Talk:Courtesan

isnt it when you build a brothel in Monteriggioni courtesans appear? XKMS Famine 23:02, October 3, 2010 (UTC)

OBJECTION!!

I saw courtesans doing parkour, doing that run across walls where it's the one-foot-width wooden poles or the walls. Spartan-617 15:10, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

Courtesans vs. Concubines

So I just created the article Concubines, only to realize that its content is already covered here. I'm not sure if concubines should go under this article.

The technical definition of a "courtesan" refers to a lady of court (though originally a courtier, male or female). Courtesans were well-educated and trained in the arts of music and dancing, especially in association with a wealthy or noble society. In this respect, a concubine to the emperor is a courtesan. However, the word "courtesan" as used in Assassin's Creed refers to prostitutes, or as a euphemism for prostitutes. Although concubines are essentially mistresses, Chinese concubines were not prostitutes (at least not the imperial ones, though maybe for a middle-class businessman they could be) and so are distinct from the courtesans in Ezio's trilogy. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 04:34, January 24, 2017 (UTC)

Since there's at least some difference in meaning, I don't mind the continued existence of the Concubines article. I suggest you transfer any information about concubines that you might have missed (the Concubines article atm is pretty general) from the Courtesans article to your Concubines article. Then the concubines section on the Courtesans article can be removed. Crook ^{The Constantine District} 09:09, January 24, 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion

When this article was originally created due to AC2, the term 'Courtesan' was a clear and easy choice. Even though it strictly referred to a 'lady of the court', in AC it was used as a euphemism for a prostitute. Since then, there's been a slew of other terms used of people (usually women in AC) engaged in the activity of selling sex, and 'courtesan' is an uneasy fit when talking about ancient Greece's hetaerae or the Victorian 'unfortunate women'.

Similarly, though the article Mercenary began in the same 'age' as 'Courtesan', that article is not called condottiero.

I suggest, therefore, that the name of the article is changed to either 'Prostitute' or 'Prostitution', following Piracy and Wikipedia. Sadelyrate (siniath) 08:51, May 6, 2019 (UTC)

I think that you might have a point although I am having trouble appreciating a couple of your arguments.

First, if we're talking about which term is more fitting for in the context of more recent games, courtesan is not uneasy for hetaerae. In fact, hetaerae would have been the quintessential courtesans in our sense of the word, more so than the prostitutes of the Italian Renaissance, because they were actually often ladies of the court—Aspasia being an prime example.

This leaves the question of whether it is unfitting for the prostitutes of Victorian era London. While their image is certainly much grimmer, evoking the squalor of the slums, they don't really differ in essence from the prostitutes of Florence or Rome. The prostitutes of Italian city-states were most often downtrodden, impoverished women all the same. Their only difference from those of Victorian London based on their portrayals in the media are in their living conditions, which were better in Italian city-states.

As a result, up until this moment, I had never thought it an issue to use such a euphemism for prostitutes of Victorian London either although I can understand why it would feel out-of-place with its aesthetic.

Secondly, that the article "Mercenary" is not called titled "Condotierro" instead isn't a good example because it was named according to the way the faction is referred to in the game, just as this article "Courtesan" was. The two cases are dissimilar, one is a euphemism used almost exclusively in those days and the other was more prominently used than its synonym. Notwithstanding this, a condotierro refers specifically to a mercenary leader, such as Bartolomeo d'Alviano or Federico da Montefeltro, not mercenaries in general.

It's important to note that Ubisoft's choice to use the term courtesan over prostitute for the games set in the Renaissance likely has less to do with it being historically accurate but more to do with avoiding controversy and legal issues.

With all of this out of the way, a strong argument that can actually be made for the page move is that prostitute is ultimately the most technical term that broadly covers all forms that prostitutes in the series have taken. In fact, while this page covers hetaerae, there should probably be a main page for it. I would wait for the opinions of others before making such a move. I think due to how ingrained this euphemism is in Assassin's Creed, we should exercise a little caution. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 12:04, May 6, 2019 (UTC)