zodiacal_light | On female knights.

I am becoming more and more convinced that by Alanna's time, it's not that it's illegal for girls to be knights, it's that cultural pressure is against it, so there hasn't been one for 'round about a century.

This would neatly solve one of the most inexplicable things of SotL, for me - why Roald lets her keep her shield.

I don't buy that he can't take it away because she passed her Ordeal; there pretty much has to be a mechanism for removing knights who are unfit for duty - and unfit for not upholding the moral standards, or for disobedience that doesn't rise to death-penalty levels, or so on. And frankly, Alanna lying about her identity for her training should have been enough to kick her out over; I still suspect the reason that was allowed to slide was that Jon knew.

But if it's actually illegal for a girl to be a knight, Roald wouldn't have had a choice.

(As a corollary, this basically means that it was technically legal for Alanna to have gone openly for her shield, too, though I do doubt that she would have been allowed to. Oooh, yet another AU idea...)