Talk:Carrion Mantle/@comment-116.203.223.162-20141016100146/@comment-23878607-20141016194634

They remind me of oversleeves on long coats from the 16th century, actually. Men wore those  long coats over their regular clothes for extra warmth; the modern scholar's robe is based on those coats. It was also a Spanish style, shown here on Sir Francis Verney, a man who left England in disgust over the terms of his inheritance and turned Barbary pirate, amongst other things:

Given the ferocity of the Barbary corsairs (who were finally defeated centuries later by the young United States), any insinuation of Sir Francis' alleged femininity would have been quickly met with the business end of a sword.