My favorite part about fantasy has to be the castles. I don’t normally use them, but I love the idea of tall towers, grated gates, and a massive palace. I did write one story with a castle; it didn’t quite go the way I hoped. While castles can be amazing on the outside, the inside can be a maze of halls that lead to nowhere if not written correctly. That’s what happened to mine, nonsense encased in stone blocks.
So how do you create a believable castle? By understanding the mechanics of one. Castles aren’t simply a building on a hill; it’s a whole city encased in a fortified structure. Later I’ll have a word list on castle terms, but for now, here’s the components of a castle, mainly what must be accounted for in order to have a realistic palace.
Fortification
Beyond beauty and impressiveness, defense is the main purpose of every castle. Any structure built to defend something, whether it be a road or town, was considered a castle. Keeps, or fortified towers, were the foundation of any good castle. Over the years, they would be modified with battlements, outer towers, and walls. Successive gates or wards (small forts) would be employed for further protection. Other than walls, natural elements like mountains and rivers were taken into account for placement. Portable drinking water was a large factor for castles; they would have deep underground wells or cisterns for such purposes.
Castles were meant for nobility. They would house the nobleman and his family, his soldiers and their families, and perhaps craftsmen and servants (the last two might have lived on the grounds, not necessarily in the major construction). Well-stocked and well-fortified was the name of the game.
Construction
Not all castles were glittering white stone and blue-shingled towers. Materials were based on need and availability. Timber was a viable option when it came to quick, cheap construction. With more time and money, stone and other earthworks could be built into a castle. The landscape will play a factor as well; perhaps part of it is carved into a mountain or it’s foundation is immersed in a swampy area (wasserburg castles).
The design will be based on what it needs to defend against. There’s no windows on ground level because that provides access for attackers; upper levels will have grated or shuttered windows. Towers were square in shape until gunpowder artillery was invented. Then they became round to provide more absorption. If you want a castle, don’t have a lot of gunpowder weaponry; such siege weapons made castles obsolete for defense and purely decorative. More squat, sturdy forts like St. Augustine became popular in this age. Castle building is all about strategic defense, so however you build it, it must be defensive.
Life Inside
Something to remember is that people live inside castles, meaning the structure and rooms need to make sense. Just outside would be farmlands, run by peasants or serfs (people tied to land, under influence of lord). They lived nearby so as to enter the gates quickly during siege. Inside are the ruler and his family, soldiers, and servants. Small castles had rooms pulling double-duty (dining room and sleeping area) while larger castles would have separate “apartments” for the lord and his family. Knights had barracks or tower rooms and commoners had huts within the outer walls. Men and women were segregated, but that’s not to say women did nothing; according to Michael Varhola’s research, women knew the castle inside and out and could run it smoothly in all situations if the lord was gone or dead.
To accommodate the people, castles had many rooms and nooks that served as storage and whatever else. Tower attics would house rookeries (chicken house for pigeons) while lower levels were storage, wellhouses, or dungeons. Courtyards had gardens, but larger spaces would house stables, huts for staff, and workshops. Along with these many rooms were tapestries, which weren’t decorative; drapery was used to insult the thick stone walls and cut down on the draftiness. Chests and wardrobes provided more storage. Remember, there are no broom closets. Another fun fact: beds were shorter because the people would sleep upright. With a diet of mainly meat, this position prevented discomfort and digestive problems.
Siege
Onto the good stuff. There were two options for taking a castle, quick assault or siege. A quick assault moved faster than a siege, which could be weeks, months, or even years of wearing down the castle defenses. Step one, prevent escape. Surround the castle and keep the inhabitants inside. Step two, taken on the defenses. It’s safe to assume that a besieging army will have twice as many forces as those inside. Timber castles could be burned, chopped to bits by axes, or hammered with catapults and battering rams. Stone castles could be attacked via sapping, burrowing a hole into the walls, packing combustibles into the cavity, and setting fire to what’s keeping the stone upright. Mining was another option, started from a distance and continued underneath the walls of the castle. Escalades (attack ladders) and siege towers were a last attempt because of the risk to soldiers’ lives. In most cases though, the simpler methods did more damage than the massive machines.
The besieged had their own weaponry like boulders and boiling oil which could be dropped on unsuspecting attackers. Protruding defense structures (hoardings) allowed them to view the base of the castle wall and drop projectiles. Moats, filled or dry, could impede mining and prevent larger machines from getting close. Siege armaments weren’t kept up, but in times of strife, they were easily replaced (wood hoardings and catwalks). The environment played a role as well; maintaining the moat and repairing masonry was a must while clearing forests would prevent cover and supplies for the enemy.
Magic can play a role in siege warfare, but that depends on what magic systems and spells you want to allow.
Final Thoughts
I’ll probably say this twenty times over for everything: nothing beats personal experience. I haven’t visited a castle, but I’ve looked up pictures. Research takes time and many sources. As much as I wish I could give you all the answers, I honestly can’t. But this should be a good start.
Look up pictures. Try to visit a castle or a fort to get an idea of how high everything is (proper proportions is my usual dilemma). When you do the research, you get results. And the results will be a realistic castle for your story to take place in.