Castle, Keep, Citadel or Fortress?

I see/use "keep" as generic for some sort of stronghold. To me it implies walls, probably towers, battlements, a secured gate. "Castle" has different implications, most importantly that there's a king but also less fortified-feeling. And "citadel" doesn't work very well for me... it feels a lot bigger than a keep, somehow.

"Fortress" could work but I dislike it as the capitol of a kingdom, the word feels somehow rustic.

The wiki page for keep doesn't imply it's exclusively Norman at all.

The OED says "keep" doesn't show up in English text until 1586, and was perhaps a translation of the Italian word "tenazza." Don't see it as exclusively Norman there, either.

I believe that the most generic term is castle, but keep is almost as general.

Citadel
1. a fortress that commands a city and is used in the control of the inhabitants and in defense during attack or siege.
2. any strongly fortified place; stronghold.

Fortress1. a large fortified place; a fort or group of forts, often including a town; citadel.
2. any place of exceptional security; stronghold. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fortress



A citadel is a fortress that commands a city, and that may be what you want.

The thesaurus includes fortress, citadel, and castle as synonyms.
http://thesaurus.com/browse/fortres...rect)|utmcmd=(none)&__utmv=-&__utmk=184979881

I think a keep is the residence of the castle's inhabitants. Fortress, citadel and castle are fairly generic.

StarWombat said:

I think a keep is the residence of the castle's inhabitants. Fortress, citadel and castle are fairly generic.

Click to expand...

Pretty much in agreement. I'm familiar with the 'keep' as the towering monolith part of the castle. Think of the Tower of London, the Tower in the center of the courtyard is the keep. The entire complex (keep, curtain walls, etc.) could be called castle, citadel whatever.

I think 'fortress' has a lot more leeway though, as it applies to any fortified area (wooden walls or earth ramparts). Maybe it's just Western cultural influence, but when I hear 'castle' or 'citadel' stone walls are a requirement.

This is just my personal definitions from the top of my head.

Keep, basically a castle without a courtyard. Limited in size compared to castles and citadels.

Castle, basically a keep but with a courtyard.

Citadel, basically a castle or a keep but fulfils more functions than just living quarter and storage. Most likely something religious or something with wizards or such.

Fortress, one of the above but also have something to do with the military/army and have stronger defences.

One thing all of them have in common, big stone buildings with towers.

Hmm ... I think:

A keep is a single fortified building. It can be a building within a castle, say the main building. But when I hear keep I think of a relatively small and simple tower - typical of the Norman period but not exclusive to it.

A castle generally has a wall. There can be a single building or a group of buildings within that wall. But without a wall it ain't a castle.

A citadel protects a town or a city. Big. Much bigger than a keep.

A fort or a fortress is a generic term for a structure that has been fortified. It can either be a temporary structure or something permanent, but it has fortification as its main purpose.

If you are talking about a structure with more than one building which functions as a court than I'd agree with your beta that keep doesn't quite work. Not because it is Norman but because a keep suggests a single building.

So I'd edge towards citadel. Or ... why not just give it a name and not a description? Camelot. Helm's Deep. Krak des Chevaliers. Minas Tirith. Genuine inhabitants of a castle generally don't call it "the castle of blah blah". They usually just call it blah blah.

kremlin?
Such an area, walled inner city, is known as a medina in North Africa

Are you writing for historians? In the end the choice is up to you, but your particular beta reader is coming at this with a different knowledge set than typical readers. You can take advantage of that for a certain degree of accuracy or you can acknowledge that you're on a non-Terran world where the historical accuracies of our own world don't precisely apply. I like the word Keep. I wouldn't bat an eye if you used any of those you listed.

I like Once!'s suggestion. It jives with the way I've always thought of those structures, based in no small part on my history of playing AD&D. I've always thought of a keep as either part of a larger structure, or an outpost.

And I like the idea of just naming it. I think too that if it's a residence for royalty at all, many people would just call it the palace in conversation.

Citadel is the closest to what youre talking about. In some cases citadels were right in the heart of a city on high ground.

Since its fantasy you dont have to restrict yourself to just European concepts. You could have a middle eastern or Asian style walled city with moats, outer walls, then an inner walled compound for administrative buildings and royal residences, and maybe a third compound within that for the leader's palace or the citadel. The whole place could be one big fortress.

Citadel feels like futuristic word, even if it isn't. I don't particularly like it in regards to a medeval setting. I prefer Keep.

As others have said, a "keep" is technically a small building or tower, which may or may not be part of a larger structure such as a castle.

The citadel is in fact the fortified portion of a city. It's not at all futuristic, and the military school took its name from the common noun.




I don't think "keep" fits the description you've given at all. I'd go with castle. A castle can absolutely include all the sorts of things you'd need to support a court with political intrigue. A keep would not really be up to that on its own. Unless you have some particular reason not to call it a castle.

What type of weaponry is common in your setting? Military architecture and fortification were technologies in constant evolution, depending on the nature of the threat they had to defend against and the type of force they were meant to project.

In the 1400s the spread of gunpowder weapons in Europe had a dramatic impact on fortification. In general, pre-gunpowder fortification depend on height and solidity as the core of defense. The best walls were tall and smooth, high enough that attackers would have trouble scaling them and thick enough to be hard to undermine. Military structures tended to be fairly compact -- even the biggest castles weren't really that big, but they might have several layers of walls, typically with the entrances not in line with each other, to make it harder for attackers to get all the way to the prize inside.

With cannon in the picture, everything changed. High walls didn't really matter any more - cannon made short work of them. What counted was defense in depth -- a standing stone wall was of limited value against an artillery barrage, a stone wall leaning back against fifteen feet of dirt was a lot more likely to last. High fortifications also had the disadvantage that they were often too thin to support cannons or allow them to be moved around - many were cut short and filled in to extend their useful life. Round towers became problematic because they often left blind spots attackers could take advantage of to mine the walls -- instead, fortifications began to sprout projecting angles (bastions) that gave the defenders a better line of fire and defensive outworks that extended the coverage and protected lines of access. "Star forts" that systematized this approach began to appear by 1500. Fortifications of the gunpowder era were much larger than older castles, and could be easily extended to encompass an entire city (which was very difficult previously).

Trees-

Personally I'm in favor of a 'third option' type approach, you aren't stuck with one of those specific terms. Personally, my approach is to use google translate to check out some of those words in other languages. that way you often get a similar-sounding name (something that people can recognize as being similar to 'fortress, etc') but it's still unique enough that the reader will be open to your own definition of what it is (thus avoiding the purists like your reader).

For example, citadel in Italian is Cittadela if you want something to sound a bit fancy
https://translate.google.com/#auto/it/citadel

Or fort in german is "Festung" if you want it to sound.. german..
https://translate.google.com/#auto/de/fort

If you already have a general theme (norse, etc) you may find using norwegian languages to be helpful.. or maybe just some inspiration to invent your own word (that sounds similar to the word we know) and invent something new.

Just a thought.

Here's a reference site I love, which can answer all your terminology questions and provide tons of additional information on the subject: A Dictionary of Military Architecture: Fortification and Fieldworks from the Iron Age to the Eighteenth Century