The High Fantasy track room was filled nearly to capacity for this early morning panel on who the best swordsman in fantasy really is. Run bracket style, the initial line up was as follows: Aragorn vs Alana, Dread Pirate Roberts vs Jamie Lannister, Lan vs Benedict, and Inigo Montoya vs Geralt. A wide array of swordsmen to be sure, but what no one anticipated was how much the handsomeness of each one would really come into play, with one panelist, Jean Kwok, eventually asking, “What sort of swordsman are we talking about?” This panel took place at 10AM on a Sunday. Heathens!

Good looks aside, a lot of the debate among the audience really boiled down to skill and armor. In the match up between Jaime Lannister and Wesley, the Dread Pirate Roberts, a lot of the discussion centered on if a rapier was really going to be any match against an armor-wearing broadsword wielder. While stabs through any gap in the armor would be more damaging in the long run than a slash, a slash could still take off a head. There was also the discussion of levels of training, with the arguments pointing out that Jaime had spent his entire life training to be a swordsman while Wesley had only spent a few years. That being said, Wesley was shown to have skill in multiple different styles of fighting, not relying solely on his sword, but should those be factored into his placement as the best swordsman overall? In the end, the vote for this one was extremely tight, with Jamie just barely edging out over Wesley.

When it came to Geralt and Inigo, it was much less close. All in the room agreed that once magic is introduced into the equation it changes the discussion. As much as they wanted Inigo to have a chance, he is just a man. One audience member likened it to sending a normal human into a fist fight with Captain America; it’s just not a fair fight. In the end, Inigo got one vote, with the audience member jokingly shouted out “I wanted Inigo to get at least one!”

At this stage, things began to devolve slightly. While the joke had been made that between Geralt and Wesley, they were both so very pretty and that would be distracting in a fight, it became more prominent in the discussion as Jamie went up against Aragorn. While some discussion was had about Aragorn’s level of experience as well as the inherent magical advantages he has over Jamie, more time was spent on quality of hair and whether or not Aragorn had to push open any doors before the fight began. The moderator of the panel, Jennifer Liang, said with a laugh, “You guys have made your choice as to which one you like. Carnally.” To which Kwok chimed in, “It IS that kind of sword fight!”

While one audience member did point out that, technically, Jamie Lannister is the Kingslayer and Aragorn is A king, and another mentioned that George R.R. Martin had based Jamie’s fighting style on Aragorn, Jamie only wound up getting one vote. From the same audience member who’d voted for Inigo Montoya, which drew a good-natured laugh from the crowd.

Geralt narrowly edged out Lan from Wheel of Time to go up against Aragorn, with the vote being so close it was suggested two representatives come up to fight it out. Between these final two, however, the group had to discuss the differences in magical enhancement, strength, training, experience, and who had the better hair. Panelist Ryan Cahill jokingly asserted that, canonically, if either of them was going to wind up falling in love with their opponent and losing the fight over it, it was going to be Geralt. In the end, Aragorn’s years of experience in battle tipped the scales massively in his favor, though one audience member did ask, fairly in my opinion, if his toe was broken at the time and if we should factor that in. Aragorn won in a bit of a landslide but, it should be noted, when I went to take a final photo of the bracket at the end of the panel, an interesting change had been made to it. Perhaps we will see an after-hours version of this panel on the schedule next year.