I'm writing a story that takes place in Renaissance Europe (circa 1600s) and there are women who are mercenaries, however women in Renaissance Europe pretty much only wore dresses, which is not exactly versatile when fighting. Any tips or pictures of how I could create women with versatile yet feminine clothing? Also, preferably not armor. Armor is somewhat reserved for antagonists (the protagonists are pretty poor).
Well, you could start here; http://bobrowen.com/valerieeads/medievalwomeninwar.html I suspect all you will find is that women generally were not involved in combat in those days. One exception I am aware of is the Pirate queen Grainne Mhaile, (phonetically: graw-in-yuh whail) often erroneously anglicized to Grace O'Malley. She lived in Elizabeth I's time and was quite good at her job! There may be other women of the period, but I doubt you'll find much on their clothes. They probably wore the same scruffy stuff any other soldier of the period wore.
if you want here to be a mercenary but still weir dresses then would she not need to find other ways of killing and fighting like drugging men or tricking them into coursing there own deaths, perhaps manipulating others into doing her dirty work or blackmailing them the only thing is these are traits more common in spy's assassins and thief's it just depends on what sort of mercenary she is.
