Mods: This question came about through reading fiction, but I’m looking for a factual answer, so I’m putting it in GQ instead of CS.
I’m re-reading The Wheel of Time series, and noticed Jordan pointing out the genders of the horses that each character rides. I found myself wondering if that was supposed to imply something about the riders. Not knowing much about horses, I just have my gut instinct to go on, so here are my guesses:
Stallions are strong, wild, hard to control. So if a character rides one (like Lan’s Mandarb, or Rand’s Red) it’s showing that he’s well-trained and capable, able to enforce his will over the horse’s?
Geldings have had a lot of that spirit… er… removed. So does that make them more of a beginner’s or layman’s horse? (like Mat’s Pips)
What about a mare? (like Rand’s (and later Egwene’s) Bela, or Moiraine’s Aldieb). Since this is fantasy, and based in the trappings of medieval times, was it more accepted in those times for a woman to ride a female horse?
Anyway, I’m curious what goes into choosing whether to ride a stallion, gelding, or mare. Both in real life today, and historically in the “knights and castles” timeframes. To someone who knows horses, is the author trying to say something about a character by which they ride?
I don’t know how appropriate this is, but I was just re-reading parts of James Loewen’s Lies Across America last night. H points out that when they depict generals and other military figures on horses, the sculptors (or their sponsors) insist on making the horse a stallion, even if the soldier was known to have ridden or preferred mares.
This tells us that
a.) there are evidently implications in the minds of sculptors and/or sponsors in the gender of horse ridden – it’s more macho to ride a boy horse
b.) soldiers either had a preference for mares sometimes, or maybe didn’t care.
I get the impression that in cultures where/when horses were common, the sex of horses were pretty much always marked–we still do this with cattle and poultry, to the point that there isn’t a common word that includes cows, bulls and steers. Nor is there a word that includes chickens and roosters. Always noting mare/gelding/stallion is just a continuation of the same pattern.
True for cattle, perhaps, although some would argue that “cow” is the generic term. But the generic term for both sexes of chicken is “chicken.” Males are roosters or cocks, females are hens. In ducks and geese, there are specific terms for the males as well, drake and gander, while the the female is covered by the same word as the generic term (“Ducks and drakes;” “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”) In falcons too, the male has a special name, tercel or tiercel. If you want to specify the female, you can append “hen” to the generic term.
I suspect that the author did not know a lot about horses.
Stallions are often very difficult to ride, although not always. (Side note - I was fascinated to see police riding stallions in Barcelona.) As a general rule, you’d keep them for breeding, racing and riding to war. Some breeds produce working stallions more reliable than others. For slogging along on a cross-country expedition with your buddies, many stallions would be disruptive and annoying at best, even dangerous.
Geldings are the often the horse of choice for many uses, followed closely by mares. Which sex you pick depends on the animal and the personal preference. Some mares will kick if another horse approaches too closely behind them. This is something that you would learn quickly and adapt to.
For most readers, I don’t expect that revealing the sex of the horse reveals much at all. Assigning mares to women, and male horses to men, as seems to have happened above is silliness.
In medieval times, horses were assigned by size and use. Palfreys and jennets being smaller and lighter would be assigned to ladies and courtiers who were staying back and not fighting. Coursers, destriers, rounceys and hobbys were all types of horses that were considered types of horses that were useful in types of combat or hunting. Assuming our heroes were embarked on some type of cross-country adventure, I would expect the entire party to be mounted on a horse from one of the latter groups.
In terms of medieval warfare, it was all about the military system in place. European knights generally( there are exceptions )preferred intact stallions. They were only a little larger and stronger per given breed( horses are rather weakly sexually dimorphic ), but they retained relatively higher aggression which was often prized in an animal that was supposed to be part of a shock/close combat system.
The Mongols and other steppe peoples on the other hand preferred mares( and geldings over intact males ), which were trained to be completely passive and biddable. This had a real logistic advantage on extended campaigns as a large string of mares with just the occasional male could provide milk, a very useful adjunct to the nomadic diet. Once it came to actual fighting, the precisely trained and docile ponies were perfect for a military system that emphasized maneuver and ranged firepower over close combat.
In my riding days, people who had quarter horses or Appaloosas or Thoroughbreds usually rode either mares or geldings. But the people who liked Arabians were more likely to ride a stallion. Because according to them Arabians have a lot of spirit but they are more biddable, like the border collies of horses. However, I cannot attest to the truth of this. It seemed to me that the Arabians were equally likely to have some unfortunate quirk, like suddenly making an unscheduled left turn.
