Are swallowtail merlons all curved?

[Koen G]

Stefano Guidoni commented on my blog that swallowtail merlons appear to come in two styles: straight an curved. I agree with him that the VM style *appears* straight, though we don't know if this was intentional.

Still, I wondered if there is any regional or chronological preference for either style, so I decided to copy our map and mark all straight V's in yellow, curved V's in black.
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Something weird happened though: the more I scrutinized existing buildings, the more I noticed that most (if not all) swallowtail merlons appear curved to some extent. They only look straight from certain angles, and some are more obviously curved than others. A nice and straight V only seems to occur in images.

Now, there are several possible explanations, which are not all mutually exclusive:
1) I was too strict and classified some pretty straight V's with the curved ones. Or I should have used different categories, like "a bit curved" versus "very curved".
2) Both styles exists in buildings, but our list of castles happens to lean seriously towards the curved side.
3) The straight style was once more common, but was often replaced by the more decorative curved style.
4) The "V" in swallowtail merlons is almost always curved, and the straight shape is just an artistic convention. Possibly because even curved merlons might appear straight from certain angles.

I almost certainly made mistakes in the list as well, so everything so far should be taken with a grain of salt. What do you think?

[Aga Tentakulus]

I have asked myself the same question.
At first I thought it depended on the era and age.
But I don't see much difference.
Usually there was a tower first, later a wall around it and maybe a stable.
Sometimes I see differences and sometimes I don't.
I decided to stop thinking about it and blame it on the different architects.

[Koen G]

Truly straight V's do appear to exist though. The first example I find are these from Malcesine castle, lake Garda. Not sure if they are original, though they are certainly not modern.

[R. Sale]

From what I've seen so far, and this last photo definitely helps to clarify the situation, it appears that the straight-line version is more often a strictly stone/brick and mortar construction. While the curved-line version often seems to have a top layer of tile. And since the tile is curved, the top-line 'V' of the merlon is also curved.