Guild Wars 2

When i was playing PvP i came across a paladins amulet. The thing is i never met anyone in game who reffered to himself/herself as paladin. Can someone please explain to me what it means? Just a sice note, i used to play WoW, where paladins were protectors of light, but that doesnt fit into GW2 universe.

Paladin is just a generic fantasy term borrowed from the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin

It doesn’t mean anything specific in GW2.

The thread title reminded me of this bit from Spoony: NSFW due to language

i think any1 could be a paladin (a knight) kinda like how any caster can be called a wizard
in lore (although most of thos examples was in GW1)

Consider it is only on that one amulet, in GW, Paladin basically doesn’t mean anything.

What is a Cavalier? What is a Carrion? What is a Berserker? What is a Maurader?

These things are more generic and not related to a specific meaning in the game’s lore.

“A Carrion” is a bit weird. Carrion is just rotting flesh (“the decaying flesh of dead animals.”) But the point is the same xD This sort of thing happens all the time. Kind of like how no one in Star Wars, no one asked Han what the fook a falcon was. They’re just generic words that players can recognize.

I seem to remember Star Wars Expanded Universe writers mention at least 1 type of falcon in the Star Wars universe. Obviously that came later, but that’s often the case with fictional worlds, even if writers do take the time to invent all the background info as they’re going along it’s usually a bad idea to try and fit it all in as soon as a term is mentioned. (Trust me, I’ve read some amateur stories where they did exactly that, it doesn’t work.)

But it’s entirely possible for the concept of a paladin to exist in Tyria and be widely understood without it being an actual profession, organisation etc.

Just like most GW1 players understood what the Paragon profession was, even though as far as I know there have never been people in real life who called themselves paragons.

A Paragon is a living embodiment of an ideal or a peerless example of a being.
Calling yourself a peerless example is a bit narcissistic but in essence not impossible.

( Also calling others a paragon, especially a Paragon of Virtue is quite common in historical literary works. Especially during times where an author would be in service of a lord.
Take Machiavelli for example, Machiavelli himself preferred a republic as a way of ruling. Yes his most famous work is likely Il Principe, the prince. Which is a “guide” for effective rule by a single monarch. (among others.)
Point being: writers would write anything to fall in favour of their lords.
Flattery such as calling someone a Paragon was common. )

The GW1 Paragon is a soldier who inspires his allies by assuming the role of the leader. A truly inspiring leader, one could say a Paragon among leaders in Tyria.

From the perspective of typical fantasy, a ‘paladin’ is a warrior who fights for a higher ideal, and whose faith in that ideal grants them access to white magic. So, basically, any guardian. If you want to be picky, it might need to be a guardian who’s fighting on the side of good. ArenaNet probably avoided the term because it often has religious connotations or requires membership of a specific order in fantasy (although it doesn’t always…) and because the white magic in question is usually more limited to protection and healing than the guardian’s magic.

From the historical perspective, the term derived from the Scholae Palatinae, which was the mounted component of the bodyguard of Eastern Roman emperors (the term ‘paladin’ applied to the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne is a reference to this). The closest analogue would be the more visible elements of the Shining Blade, followed by the personal warbands of the charr Imperators.