As the title inquires, have we ever seen any regular, traditional elven knights past or present employed in Silvermoon’s armies? Not Blood Knights, but knights much like the regular human ones? Reason I ask is because debating on using such a background for RP purposes, and I wish to know if we’ve full on explicitly seen such in the text, or if we haven’t but it’d be feasible or sensible enough, or completely inaccurate with no reason why Silvermoon would have such a unit.
So AFAIK there haven’t been in SILVERMOON affiliated Elven Knights.
But in War of the Ancients (trilogy by Knaak written a lifetime ago thesedays) the Ancient Nelf Empire very much had a nobility system with people like “Lord Ravencrest” leading armies. I would assume knights were part and parcel of that.
Silvermoon uses alot of rangers and magic. Though the ancient Nelf Empire also used a ton of magic as well. Well of Eternity and all.
Edit- I stand corrected see below.
5 Likes
In WC3 TFT, The blood Elf faction gets their own version of the human footman during the second campaign (from mission 2 onwards)
2 Likes
Insofar as knights in the RTS’s capacity of armored heavy cavalry, not really. Cavalry’s never been portrayed as an especially big “thing” in the armies of Silvermoon, so while it may exist in some capacity it’s never really gotten the sort of attention that the human equivalent gets.
As a rank/position, technically while knights are a type of soldier, they also historically held a particular position within the class structure usually at the lower end of the nobility, so there may well be an equivalent in high/blood elf society, but it’s hard to say because the exact nature of the elves’ system of nobility hasn’t really been fleshed out beyond “there’s a royal family and other important families like the Windrunners.”
In fairness, even the human kingdoms’ portrayals of the nobility - and thereby where exactly their knights fit into it (let alone paladins in particular) - have also been pretty incomplete.
4 Likes
The elite military units of the high and blood elves have always been the rangers.
They have like generic swordsmen in WC3, but no knights.
Not sure there’s really any nobles in Thalassian society. Closest I guess would be the Windrunners, but they were raised to be rangers, not knights.
2 Likes
Okay so… lore nut here.
Yes, Silvermoon did have knights. The wowpedia page for the Knight says the following:
Knights are traditionally powerful horse-mounted warriors of the Alliance and the kingdoms of humanity. They are usually humans, although other factions have knights as well such as the elves.
Sadly beyond that all we have is speculation. Traditionally, save for rare exceptions, Knights were nobles who served in the military, as they were the only ones able to afford proper armor and a horse. Elves did have noble families (the Windrunners being one of many) So it is likely that the Elves did have Knights, some on foot, others using cavalry, likely using Hawkstriders as mounts instead of the Chargers used by their human counterparts.
2 Likes
The existence of blood knights sort of implies some kind of non-blood knight predecessor, doesn’t it?
Since the effort to drain mu’ru was an attempt to regain what they lost when they lost faith in The Light.
5 Likes
Let’s consider what you mean by “knights?” Are you talking about the generic term we use in the fantasy genre to basically refer to any sort guy in armor sitting atop a mount…aka: cavalry?
In the Tides of Darkness novel, we are led to believe the high elven army was composed of rangers (the Farstriders) and a regular sort of infantry which was led by Lorthemar.
But to answer your question, consider how cavalry was used in real world contexts? They are highly mobile soldiers who could scout, flank, and chase routing enemies. These are functions which could easily be managed by Silvermoon’s magic wielders and rangers. Also in Tides of Darkness, when Lothar first meets Alleria in Hillsbrad, we were led to the conclusion that a ranger on foot could travel basically fast as a mounted scout with less need to rest - which would solve the mobility issue.
In the context of RP, you might not call it a “knight” in the human sense of the world. I’m sure there have been instances of the high elves sticking warriors on mounts (not hawkstriders–they look too fragile) at some point in their history and you can say you were one of those warriors. But if you feel the need to claim your character has ties to some past order…you could RP that your character used to be a member of the Spellbreakers - and maybe say you were in a mounted detachment of Spellbreakers.
And you would not need to a magic-using class to be this because I think of the Spellbreakers as warriors-first who used their innate elven abilities with magic to negate it in others—that’s a good idea…I might RP something like that myself one day. 
3 Likes
Oh! And the Dragonhawk Riders! They were mounted warriors you could say you belonged to!
4 Likes
Those are the folks in the red and gold spikey armor.
They don’t use the term Knights because every single one of the blood elves is nobility. Remember… they’re Highborne.
Blood Knights are Even More Stuckup Highborne.
3 Likes
I mean, a Knight is just “Land owning full time warrior/soldier” so every culture has some sort of “Knight”.
True, they were called Swordsmen. There were also High Elf Swordsmen. Though while the Blood Elf Barracks could make Swordsmen and Archers instead of Footmen and Riflemen that the Human Barracks made, the Blood Elf Barracks did not make a third type of unit the way the Human Barracks also made Knights.
Wowpedia is a fan site, not a lore source, and does not have a citation for its comment on factions such as Elves having knights.
That being said, nowadays the general fantasy idea of knights are more ambiguous, and a Swordsperson could very well be considered a knight.
Wowpedia is a well curated website that has references to official lore sources, some of which are no longer easily available to obtain. It is recognized by the bulk of the community that cares about the lore to be an official source of reference.
If Wowpedia says that the Elves have Knights. They have Knights.
Unless there is a source that counters that and clearly says they don’t, or Blizzard themselves outright state they don’t, either through a Q&A statement, twitter post, retconning (such as what they did with the Warcraft RPG) or a new lore source that they’ve created, then the fact remains that they have knights.
2 Likes
It is nonetheless a fan site, and without citations with source references a statement on the website is merely a statement on the website, not a lore fact.
1 Like
It’s also recognized officially by blizzard themselves last I checked also
4 Likes
Blizzard has a lot of respect for the work put into Wowpedia by its dedicated fans, yes.
“Knight” can be pretty broad while also pretty specific.
If you mean a counterpart unit to the Human Knight in the RTS …. not as such. The High Elves had various units, from footies to archers to priests to spell breakers to dragon hawk riders, but the “Knights” were specifically Human in WC 3. They did not have Elven Knight counterparts being churned out of Barracks.
But if you mean “knight” as a general term:
And we have the “knight errant” - knights who don’t even own land, and fight for their own glory, or the glory of their patron.
2 Likes
Knight is the lowest form of nobility. Many of them were second sons, so they owned squat since the first son got everything, hence the term primogeniture. So they would seek service and station by serving a landed lord.
I remember the old WoWiki vs WoWpedia arguments. I think Blizzard finally endorsed WoWpedia circa WoD.
5 Likes