The cross on this figure is the badge of an entire kingdom. When the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099 and founded a Latin kingdom there, its arms became one of the most famous in all heraldry: a gold cross ringed by four smaller gold crosses — set, uniquely, on silver. Metal laid on metal broke the first rule of heraldry, that colour and metal must alternate, and the breach was deliberate: Jerusalem was reckoned too holy for the ordinary rules. The five crosses have been read as Christ and the four evangelists, as the five wounds of Christ, or as the gospel carried to the four corners of the earth.

King & Country paint the cross here in red on gold — the popular devotional colouring rather than the kingdom's true gold-on-silver — across the surcoat and heater shield of a priest in a flat-topped great helm and full mail. He carries a sword with a blood-tipped blade, which is its own small story: canon law forbade clergy to shed blood, so many fighting priests kept to maces and warhammers to honour the letter of the ban, though plenty ignored it and medieval priests really did go to war. Rank him with the Crusader Priest Standard Bearer and the mace-swinging warhammer priest for a clergy-at-war diorama outside a crusader city's walls.

Model: MK257 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set