Dagger’s Dawn

demonic pigs attack

Vincent of Beauvais, Le Mirouer historial (French translation of Speculum historiale), Paris 1463

@grubloved

This is me making a massive vibes-based layman-educated guesses and a lot of generalizations, but I think it at least Partially comes down to swords more often being aristocratic weapons, even in cases where warrior aristocrats are still mostly just using spears. Swords are more costly and difficult to produce and more expensive to obtain, and the peasantry that made up the bulk of most pre-modern infantry levies in most settled agrarian societies would be FAR more likely to own a spear than a sword (if not just using repurposed farming equipment). A sword is a status symbol to some extent, something that naturally becomes associated with lordship in the warrior culture of most socially stratified societies, and therefore has more presence in most stories wherein most heroes are aristocrats.

I also VERY much think racism plays a part in the relative dearth of spears. There's a definite trend in fantasy for spear usage to be relegated to racist caricatures of indigenous peoples or otherwise people being cast as 'barbaric', whereas all your Lordly Noble white/white-coded people are swordsmen (unless it's MAYBE a white Proud Warrior Race, wherein they're still being conveyed as at least a little 'barbaric'). In the western imagination, spears are more associated with the military and subsistence of colonized peoples than their vast history for the exact same purposes in pre-firearm Europe, a spear is often used as a shorthand for a '''primitive''' society. It's not that it's Never not but there's certainly at least a trend there.

The Basilica Cistern, built in the 6th century during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I.

Istanbul, Turkey.