Guild Wars 2

You said soldier, not caster. We’ve already been over that skin, it’s the same as the Savant I posted earlier. That model is very rarely used, not 1 quarter or whatever you suggested. That it’s 1 of 4-6 actual models doesn’t matter much when the model itself is very rarely used.

The Blade Ranger isn’t a Caucasian model dude. Not to get all racial here, but the lips, nose, eyes, hair all attest to that. I have a big, red Irish nose and red facial hair myself, but I also tan very well for some reason…I don’t think anyone would mistake me for African.

You’re still reaching, drax.

Um… in GW1 terms, they’re members of an army regardless of whether they’re spellcasters or swinging a sword. A nitpick like that is trying to score points on a technicality when I’m sure you knew exactly what I meant.

And in terms of usage… in Prophecies, it’s probably the second most used of the WM caster models, behind the priest. In WiK it falls behind, but that’s because it wasn’t deemed appropriate for one of the expansion professions (reasonably so – it could have been used instead of the priest model for the dervish, but that’s about all). The point is that it’s common enough to appear as one of the stock models – which means they at least represent a significant minority. In truth, there’d be members of all ethnicities within Kryta in all professions, unless there really is some genetic component connecting fair skin to elemental affinity, so they actual mix of models used will represent the balance of professions more than the balance of ethnicities. What it shows, though, is that there are enough fair-skinned people in Kryta that ArenaNet felt they could mix in among Krytan factions without comment – if being fair-skinned in Kryta was as rare as you seem to be trying to claim, wouldn’t it have been better to not have any at all, or to have any that do appear be unique characters that are automatically assumed to be foreign unless known to be otherwise. Instead, they have whites casually dropped among the Krytans – a minority, yes, but not such a small minority as to be cause for comment. Armen the Guide, while he IS a unique character, is as white as they come, but he’s clearly Krytan and a character talking to him makes no assumption that he’s white because of his skin tone.

Come to think on it, as another example, look up the Krytans in the Annihilator quest (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Annihilator) Mostly darker-skinned, and while many of the clear Caucasians there are reused models, there are other models they could have reused if Caucasians weren’t intended to be at least a significant minority.

On the Blade Ranger… Really?

Her lips are… in terms of shape, not far from some female Ascalonians. Colour might be unusual, but this is a world where some women wear lipstick into combat.

Nose… Is it the size? There are Caucasians with large noses.

Eyes… they’re green. That’s a colour that’s most common in Europe, although it does appear elsewhere (and unlike blue, it doesn’t all seem to stem from a single ancestor). Shape doesn’t appear to point to non-Caucasian.

Hair? Dark hair, in a particular hairstyle? And you accuse me of reaching.

If I had to guess, I’d say she was probably of Mediterranean ancestry if she was on Earth. Yes, that may include North Africa, although that’s not the side my gut is leaning on – but Caucasian and European are not synonyms. The Caucusus region is actually in Central Asia (between the Black Sea and the Caspian) and at the time the term was coined Caucasians were believed to have spread from there.

However, strictly speaking, we’re talking about skin tone here – I’ve just been using ‘Caucasian’ because it’s a less loaded term than ‘white’. The fact of the matter is that hers is light. It’s lighter than General Bayel’s, in fact, and he’s specifically called out to be Ascalonian.

Thing is, if we were to think about the genotypes they would use rather than Earth ones… what we call Caucasian would probably be, to them, Orrian or even just plain Tyrian (along with Canthan, Elonian, and possibly others). Kryta was originally settled from Orr, then colonised by Elonians around 300AE. So it has always had a mix of Orrian (Caucasian) and Elonian (African) types. We can quibble over the numbers, but at no point in Kryta’s history was it ever likely to have had less than a significant minority of “whites”.

draxynnic.3719:

On the Blade Ranger… Really?

Her lips are… in terms of shape, not far from some female Ascalonians. Colour might be unusual, but this is a world where some women wear lipstick into combat.

Nose… Is it the size? There are Caucasians with large noses.

Eyes… they’re green. That’s a colour that’s most common in Europe, although it does appear elsewhere (and unlike blue, it doesn’t all seem to stem from a single ancestor). Shape doesn’t appear to point to non-Caucasian.

Hair? Dark hair, in a particular hairstyle? And you accuse me of reaching.

If I had to guess, I’d say she was probably of Mediterranean ancestry if she was on Earth. Yes, that may include North Africa, although that’s not the side my gut is leaning on – but Caucasian and European are not synonyms. The Caucusus region is actually in Central Asia (between the Black Sea and the Caspian) and at the time the term was coined Caucasians were believed to have spread from there.

However, strictly speaking, we’re talking about skin tone here – I’ve just been using ‘Caucasian’ because it’s a less loaded term than ‘white’. The fact of the matter is that hers is light. It’s lighter than General Bayel’s, in fact, and he’s specifically called out to be Ascalonian.

