Chivalry never died, it just got an upgrade.
"Because they're ridiculous! Because they gallivant around the Mojave pretending to be Knights of Yore. Or did, until the NCR showed them that ideological purity and shiny power armor don't count when you're outnumbered fifteen to one."
—Robert House, regarding the Brotherhood of Steel, Fallout: New Vegas
The Knight in Shining Armor is a trope with remarkable staying power. Combining a highly skilled warrior with well-made weapons and armor and a chivalric code of honor that is periodically deconstructed. With the preponderance of the Feudal Future trope, it's not surprising that sci-fi knights came with it.
After sci-fi writers dreamt up Humongous Mecha and Powered Armor these future knights had a workable parallel to plate armor and warhorses that could hold their own against the guns and motors that had rendered their medieval counterparts obsolete.
This trope covers explicit references to mech/power armor pilots as "knights" (or similar warriors like samurai), aristocratic traditions of mech piloting, and Church Militant organizations that use mechs. These knights may also wield an Enhanced Archaic Weapon. Compare Mechanical Horse or My Horse Is a Motorbike for another juxtaposition of the "old-timey" and the modern. Compare and contrast Cyber Ninja, another "uplifted old-timey".
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The Atomic Knights, a series published through DC Comics and later integrated into the The DCU proper. Initially a small team wearing ancient armor that had adapted to resist the radiation permeating their post-apocalyptic world, their DCU incarnations wore full-on powered armor, included many more members, and were linked by a central database called Roundtable.
- Rom: Spaceknight: The Spaceknights are Knights in Shining Armor... spacefaring aliens in chrome Powered Armor sworn to defeat the evil Dire Wraiths. The IDW Publishing reboot makes them members of a knightly order to boot.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami and Cathy have both used magically powered armor, along with Magic Enhancement of their bodies to use two-handed swords with supernatural skill.
Literature
- I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!: "Mobile Knights" are Humongous Mecha used for space and ground combat, piloted by knights loyal to Imperial lords, and sometimes even by the lord themselves as in the case of protagonist Liam's Avid.
- The Laundry Files: The alfär are invaders from a parallel Earth that they dominated with magic instead of technology. A character taken prisoner by them notes that the anachronistic-looking steel plate armor they wear is equipped with a variety of modern conveniences like retractable visors, oxygen tanks, and active camouflage, and can't decide whether he's looking at medieval knights or futuristic powered armor.
- 12 Miles Below: Knights form the highest caste in the book's Feudal Future, using Nanomachine-based Relic Armor to fight against the endless horde of Killer Robots that threatens humanity. Notably, the surface clans and the underground cities treat knights entirely differently. Surface knights train their entire lives to use the armor, constantly fighting against each other and ruthless slavers. Relic armor is a rare treasure, and an entire noble House can be built around a single armor. Undersiders have access to far more armor, to the point that it is standard equipment for anyone who leaves a city. This means it is treated far more casually, and the soldiers make up for their reduced individual skill with squad tactics. It's considered axiomatic that a couple decent Clan knights can easily slaughter a dozen undersider knights, but Clan knights still have a negative reputation due to Culture Clash and the fact that they usually only come underground for mercenary work.
- The Stormlight Archive: Magic-powered Shardplate armor was originally used by the legendary Knights Radiant; the suits that remain at the time of the series are relics owned by Warrior Princes and the like. It turns out that one of the Radiants' advanced Oathbound Powers actually manifests the Shardplate from a swarm of minor spirits, and in Rhythm of War, the new Radiants create the first living Shardplate in millennia.
Live-Action TV
- Kamen Rider Gaim: All of the various Armored Riders are themed after a variety of swordsmen from throughout the world, with the main character and his rival themed after a samurai and a knight respectively. The armor they use is powered by otherworldly magic channeled through advanced technology.
- Kamen Rider Saber: Wielders of the eleven Sacred Swords are able to use the magical weapons and their accompanying storybooks to don powered armor with a variety of abilities. While referred to as swordsmen, their armor and mannerisms are styled directly after European knights.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: Most Inner Sphere Successor States are feudal kingdoms in all but name, with militaries led by aristocratic mechwarriors piloting inherited mechs. Though the fiction tends to favor more rough-cut mercenary types and the Clan invasion and Word of Blake crusade both forced dramatic military reforms in favor of more modern military structures. The Draconis Combine, which is culturally the Theme Park Version of Imperial Japan, calls all of its mechwarriors samurai, while the Knights of the Inner Sphere was a group from the Free Worlds League dedicated to fighting wars honorably via the code of chivalry (until they were wiped out by a nerve agent attack).
- GURPS Warriors: One of the sample characters is Marta Nayer, a young woman from a minor noble family in a Feudal Future, who travels the galaxy in her Humongous Mecha, issuing challenges and doing good deeds. She's built using the Knight template, not the Battlesuit Trooper template.
- Lancer: The Karrakin Trade Baronies, a subject state of Union, is organized along feudal lines with noble houses who train their scions in the art of mech combat for honor duels and limited warfare with their neighboring houses.
- Magic: The Gathering: The Celestial Palatinate of the Edge is an interstellar empire that worships light itself, locked in a holy crusade of Solar CPR against their enemies, the Monoists, who revere supervoids. Their most elite forces are the Solar Knights, who follow a strict hierarchy of knights and squires, obey a code of chivalry, and prefer bladed weapons in close combat.
