June 5, 2026
Swords, society, and comment wars
Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part I: Why They Fight
Fantasy armies got dragged as commenters argued society always shows up in war
TLDR: The article says pre-modern armies only make sense when they grow naturally out of their society, economy, and leadership. Commenters loved that big idea, joked that armies follow "org chart logic," spun off into Star Trek politics, and fought over whether the whole theory was brilliant or pompous.
A history-and-worldbuilding essay about why pre-modern armies fight and how societies create them somehow turned into a full-on comments-section spectacle. The article itself is pretty grounded: if you want believable old-school armies in fantasy or history, you can’t just toss in a giant royal guard and call it a day. Armies, the writer argues, grow out of the society around them — who has money, who owes service, who can be organized, and who can actually be fed. In other words: your kingdom’s soldiers should make sense for the kingdom they come from.
But the real fireworks were in the reactions. One reader instantly turned the whole thing into a meme by comparing it to Conway’s Law — the famous idea that organizations build things that mirror their internal structure. Translation for non-nerds: a society basically "ships" its own social hierarchy onto the battlefield. Another commenter sprinted off into Star Trek discourse, arguing that the Klingons only make moral sense if you read them as a stand-in for the Soviet Union and later Western hopes about reform. Yes, a post about medieval-style armies somehow detonated a sci-fi diplomacy debate.
Then came the juiciest hot take: the beloved warrior elite who wins power, becomes useless, and still hangs around draining resources for centuries. That comment had big "failing upward, but imperial" energy. And of course, one critic showed up swinging, dismissing the whole thing as "sententious bloviation." So the vibe was clear: half the crowd loved the grand theory, half wanted receipts, and everyone was ready to drag bad fantasy armies that seem to appear from nowhere like NPCs spawning offscreen.
Key Points
- •The article begins a series explaining how pre-industrial societies and their military systems relate to each other.
- •It will examine recruitment, obligation to serve, financing, leadership, and battlefield cohesion in pre-modern armies.
- •The series is designed partly as a synthesis of earlier posts and points readers to key scholarly works on pre-modern society and warfare.
- •The article limits its analysis to pre-modern or pre-industrial armies because industrial armies follow different rules and offer fewer comparative examples.
- •It argues that pre-industrial agrarian societies provide a large enough sample to identify recurring organizational patterns and to evaluate whether fictional armies fit their societies.