Bitterman:
What would "grim dark" bretonnians look like who have lost their lords, their lands etc?
I can't really imagine an army of ronin knights. Probably better to just stick with Arthurian look?
Grimstonefire
Questing Knights renounce worldly ties while they go on their quest for the Grail. They give up lances in favour of great weapons, and carry everything they own with them. Can't really make an army of them though.
Alternatively, Mousillon (a Bretonnian city) fell to darkness years ago when their Lord pretended to have found the Grail when he hadn't. The city is now largely wasteland, Undead are involved (especially Vampires), and so on... a Bretonnian army from the province around Mousillon could look pretty ragged, with beat-up old equipment, torn robes and such like. Could either be fallen themselves, or simply the dispossessed, down-on-their-luck Knights of Mousillon who rejected their fallen lord but suffered the misfortunes of his punishment.
Those two are the closest to what you describe in existing fluff. A wandering/Ronin Bretonnian army would seem a bit odd to me (have
all the Knights lost their lord and master, or...?), I'd think a Knight-heavy mercenary Empire army would be more appropriate for that, but perhaps your imagination can make it work.
Also, forgive my crude lack of knowledge on heraldry, but when you have a deer helmet or a boars head icon etc, these mean something heroic in ages past right?
Broadly, yes, in real-world history. The previous Bretonnian army book also had loads of examples of this, many (not all) of which had a Warhammer twist, for example a Unicorn on his coat of arms showed the Knight had the friendship of the Wood Elves, etc.
I think (from memory) the current book pushed that to one side and made such symbols purely geographical i.e. the symbols are based on which province the Knight comes from, but I could be wrong.
Either way, if you want to just paint a load of different heraldry on there, no-one's going to argue the difference. Or you can come up with a consistent theme to the heraldry, to fit the back story for the army. Either works. The only firm advice I'd give is to follow the old heraldic colour rules absolutely - they were created for a reason, and for example white on blue stands out much more than (and looks much better than) green on blue, that kind of thing.
In the warhammer world wouldn't you see daemon heraldry or a dwarf head or tomb kings etc??
I don't see why not. I've not seen a Bretonnian army done like that, though, and I don't think GW's own examples do that. Sure they have dragons, but then so did traditional heraldry - the difference being that one was simply purely mythological.
A heraldry based around the Warhammer world, rather than one based on our world with vague links to Warhammer symbolism, might be quite interesting. Possibly also quite difficult, but again, maybe your imagination is better than mine.
