Darksword Armory – The Black Prince Dagger

The Darksword Black Prince Dagger has an unsharpened blade of 1060 high carbon steel tempered to a Rockwell Hardness of 53. The crossguard and pommel are of steel and the wooden grip is overlaid with black leather. It is accompanied by a wood-core scabbard overlaid in black leather. It has a chape piece of steel and integrated leather belt loops.

The nickname Black Prince came either from his blackened steel armor, or from the dread his tactics put into his French foes. A convoluted figure, Edward is imbued with his twin legacies; that of being a re-igniting figure of chivalry who founded the Order of the Garter, (which exists to this day as one of the highest honors awarded by the British Monarchy), and that of a pragmatic tactician whose battle successes both legitimized his efforts and undermined his legacy.

Chivalry was considered to be in decline in his day, and his founding of the Order of the Garter was an Arthurian-esque move to bring knighthood back from Crusading obligations and into a patriotic realm of national knighthood. When he captured other nobles and knights, he treated them with the greatest courtesies. Victor of the battles of Crecy and Poitiers in the Hundred Years War, his chivalric image appears to have extended only towards other nobility, as he is famous for his cruel chevauchee raids that burned and pillaged French villages and countrysides. His record is marred by massacres of the lower class at Caen and Limoges and crippling taxation in Aquitaine. His pragmatism, however dark, did win victories and his supporters defend his reputation as being typical behavior towards the non-noble classes at the time. He gave extensive contributions to Canterbury Cathedral in his lifetime, and now resides there permanently.