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The Grand Colonel Effect
- Thread starter David Flin
- Start date
"Torchbearer" is a particularly great one.
Alexander Rooksmoor
Well-known member
Fascinating read as I am currently writing a novel featuring Imperial Russian ranks. There is a Shtabs-kapitan which equates to Captain in many armies and then a Kapitan, the next rank up. At times Russia had a rank of Maior but in the period I am writing about Kapitan is a major. To try to give the flavour of the setting and the times, I do tend to use the rank names untranslated (though transliterated from Cyrillic to Latin script), as in this case the average reader might keep thinking I meant a lower rank. Do not even get me started on how Russian Deputy and Sub-Ensigns are NCOs rather than junior commissioned officers.
At times I do worry that I am becoming too much like a 'trainspotter' myself and/or overly fearful of how commentators will complain bitterly, 'but that gun had not been issued in those numbers by April 1937' and so end up nit-picking myself as much as they do. In their case I feel it is often because they cannot write novels, they feel obliged to assert some authority through picking us up on such details to kind of equalise, or indeed seek to dominate, the relationship with the author.
A prime challenge for AH authors, as opposed to historical fiction authors, is while it is great to show the distinct nature of the historical context, our worlds by definition are not precisely like that and us using different ranks or organisation, is sometimes/often not a 'mistake' on our part and in fact intentional, as with the 'Grand Colonel' discussed here to show that it is similar, i.e. this is a middle/senior army rank, but it is different.
The most fun I had with this was in 'Byzantium Express' imagining what ranks a 20th Century byzantine army would have, both based on the very numerous civil service, military and naval ranks Byzantium had had and the fact the modern Greek military in fact uses some of those older terms anyway.
At times I do worry that I am becoming too much like a 'trainspotter' myself and/or overly fearful of how commentators will complain bitterly, 'but that gun had not been issued in those numbers by April 1937' and so end up nit-picking myself as much as they do. In their case I feel it is often because they cannot write novels, they feel obliged to assert some authority through picking us up on such details to kind of equalise, or indeed seek to dominate, the relationship with the author.
A prime challenge for AH authors, as opposed to historical fiction authors, is while it is great to show the distinct nature of the historical context, our worlds by definition are not precisely like that and us using different ranks or organisation, is sometimes/often not a 'mistake' on our part and in fact intentional, as with the 'Grand Colonel' discussed here to show that it is similar, i.e. this is a middle/senior army rank, but it is different.
The most fun I had with this was in 'Byzantium Express' imagining what ranks a 20th Century byzantine army would have, both based on the very numerous civil service, military and naval ranks Byzantium had had and the fact the modern Greek military in fact uses some of those older terms anyway.
Alexander Rooksmoor
Well-known member
Advance Towelmaster ... and be recognised."Torchbearer" is a particularly great one.
Nice, I did an article about this some years ago but there's some new ones here I was unaware of.
I also think (and may write another post either here or on my own blog) that this can apply to variations on character names. Like a common fantasy trope of taking a real name and slightly altering it actually actually fits with linguistic variations on real names (John,Johan,Ion,Ivan,Jan,Jean,etc...).