ok but do u even KNOW how much i love swords, i am so about swords, i am so passionate about the role of heroic weapons in things and how swords mirror heroes bc like, swords can become legendary, but like, a "normal" sword can become famous where a fancy magical sword might fade into obscurity, and it all depends on who wields them and how they are used
a sword itself might not be inherently evil or inherently good or inherently incredible but like, if the right person picks it up, it can be a symbol of incredible villainy, or it can be a rallying point for the armies standing against said villainy
joan of arc finding what was said to be the sword of charlemagne Meant Something, whether or not that was actually his sword
alanna's first sword IS magical, but it would never have meant anything to anyone if she hadn't happened to pick it up out of miles's storerooms, and her second sword is twisted with evil magic when she first finds it, but through determination and time, she pulls the magic out of it, and uses it to fix lightning and forge an even more powerful sword, but like, the power is largely because she loves lightning so much and she puts so much into that sword, not just because it's a magic sword
and. i mentioned this but. owain never finds mystletainn, but he can get this sword that is owain-only usable. called missletainn. which he gets from a villager in his paralogue and he Believes is the sword of legend, and it's not, it's just an Average Everyday Sword that the villager protests they used to cut vegetables sometimes, but owain Believes in it, so it gives him hope and strength (and stat boosts)
excalibur never would have meant a damned thing if vivianne hadn't given it to arthur and told him to use it to find victory and use it as a beacon of hope in his mission, or like, if u follow the sword in the stone thing, because damn is arthurian myth kinda convoluted, anyway, it's not the sword itself that is magic there, it's the fact that when it was put in the stone, the stone was bewitched to not let anyone but the most worthy retrieve the sword. the sword itself is just a sword. until it's not.
just like a person is just a person until they choose the hero's path, a sword is just a sword until someone really believes in it and names it and gives it power
a simple blade forged by a country blacksmith can become greater than all the magic fancy mithril with gold inlay glows-when-danger-is-near and shoots fireballs out of the pommel type swords combined
swords can become such amazing things, and they get there because people believe in them and care about them and put weight in them, to the point that like, you can give someone an entirely different sword, tell them it is a magic sword, and it can pretty much become that magic sword through the strength of that person's belief in it
swords, more than any other kind of weapon i can think of, have the ability to really just. be alive. basically.
and that's part of why swords, insofar as stories and such are concerned, are so cool
they're alive and they can grow and change and stand for so much, they can be reforged and they can be renamed and they can be remade and they can become as famous as their wielders, to the point where a sword can carry on the legacy long after a hero has died. a sword of a long-gone hero can be taken up by a new hero and all that power stays with it, because the new hero knows the old stories, and that gives them strength and bonds them with the blade, and then the legends they create only make the sword even more powerful, and the legacy goes on and on and on
narsil wasn't a magic sword, it was just a sword, admittedly a pretty cool sword, that isildur happened to be fighting with when he used it to take down sauron
think about how many swords lay broken into pieces on the battlefield that didn't really mean that much, because they were never revered like narsil was, and yet the shards of narsil were laid carefully out for centuries in rivendell, watched over and cared for and visited many many times, and when they were reforged, aragorn used that sword to rally the men from under the mountain along with all the men he lead who were still living
it wasn't a magic sword - it was the stories bound to it that were magical, and those stories wouldn't exist if that particular crafted hunk of metal hadn't happened to have come into the hands of greatness and used to do great things
swords are just like people. they can do and become anything, and half of getting there is just having people believe in them.
