Norman Shields

[Mr.J]

Hi all, I'm hoping someone better educated than me can help me out.
Basically I've just bought a bunch of Crusader Norman minis and I'm unsure of how to paint their shields. The plan was to paint a Lord and his retinue with matching shields to tie them together however after seeing loads of painted examples and doing some reading on the subject I'm beginning to think that this might not be totally historically accurate. Can anyone help out?

[Mad Doc Morris]

Heraldry in a virtual sense had not been developed in the 11th century yet. Seemingly it came into widespread use first during the 13th century and reached its peak in the 14th and 15th century. However, one could suggest that shields were used before to show some kind of allegiance. We simply don't have reliable evidence. So basically it's up to you if you want to give your Normans a bit of uniformity.
For my taste, Medieval units look 'more realistic', but overall simply better if sporting a lot of different colours.

[Mr.J]

That's pretty much what I thought to be honest. Was thinking about maybe doing the lord and his retainers with matching shields then painting the rest with a greater variety. As you said theres little reliable evidence and I think itd look cool anyway so I might take a few liberties anyway. Thanks Mad Doc.

[itchy]

a while ago I painted a Norman army and painted each unit  so that the patterns and emblems were all different but each unit used a main colour ,so one unit had mainly blue shields the next Red etc.

[Mr.J]

I did something like that with a Trojan/Greek army and it looked quite effective. Any pics of the Normans I'd very much like to see them?