Are Your Gules Properly Armed and Langued?

I've been looking at heraldry a bit lately.  Well that's an exaggeration, what I've been looking at is coats of arms and then attempting to read the heraldic blazon associated with them and in some way connect the latter with the former.  This is where one encounters phrases like "armed and langued gules".  Personally I like my gules to be unarmed.

Heraldry, like many other institutions, is one that has grown more exacting and intricate as it moves further and further away from having any practical relevance.  There was a reason once.  The night before a battle at some point as the dark ages slid into the early medieval one member of a group of otherwise largely indistinguishable metal clad thugs announced to his comrades "Lo!  I shall paint blotches on my shield that you may know me in the battle tomorrow and follow my lead."  Meanwhile on the other side of the field another metal clad thug was informing his fellows "Thou shalt know the enemy leader for he has paint blotches on his shield.  Kill that bastard!"

As you can see heraldry was a bit of a double edged sword right from the get go.  Still like all ideas that grab the imagination people just didn't know when to stop.  Ultimately battles were being delayed because somebody's bend wavy sable hadn't been properly fimbriated or.  In later medieval armies shield painters outnumbered men at arms.

Since the principal definition of status and high rank in those days was the ability to beat the crap out of anyone who might question your status and high rank and since all of these people were busy painting blotches on their shields the arrangement of the blotches became a very useful shorthand for working out who was who and exactly where they stood in the pecking order (here's a clue; most of them were peckers rather than peckees).  To prevent unworthy types (ie those trying to carve themselves a career now rather than a couple of centuries ago) getting in on the act there was naturally a requirement that somebody keep records properly identifying all of the coats of arms and who was entitled to them.  Thus the College of Heralds was born, at least in England although most western European nations had some sort of equivalent.  Scotland's heraldry college is run by a lion.

The College of Heralds (also known as the College of Arms) was knocked together by Richard III using people who were already doing the job for somebody else.  Despite their patron's messy end under a car park the college survived and although its had its ups and downs over the centuries nobody seems to be quite ready to put a bullet in it yet.  The College of Heralds exists to this day with officers glorying in such titles as Brown Turret Deliquescent and similar.  Nowadays their principal roles are to provide a bit of pomp and circumstance at state occasions, cobbling together vaguely plausible coats of arms for the various commoners that royal offspring seem to insist on marrying nowadays and genealogy.  Also if you're English (or Welsh) and you want a coat of arms, this is the place to come.  If you're entitled to one they will design it for you.  They'll also be able to tell you whether or not you're entitled to one.  Money helps although its not the only qualification.

One other thing the college does is advise the Court of Chivalry.  The Court of Chivalry is a genuine English civil court whose role it is to hear cases relating to the wrongful use of arms (the wrongful use of legs is usually judged in a criminal court).  The chief, and sole, judge of the Court of Chivalry is the Earl-Marshal of Britain (he's also the head of the College of Heralds).  Normally the Earl-Marshal is permitted to rot gently undisturbed in the House of Lords but if an allegation of wrongful use of arms is brought before the court then the button is pressed and the Earl-Marshal and the College of Heralds leap into action.  This doesn't happen very often.  In fact cases heard before the Court of Chivalry in the last couple of hundred years can be counted on the fingers of one hand.  They can actually be counted on the fingers of one hand after you've removed three of the fingers.  The last case was in 1954 which was itself the first case in a couple of centuries.  When the case was brought the first thing the court had to do was decide whether in fact it still existed.  It decided that it did and judgement was awarded in favour of the plaintiff.

Nowadays coats of arms have come a long way from a simple means of battlefield identification.  In fact as a means of battle identification they are probably now less than useless unless you're riding into combat alongside the College of Heralds.  Instead people have to use other methods to identify themselves on the battlefield.  Manfred von Richtofen, the famous red baron for instance painted his aircraft red (or, more likely, got a servant to do it) as a means of identifying himself to friend and foe despite having a thoroughly serviceable coat of arms.  von Richtofen's coat of arms incidentally can be described as "party per pale: dexter, per fess argent and gules, in chief an eagle's wing erect azure, in base a stork in its vigilance of the first: sinister, or, a monk habited gules, seated in a chair sable and holding in the dexter hand a staff in pale argent. The shield ensigned with the coronet of a German Baron".  Faced with all that it's no wonder that Manfred simply reached for the nearest can of red paint.  Mind you if the College of Heralds had been allowed near his aircraft it would probably have come up with something like, "a triplane gules, armed and wheeled sable with a cross pattee of the second fimbriated argent."

Incidentally "armed and langued gules" means "with claws and tongue extended both coloured red".