Princess and Armored Knight: Free Coloring Printout

Knights: History & Fun Facts

Quick Facts

• Medieval knights began training as pages around age seven, became squires at about fourteen, and were dubbed knights around twenty-one.
• A complete suit of 15th-century plate armor weighed roughly 45 to 55 pounds, but the weight was spread across the whole body.
• The word 'knight' comes from the Old English cniht, meaning young man, attendant, or servant.
• A knight's personal coat of arms — displayed on shield, surcoat, and horse covering — was a legally registered identifier unique to their family.
• Jousting tournaments began as combat training exercises before becoming popular public spectacles attended by royalty.
• The code of chivalry asked knights to protect the weak, serve their lord faithfully, and behave with honor in battle and in peace.

Knights are among the most enduring figures in all of history and legend, and their connection to princesses runs through some of the most famous stories ever told. In medieval Europe, a knight was a professional mounted warrior who had passed through years of training and been formally admitted to a brotherhood of arms by a ceremonial dubbing. The code of chivalry that guided a knight's behavior emphasized loyalty, courage, and — at least in its idealized literary form — the protection and honor of women, which is exactly the relationship suggested by the two figures standing side by side in this coloring page. Behind the star-emblazoned shield and polished armor is a real and fascinating history of how medieval Europe trained its warriors, equipped them for battle, and wrapped the whole enterprise in a code of noble conduct.

A Long Road from Page to Knight

Becoming a knight in medieval Europe was a lengthy process that began in childhood. A boy of noble birth might be sent to a lord's household at around age seven to serve as a page, learning manners, basic swordsmanship, and riding. At about fourteen he became a squire, a personal attendant to a knight who helped with armor and weapons while continuing his training on horseback and in combat. After years of service, a squire who had proved himself worthy could be dubbed a knight in a formal ceremony: the candidate knelt before a lord or king, received a tap on the shoulder with a sword called the accolade, and rose as a knight. The whole path from page to knight could take fourteen years or more.

What That Armor Actually Weighed

The knight in this coloring page wears a full suit of plate armor — the style that became standard in 15th-century Europe — and the real version would have weighed approximately 45 to 55 pounds. That sounds heavy, but the weight was carefully distributed across the entire body rather than concentrated in one place, so a trained knight in good-fitting armor could run, jump, mount a horse, and fight effectively. Modern tests with replica armor have shown that a fit person can even do cartwheels in a properly fitted 15th-century suit. The armor's individual pieces — breastplate, backplate, shoulder cops, arm guards, gauntlets, and leg armor — were shaped by specialist craftsmen called armorers who could take months to complete a single commission for a wealthy patron.

The Code of Chivalry and the Princess

The code of chivalry was a set of ideals about how a knight should behave — loyal to his lord, brave in battle, generous to the weak, and courteous to women. It was partly a real social code and partly a literary invention developed through French romance poems and tales from the 12th century onward. Writers like Chrétien de Troyes created stories of knights like Lancelot and Percival who embodied these ideals, and those stories shaped how medieval culture imagined the relationship between warriors and nobility. The image of a knight standing protectively beside a princess — which is exactly what this coloring page shows — comes directly from that literary tradition of chivalric romance, which has never entirely gone away.