[quote=Nevis]
Some issues with Ecthelion... mainly the scraggly equipment. He's a general in a period paralleling the late Medieval Ages and Renaissance and a -there's no way his armor will be rusted, wearing piles of crude fur or rags. Armor at this point was usually as well-maintained as possible (which was fairly well) and often as fashionable as the person could afford. For someone of his stature, the finest arms and armor would be available to him and it would actually be a social for him to be using such subpar (and, honestly, unpretty in the eyes of the nobility) equipment-plate armor was usually designed with as much of a refined aesthetic as possible, as were the arms of the wealthy. And he's a famous general. While underdogs and the whole gritty and gruff thing did exist (far LESS at this technological level), it makes no logical sense for your character to be considering his status. You can't be both the elite AND the gritty underdog type.Also, is Ecthelion from ANYWHERE other than the LoTR (he was Denethor's, the Steward of Gondor's, father)?
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While this doesn't apply to all of history, the first Great Mughal Emperor Babur spent quite a bit of his life in squalor to an extent that, at one point in his life, a bunch of his men had to get a rawhide coat from a village to keep him from freezing.