- Rifts: Glitter Boys are a type of power armor — the name refers to both the armor itself and to their users — that is traditionally passed down among family lines, often going back to the time before the Coming of the Rifts. Glitter Boys have a shared culture that emphasizes honor and heroism, and are often viewed as protectors of hope and civilization in a perilous world, a tradition that stems from their original role in protecting the fragments of civilization during the ancient apocalypse.
- Trench Crusade: The Shrine Anchorites are both mechas and holy reliquaries, which resemble a mix of cathedral and knight.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The Adeptus Astartes, or Space Marines, are bio-augmented super soldiers with hulking powered armor organized into chapters resembling knightly orders to varying extents. The Black Templars, Dark Angels and Grey Knights in particular.
- Imperial Knights are both a class of mech that's smaller than the Mechanicus' Titans (but still Humongous) and their aristocratic pilots from feudal worlds that had hostile megafauna or extreme environments that necessitated the use of heavily armed mechs.
Video Games
- Age of Wonders: Planetfall: The Star Kings DLC adds the Oathbound, a knight-like group consisting of champions who pilot battlesuits called Paladins, and the Seers, mysterious people who use hyper-advanced data processing systems to predict the future.
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura actively averts this. There are knight orders, and there are technologically enhanced armours and melee weapons, but due to the fact, that magic and technology don't mix in the setting, the traditionalists refuse them.
- Dungeons of Dredmor: The Clockwork Knight skill is built around turning you into a steampunk version of this archetype, each rank granting you another power armor-type ability (and, eventually, the recipes for the armor pieces themselves). The flavor puts you as a Clockwork Knight of Her Majesty's Third Zeppelinborne Assault Brigade. Long live the Queen!
- Fallout: The Brotherhood of Steel are a quasi-religious order dedicated to keeping pre-war technology out of the hands of those who would misuse it (read: everyone but themselves) and are well known for their Knights and Paladins outfitted in pre-war power armor, supported by squires.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- The primary footsoldiers of the technologically and magically advanced Ancient Allag were the Onion Knights, soldiers clad in medieval armor, swords, shields, spears, and axes. As the nation neared its end, the soldiers donned much more obviously Magitek equipment, wearing Powered Armor, Laser Blades, and other scientifically advanced gear that no nation in the setting has come close to matching since. Much of this same gear is available to players through various means.
- The Ronkan armor sets imply that the Ronkan Empire of Norvandt reached a level of technological advancement to Allag, with its soldiers donning mechanized armor and weapons with glowing internal machinery. They even developed manatriggers with functions akin to the Bozjan gunblade, a Vibroweapon that uses precisely timed explosions to superheat the blade and slice through foes.
- Hellgate: London: The Templars go into battle dressed in advanced armor that none the less resembles the classic image of a knight, though it's a lot slimmer and less armoured on the female members. Despite their futuristic look, most of their armor pieces are referred to in-game by their medieval equivalents, such as armets (helmet), hauberks (torso armor), and cuisses (leg armor).
- Honkai: Star Rail: In the past, in planet Glamoth there existed the Iron Cavalry, knights wearing silver Powered Armor to battle The Swarm invasion on their planet. It's said that "their arrival was like a gift from the gods, bringing the light of day back to the human world".
- In Overwatch, Reinhardt was a member of the Crusaders, a contingent of the German armed forces who don enormous sets of Powered Armor to fight the Omnics with chivalry, honor, and duty in mind. He sticks out as being comparatively old-fashioned in the game's futuristic superhero-esque setting, but his rocket hammer, powerful barrier shield, and ability to disrupt entire teams makes him a formidable presence on the battlefield.
- RimWorld: The "Royalty" DLC adds the Shattered Empire faction and a system of noble titles that their pawns might have and can grant to your colonists. Specifically, Stellic Wardens always have the Knight/Dame title and a suit of heavy powered armor that amplifies Psychic Powers.
- Rocket Knight Adventures is a game about the Rocket Knights, an army of opossum knights who wear jet packs along with their armor, as well as wield swords that fire beams. Sparkster, the leader of the Rocket Knights, wears flight goggles whenever he takes flight. In the second game, Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2, Sparkster's armor turns gold and his attacks become more powerful when he collects the seven Holy Swords.
- The Night Sentinels in the newer Doom trilogy look like the exactly sort of warriors you'd expect out of a Science Fantasy setting, being practically high-tech crusaders.
Web Comics
- In The Warrior Returns, the Shield Warrior, Seonhwa Yu, dons a suit of knight-like Powered Armor inspired by King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. The knightly trappings of her equipment even require her to complete "quests" and other prerequisites in order to use her abilities, such as goading her opponent into striking her shield enough times to retaliate with an Attack Reflector.
Western Animation
- Ben 10 franchise has the Forever Knights, a Medieval order that has lasted into the modern day. They wear upgraded high tech armor and wield blaster lances, all in the name of supposedly protecting Earth from aliens and magic.
- Nexo Knights takes place in a medieval setting with futuristic technology, with the titular knights wielding hi-tech weapons and armour to battle legions of invading monsters, including power armor that can combine with their vehicles.
