matter of degree of separation, isnt it. is a celt a germanic? go back far enough and, like, yeah, a little bit, but is that what the romans were thinking of?

the dying gaul, which is now sometimes called the dying galatian for fairly obvious reasons, depicts the final moments of a galatian, who were a group of celts that inhabited parts of anatolia. this guy is the noble barbarian in statue form. hes wearing the torc, hes nude, hes got hair on his upper lip like some sort of dipshit, but hes very physically impressive. hes sort of tragic, as he lays there dying. what a waste, eh? if only hed had the sense to accept the gift of becoming roman

the romans, as you might expect, did indeed describe the galatians as tall and handsome. the gauls too, another group of celts. and, as mentioned in another post above, also the britons. i think, in fairness, they generally did seem to use a different set of tropes for people who werent pale skinned europeans, but i wouldnt quote me on that, my knowledge on that front is a lot hazier

edit (to avoid double-posting):

Very silly but I don't think so!
There are cases in which Roman historians, such as Prokopios has to diverge from writing important history to express how beautiful Slavic women were. But I would not justify your case to say that historians were always horny when they were writing, even though Slavic and Sarmatian women were very attractive at that time.

yeah, see, i think this is an example of a cool form of imperialist propaganda that actually persists to this day. this is fetishisation. this is the romans doing to slavs what 19th century orientalists did to middle-eastern women. again, i fear this continues to tell us very little about the actual physical makeup these people. and i dont say that just to be #woke, im saying that because these sources generally say a lot of things and very few of them are the exact literal meaning of the words on the page

i mean, who knows though. maybe prokopios found the village where every woman is a big tiddy anime goth girl with feet. maybe he was a gamer and he was into that sort of shit. im not here to yuck his yum, more power to him honestly

 

[DiabloDeVille]

i suppose its a matter of degree of separation, isnt it. is a celt a germanic? go back far enough and, like, yeah, a little bit, but is that what the romans were thinking of?

the dying gaul, which is now sometimes called the dying galatian for fairly obvious reasons, depicts the final moments of a galatian, who were a group of celts that inhabited parts of anatolia. this guy is the noble barbarian in statue form. hes wearing the torc, hes nude, hes got hair on his upper lip like some sort of dipshit, but hes very physically impressive. hes sort of tragic, as he lays there dying. what a waste, eh? if only hed had the sense to accept the gift of becoming roman

the romans, as you might expect, did indeed describe the galatians as tall and handsome. the gauls too, another group of celts. and, as mentioned in another post above, also the britons. i think, in fairness, they generally did seem to use a different set of tropes for people who werent pale skinned europeans, but i wouldnt quote me on that, my knowledge on that front is a lot hazier

The dying gaul was a greek sculpture no? So its to be analysed within greek concepts of the heroic nude surely?

 

[tilly]

The dying gaul was a greek sculpture no? So its to be analysed within greek concepts of the heroic nude surely?

the original bronze was, sure. the only surviving version is a roman marble copy though. you can sort of apply both readings to it arguably

 

[treb]

The Scythians, Cimmerians, and Sarmatians were the original inhabitants of both Central Asia and eastern Europe. Just because today there are Turkic, mongoloid people in Central Asia, does not mean that the Alans were Turkic and mongoloid. They were Iranian both linguistically and genetically, and they had their unique way of dressing unlike the Persians and Greeks.

Moreover, the Roman sources emphasize that they were typically handsome and blond, not mongoloid and dark. And even if they are not directly Scythian, Sarmatian is still the closest related tribe to Scythians and Cimmerians. Alans did not speak Persian not Greek or Latin because they had their own language that is unique and to this day, they speak forms of Iron Ossetic, and Ossetic is a language that is unlike Georgian, but still similar to Persian and Kurdish.

I never implied they were turkic, and I know about both Ossetian and Jassic. And you cant 2000 year old descriptions from Romans to extrapolate the appearance of an entire ethnic group because the Romans themselves had there own said of worldviews and biases that played into their perceptions of other peoples. Its lightly the Alans looked like most Iranic peoples. Not just tall, blond beefcakes riding horses across the steppe toward the sunset.