Thing is, if we were to think about the genotypes they would use rather than Earth ones… what we call Caucasian would probably be, to them, Orrian or even just plain Tyrian (along with Canthan, Elonian, and possibly others). Kryta was originally settled from Orr, then colonised by Elonians around 300AE. So it has always had a mix of Orrian (Caucasian) and Elonian (African) types. We can quibble over the numbers, but at no point in Kryta’s history was it ever likely to have had less than a significant minority of “whites”.

I have to say those lips are rather full too for Ascalonian ancestry. The nose bridge is broad and the nostrils are heavy, like in Blacks. I’d say she’s at least 25% of Elonian phenotype; that’s not too much to have green eyes. You should also notice how Quarteroons and Octoroons irl tend to have lighter complexion than “pure” Whites who color towards salmon pink because of the the translucency of their skin.

The Dominican Republic, with a majoritarely mixed population between similar hues, would be the closest real-life representation of the phenotypic distribution of Kryta in Guild Wars “1”. They whitened down in Guild Wars 2 to a rather cliché distribution of Western capitals. Furthermore, the nobility, which one would presume descended from the old brown Krytans, are now mainly White, occasionally something Black-skinned yet morphologically White in every other respect apart from the fullness of their pink lips.

Sure, I could definitely go with her being of mixed phenotype. my whole point is that GW1 Kryta was a mix of Elonian and Orrian with predominantly Elonian, after all.

Regarding the nobility… I haven’t looked that closely at the nobles specifically myself, but consider: Where are the nobles actually coming from? We didn’t see much of Krytan nobility in GW1 when the WM was in charge – were the noble families established but in hiding at the time, or were the current noble families actually mostly established after the restoration of the monarchy, with the old families having been largely destroyed in the charr invasion and the years of WM control of the country?

Essentially, the way I see it, there’s three periods in which the noble families could have been established:

1: Original settlement from Orr. This would be the likely result if the Elonian ‘colonisation’ was mostly simple migration – the original Orrian colonists were the established upper classes (and thus the Orrian phenotype is dominant in the noble caste) while the new colonists filled in the middle and lower classes. While such a strata might have unfortunate implications, it might be an accurate representation of Krytan history.

2: If the colonisation was more along the lines of an actual takeover as happened in European settlement, then the Elonians would occupy most of the upper classes as you suggest. However, the fact that the current monarch is descended from the line established when Mazdak first broke away from Orr suggests that the Elonian settlement did not overturn the existing social structure – although it’s possible (particularly since Queen Jennah also appears to be an Elonian-Orrian mix) that the new Elonian administration married into the Krytan royal family for legitimacy. On the other hand, the racial mix of the Krytan royal line could entirely be explained by royal marriages with Elonian lines… and possibly a bit of Canthan as well.

3. Post-War in Kryta. In this case, the most likely source for most of the Krytan nobles would be writs of nobility granted in recognition for deeds of distinction during the fighting against the White Mantle. Given the roles of the PCs in that conflict, it’s quite likely that Ascalonians were disproportionately represented when it came to handing out such rewards.

On top of that, from the Movement of the World, we know that the Ministry consisted of representatives from all the refugee groups inside Kryta, while more recent information suggests the Ministry is pretty much restricted to the nobility. This implies that Kryta absorbed the noble castes from the refugees that arrived in Kryta… with Ascalonians being the largest of the refugee groups. Throw in the tendency of nobility to be obsessed with only marrying other nobility, and a lot of nobles appearing to be of the Orrian phenotype makes sense.

That said, Minister Zamon would probably have been more accurate with more Elonian features.

The ministry draws from both nobles and commoners. It’s possible that those who rise to wealth then marry into nobility.

Regarding the origins of the nobles:

• There is nothing that indicates that the Ascalonians playing a prominent role in the defeat of the White Mantle were ennobled. There’s not even 1 known Ascalonian family name found among Divinity’s Reach Nobles. That includes the original Ascalonian noble families, of which virtually none seem to have never made it to Kryta.
• If Salma’s complexion were the exceptional result of her noble White father having conceived her with a brown-skinned priestess, then we shouldn’t see the tone persist all the way to Jenna, if the rest of the noble candidates to intermarriage were mainly White … unless her lineage is one of purity through incest, isolating royalty from other nobility. So, if the unfortunate has no veracity, the nobles should be much more of mixed phenotype, like Jenna.
• Orrian blood would make a not so White nobility, for although there is only 1 Orrian specimen ever seen, he reveals a rather Mediterranean complexion (Orr is warm enough to have had gorillas and massive trees), light-brown but not suntanned, and pigmented lips:

drax

I actually thought you meant just the melee types. :/

How is Orrian Caucasian? Isn’t Orr styled after Middle Eastern themes? I suppose if you’re using it in the general sense to mean everyone in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia. That’s the textbook definition, but it’s also used to mean European ancestry…which is what we’re arguing about. If we used your definition, every culture in GW1 but Istan and Cantha proper would be considered Caucasian.