Stallions were known to be challenging, and people liked to think they could handle them.
Of course writers are making a point. The masterful character will ride a stallion because he’s masterful.
I always liked mares myself. If you’re boarding, it’s a lot easier to find a place to put your mare or gelding, just as a practical matter. People I knew who had their own pastures/stables didn’t have that worry and some of them had stallions.
In the actual real horse riding world of today . . .
Geldings are always a good choice. They are deservedly popular. Gelding are not moody like some mares nor aggressive like any stallion can be. Almost all male horses in the developed world are gelded.
Mares have the disadvantage of having heat cycles, and during those cycles some mares’ personalities are more difficult. Others – the majority – stay the same. Some people think mares are more opinionated, more loyal, more ‘interesting’ than geldings.
I have two mares.
Stallions are rarely kept as riding horses in the US, unless they are intended specifically as breeding animals. They are much stronger-minded – and physically stronger – than geldings and unless you are experienced and ever-watchful, very bad things can happen very quickly. They often lead lonely lives, since they cannot be kept in mixed herds nor with other stallions. They need double-strong fences, strict management, ongoing training.
There are literally millions of unwanted horses in the US, so, no big demand to produce more of them – few stallions are needed.
Stallions have a romance attached to them exploited by fantasy fiction writers. Don’t read too much into it.
One other point is that, just like with neutered cats or dogs, gelded horses have fewer health problems than intact. Hard to get testicular cancer when you ain’t got none. Some horse folk of my acquaintance showed slight preference towards geldings over mares for this reason. AFAIK, spaying mares isn’t routinely done, although I recall sometimes they get hormonal treatments to delay or otherwise reschedule their reproductive cycle.
(OP, it’s more correct to refer to an animal’s sex, rather than gender.)
I think authors also like to use mare/gelding/stallion/colt/filly (young stallion and young mare respectively) just as different synonyms, so they’re not referring to a horse a millions times.
I don’t think mares are routinely spayed at all. Large animal + invasive surgery = expensive + risky. There have been experiments with IUDs with limited success.
Yeah, if you have a very moody ass mare your best bet is to get her hormone shots to get over it quickly. Not only do they get cranky and fussy but they’re a bit of a menace if you need to be out in public and a stallion gets a whiff. Horses are not good at ignoring their biological imperatives. If you’re really in love with that stallion look get a gelding who got left late for it, cut around four or five if you must. They’ll have the thicker necks and extra musculature but their tempers settle right down.
I really have nothing to add except, when I was a little kid back in the '60s, I grew up in a small town in East Texas. My folks owned a grocery and feed store. Once a week, an old man would ride into to town on an old stallion. It was memorable for two reasons. The old man always had a holstered six-gun on his side and the stallion was, well, a stallion. No one else I knew of rode anything but geldings or mares and certainly no one else carried a gun like John Wayne in the movies. He, nor the stallion, ever caused any trouble. I guess they were just too old to care anymore.
However, I do also remember my older brother working with a horse to break. It was a young gelding and it was pastured with an older stallion. One day the stallion just took a bite out of the neck of the gelding. The main reason I remember is because I helped my brother clean out the wound with a water hose and applying antibiotic powder.
In the US stallions are not generally ridden for pleasure, and show horses are mostly handled by professionals. This is not at all true in other parts of the world. Stallions can be just as well behaved as geldings or mares if they are correctly socialized and handled, and in may places they are kept together with little issue.
Mares are no more likely to bite or kick than geldings, and geldings aren’t necessarily easier to handle. Much of that is again the individual horse’s personality combined with training and handling. Some horses are placid, some are worriers, some are belligerent, some are smart, some are not smart but biddable, some are hard headed. Some are social and love attention, some are loners. I’ve ridden and handled all sorts of horses for 50+ years, and I think the literary stuff is a need to add descriptive, personalizing detail combined with some ignorance of the horse world. It’s a little like putting a trampy character in tight clothes and high heels and making her birdbrained, and the intellectual one wears ill fitting clothes and keeps cats. In short, stereotyping.
In the US Equestrian Federation rules, most breeds prohibit showing stallions in classes for young people (leadline, Junior Exhibitor, Equitation) and also in Ladies classes. The Ladies part is mostly a hangover from the sexism of previous centuries; a large share of professional horse trainers are female, and have no problem handling stallions. But it still hangs on.