I think this depends on the time period, location, and individual King/General.
If you don’t mind, I’ll choose the time period, location, and King to prove my point. Yes, this gets rather specific but… I choose Sigismund II Augustus’s armor as a 15-year-old. King of Poland.
Many kings never took to the battlefield though and only wore their armor in parades and celebrations. I bet you this piece of armor never saw a single battle. No one would seriously put a 15-year-old inexperienced King into a battle.
This king was also rich enough to afford not just one suit of armor, but multiple. There’s a lot of parade armor / ceremonial armor. Now… these don’t have sexualized codpieces on them but the ostentatious / fashion statements they made is obvious. These were clearly designed to make the wearer look good.
Codpieces were either worn by that like ~100 year period where they were lol in fashion, or by “Big Dick” (so to speak) Kings (Henry VIII, and the like). There’s a certain personality type that really just wants to emphasize their penis and they’ll spend good money back then to make a massive codpiece.
Henry VIII saw battle, and likely in that armor. But in his later years, he was a rather sickly man (gout, etc. etc.), so I’m sure his generals made sure he was never really in danger in those later military campaigns.
Given the ceremonial / parade / and even play/costume/theater armors that existed in the Medieval Era, if more females were in power… some fashionista would have looked for ways to accentuate her femininity, much like how Henry VIII or other kings did so with their codpieces to portray manliness. Not necessarily “for battle”, but for a parade, ceremony, or other such event. Not all suits of armor were for battle.
EDIT: As for “battle”, remember that these 1500+ era armor pieces coexisted with Muskets. That meant that if you were hit by a musket while in armor, the armor deformed and pierced you, meaning you’d have to cut the armor off before you can remove the armor piece. There was little military use of armor in this era, a lot of it was just cultural momentum / status symbol purposes from an European perspective. (Armor remained useful vs the Aztecs or other cultures without guns).
So yeah, armor made bullets worse, it was better for the bullet to pass through you than to be stabbed by your own armor while getting shot.
If you don’t mind, I’ll choose the time period, location, and King to prove my point. Yes, this gets rather specific but… I choose Sigismund II Augustus’s armor as a 15-year-old. King of Poland.
Many kings never took to the battlefield though and only wore their armor in parades and celebrations. I bet you this piece of armor never saw a single battle. No one would seriously put a 15-year-old inexperienced King into a battle.
This king was also rich enough to afford not just one suit of armor, but multiple. There’s a lot of parade armor / ceremonial armor. Now… these don’t have sexualized codpieces on them but the ostentatious / fashion statements they made is obvious. These were clearly designed to make the wearer look good.
Codpieces were either worn by that like ~100 year period where they were lol in fashion, or by “Big Dick” (so to speak) Kings (Henry VIII, and the like). There’s a certain personality type that really just wants to emphasize their penis and they’ll spend good money back then to make a massive codpiece.
Henry VIII saw battle, and likely in that armor. But in his later years, he was a rather sickly man (gout, etc. etc.), so I’m sure his generals made sure he was never really in danger in those later military campaigns.
Given the ceremonial / parade / and even play/costume/theater armors that existed in the Medieval Era, if more females were in power… some fashionista would have looked for ways to accentuate her femininity, much like how Henry VIII or other kings did so with their codpieces to portray manliness. Not necessarily “for battle”, but for a parade, ceremony, or other such event. Not all suits of armor were for battle.
EDIT: As for “battle”, remember that these 1500+ era armor pieces coexisted with Muskets. That meant that if you were hit by a musket while in armor, the armor deformed and pierced you, meaning you’d have to cut the armor off before you can remove the armor piece. There was little military use of armor in this era, a lot of it was just cultural momentum / status symbol purposes from an European perspective. (Armor remained useful vs the Aztecs or other cultures without guns).
So yeah, armor made bullets worse, it was better for the bullet to pass through you than to be stabbed by your own armor while getting shot.