The origin of the world’s most famous and still the noblest order of knighthood owes its existence to an embarrassing mishap on the dance floor. When King Edward III of England danced with Joan of Kent, the Countess of Salisbury, at a lavish court ball around 1348, her silk garter suddenly slipped off and fell to the ground before the eyes of the entire elite. While the surrounding courtiers and knights began to snicker and whisper, the monarch displayed masterful presence of mind: he elegantly bent down, picked up the blue ribbon, tied it demonstratively around his own knee, and hurled back at the mockers in Old French: “Honi soit qui mal y pense” – shame on him who thinks evil of it. From this spontaneous gesture, the king created the Order of the Garter, transforming what was once an undergarment accessory into the most coveted status symbol of the European feudal world. To this day, the knights of the order wear a dark blue velvet ribbon with golden letters just below the left knee during ceremonial processions, demonstrating that true noble chivalry can turn even a faux pas into the highest royal dignity.

When Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430 on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella of Portugal, he created the most exclusive brotherhood of the late Middle Ages – with an insignia that was hardly surpassed in its eccentricity. The order’s emblem consisted of a massive chain of fire steels and flints, from which hung a complete, lifeless sheepskin made of solid gold, draping down around the waist. The motif referred to the ancient Argonaut legend about Jason, but the clergy promptly railed against the pagan superstition, after which the Burgundian court poets reinterpreted the sheep as a biblical scene of Gideon. The order was so powerful and independent that the assembled knights had the right to publicly reprimand their own Grand Master – the reigning duke or later Habsburg emperor – for misconduct, immorality, or military failure before the order’s chapter and to impose penances. Those who wore this dangling golden sheep on their chest stood practically above the laws of normal secular courts and could only be judged by their fellow knights.

Secular orders of nobility were by no means only dedicated to bloody warfare or high-level diplomacy, but sometimes simply to cultivated, noble madness. In 1381, Count Adolf I of Cleves, together with thirty-five counts and knights, founded the so-called Cleves Fool’s Order, the Societas Stultorum, which is considered the oldest secular fool’s order in existence. The members solemnly pledged to wear a metal clasp with a laughing fool figure complete with donkey ears and bells on the left breast throughout the year. Anyone who appeared at the regular meetings without their order insignia had to pay horrendous sums of silver into the order’s treasury as punishment, which were used to feed the poor and finance extravagant banquets. At court, the powerful lords of the Rhineland then mingled in fool’s robes and held grotesque mock trials, where no social distinction applied and everyone could mock each other without punishment – a bizarre mix of aristocratic elite thinking and carnival-like freedom that was nurtured over generations.

In the 15th century, Elector Frederick II of Brandenburg invented a secular order with a tangible educational purpose: it was meant to civilize the rough nobility of Mark. The Swan Order, founded in 1440, was distinguished by an ornate chain from which hung a medal featuring the Virgin Mary, beneath which a graceful white swan dangled in a cloth. The uniqueness of this brotherhood was the membership of both genders: both princes and high-born ladies were allowed to join and wore the swan insignia with proud elegance. However, the statutes of the order were essentially a code of conduct against the notorious drinking bouts of the Mark nobility. Anyone wearing the swan on their breast had to commit in writing not to get excessively drunk at festivities, not to blaspheme, to protect widows and orphans, and not to behave like a marauding knight at the table. If a knight transgressed against good manners, they faced immediate expulsion from the noble swan community – a revolutionary method for the time to domesticate wild feudal lords through the pressure of noble ladies.

That secular orders were also established as a tangible declaration of war and open threat to rivals was demonstrated by Duke Louis de Valois, the Duke of Orléans, in 1394 with the founding of the Order of the Porcupine (Ordre du Porc-Épic). As a symbol, the ambitious duke chose a formidable porcupine, accompanied by the unmistakable Latin motto “Cominus et eminus” – which means “From near and far it strikes you.” This alluded to the medieval popular belief that agitated porcupines could shoot their quills like poisonous arrows over great distances at enemies. The order’s insignia consisted of a golden porcupine on a chain of oak leaves and served as a clear warning to his arch-rival John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, who promptly countered with his own order, whose emblem was a planing machine, to demonstratively flatten the quills of the Orléans porcupine. The mutual founding of orders heated the bloody feud between the Armagnacs and Burgundians until the order founder Louis was ultimately murdered in the streets of Paris – yet the porcupine remained a proud emblem of the French kings, engraved on armours and castles for generations.