Fish and Fighting - late 14th century french style scroll

I had a scroll to make recognizing a boy's contribution to youth combat. When asking his family and friends about him, I learned he is interested in late 14th century France, his chosen name translates as "Nicholas the fisher," he likes to be called "Nick the Fish" and he is part of group where he wears a blue tunic. There were other details but those went into the wording.

With this inspiration I knew I had to include fish in a late 14th century french style. I based the overall design on BL Lansdowne 1175 f.370v (France 1364-1380). The bar & ivy border and calligraphy hand come from this manuscript. The inspiration piece had illumination within 170 x 110 mm or 6.7" x 4.3". I kept close to those proportions but scaled down to fit within a 6" x 4" mat opening.

There were some interesting abbreviation marks and conjoined letters in the inspiration manuscript that I used, particularly the tall-s plus -er or -ear that I modified for l(ear)ned on line 6. Possibly because the manuscript was written in French the 2 shaped symbol for con- was also used for com- so I used it in (com)bat on line 9. There was also the use of an actual v when it was the start of a word even though u was used when it occurred in the middle of a word.

The illuminated capital is based on BL Yates Thompson 31 f.48 (Spain, 1375-1400) with two fish diving into the water in an X shape, which was modified into the needed N. The little hybrid creature at the bottom is based on BL Burney 275 f.166 (France, 1309-1316). The original had a face coming out the back end. Although I'm sure a teenage boy would love the face sticking out from there, I changed that into a fish tail to better fit the recipient and made his tunic blue.