The short answer is “never,” but bear with me.

Some guy who goes by the name Vox Day on the internet has announced plans to create a medieval combat video game. The game will allow players to manage the combat of a variety of characters, including humans, elves, and dwarves. The game will also have goblins, orcs, and trolls, but I don’t know if those are playable characters or enemies. (I don’t play much of this style of game, so I don’t know exactly how it works.)

What the game will not have is female characters. At all. Because as far as Vox Day is concerned, women don’t fight in combat, and to claim otherwise would require him to “throw out historical verisimilitude.” (Also, he figures “whiny women” won’t be playing his game anyway.)

As David Futrelle (linked above), Ophelia Benson, Jason Thibeault, and PZ Myers have all pointed out, women have in fact served in combat throughout human history, including in the European Middle Ages (PDF file). I will describe another woman warrior below, but first, I have an observation about Vox Day’s game.

He will include goblins, trolls, orcs, elves, and dwarves in his game, but he considers women to be implausible.

Forget historical accuracy for a second. If you have difficulty even imagining a woman in a combat role alongside actual mythical characters, well, you may have issues.

Now then, let me tell you a bit about Milunka Savić.

She fought for Serbia during the First and Second Balkan Wars and World War I. (That’s almost non-stop from 1912 to 1918.) In addition to being the most-decorated female soldier in history (and way up there among soldiers, period), she delivered one of the greatest one-liners of all time.

In 1912, when Milunka Savic was 24, her brother was called up to serve in the first Balkan War. We’re not sure if Milunka took his place or just went along, but we do know that she assumed a male identity and became a highly decorated soldier in the Serbian army. She apparently kept her gender a secret through the First Balkan War and into the Second, when a Bulgarian grenade wounded her so severely that her gender was revealed to the field surgeons.

Savic was called before her commanding officer. They didn’t want to punish her, because she had proven a valuable and highly competent soldier. The military deployment that had resulted in her gender being revealed had been her tenth. But neither was it suitable for a young woman to be in combat. She was offered a transfer to the Nursing division. Savic stood at attention and insisted she only wanted to fight for her country as a combatant. The officer said he’d think it over and give her his answer the next day. Still standing at attention, Savic responded, “I will wait.”

It is said he only made her stand an hour before agreeing to send her back to the infantry. She fought for Serbia through World War I, receiving honors from several different governments for her distinguished service. Some believe her to be the most decorated female in the history of warfare. She was decommissioned in 1919 and fell into a life of relative obscurity and hardship. She died in Belgrade in 1973 at the age of 84. [Emphasis added.]

No fictional, video-game-based medieval knight could ever top that.

Not even the fictional Lara Croft, who might not be plausible, but certainly engages in a sort of combat, can match that.

Photo credits: Detail of Medieval Royal Armouries Ms. I.33, fol. 32r (p. 63) by anonymous (modified image) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Four F-15 Eagle pilots from the 3rd Wing, Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, by U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Keith Brown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Milunka Savić, see page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Alison Carroll, the official Lara Croft model for Tomb Raider: Underworld at Festival du jeu vidéo 2008, by Georges Seguin (Okki) (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.