I have not seen ANYONE on ANYTHING in ANY MEDIA use the CORRECT four horsemen of the apocalypse.
So what do they use?
War, Famine, Pestilence, Death
Guess what? You are WRONG.
This just proves that nobody ever reads the bible.
These are the CORRECT four horsemen, in order:
Conquest. War. Famine. Death.
Not necessarily by those exact names, but definitely by those functions.
So let's break it down in reverse order
DEATH
Alright, everyone gets this one right.
When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
The one thing that some media tend to get wrong is the color. The horseman of death is pale, as in sickly pale, as in deathly sickly ghost pale. The black horse is Famine.
So you wonder, where the hell did Pestilence come from? It says up there. Death kills by sword, famine and PLAGUE. In some translations, Death is Plague or Pestilence. In biblical times they didn't have much in the way of medical advancement, so to them sickness and pestilence was synonymous with death.
I guess someone somewhere got confused an though Pestilence was a separate horse and then everyone followed the idiot. Also, death does not inherently carry a scythe.
The Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman novel Good Omens (which I love btw) did something hideously stupid with the Pestilence horseman. They had the Pestilence horseman going out of business due to the advent of medicine.
Really? So you think all sickness by all means is completely eradicated in the modern world? You think people all over the globe don't die of easily curable diseases because they don't have access to medical help? You think there aren't diseases we still can't cure that kill people out there? You think multiple-drug resistant bacterial pathogens don't exist? YOU THINK PEOPLE DON'T DIE OF CANCER ANYMORE?
Yes it was just for humor, but I thought it was so flawed that it bugged me for the rest of the novel. Also he was replaced by Pollution. The Four Horsemen represent things that ail HUMANITY. Pollution kills the environment which most people don't care about anyway. The worst thing it does is make people sick- OH WAIT DIDN'T YOU ALREADY HAVE SOMEONE FOR THAT?
Death should then be represented by, well, a dead person. A sickly corpse with a funeral shroud. In terms of depiction, Death is one you can't go wrong. Stick a skeleton on a horse, presto! Death!
FAMINE
One frequently misunderstood
When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"
Alright, so most people just think of Famine as meaning people go hungry. People dying of starvation. These people aren't really thinking it through. Famine itself says "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and wine!"
Famine is about the huge difference between the rich and the poor. Its about how the necessities such and food and water are the highest priced and hard to come by, yet the luxuries of life stay the same. People around the world suffer without food, clean water or even a proper home, yet a few people live with constant access to food, water, wine, petrol, gold, the internet, ponies.
Famine is about how 10% of the population have 90% of the wealth, as the saying goes. The rider is holding scales because it is controlling the price and distribution of resources.
If you think about it, Famine should be represented by a fat and wealthy businessman/woman, not the typical skinny guy that most people think of. C'mon people, actually THINK religious imagery through.
WAR
Everyone's favorite horseman.
When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come and see!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.
The easiest to understand. War represents violence, chaos and anarchy. Some say this horse better represents civil war/murder as opposed to actual war, because the first horse represents Conquest. So in this sense, War is a more personal form of violence. Not between countries and populations, but between men. Murder, assault, theft, rape, War represents the crimes that men indulge in for themselves.
Popular depictions of the War horsemen vary wildly, but you can't go too wrong. A Fiery and violent person, who lives to fight and to kill.
CONQUEST
The first horseman, the most important horseman, the one horseman EVERYONE forgets.
I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.
Look people, this is the FIRST horseman introduced, yet I've NEVER seen a "popular depiction of the four horsemen" that includes Conquest. Conquest is a conqueror who lives for conquest. A leader of people, a ruler, king or queen who hungers for power. The powerhungry villain is pretty much the most popular kind of villain, so why does no one remember this horseman? Dear God people are stupid, lazy and ignorant to not pick up a God damn bible (I'm not Christian in the slightest yet I have at least five bibles in the house) and skip to ONE chapter in Revelations.
Conquest would be piss easy to portray properly. Like I said, a King/Queen who is a natural leader, who rules over a large kingdom. Charismatic, tall, dressed in white and wearing a golden crown to signify their power. Maybe they are/believe themselves to be divine, feeling as if they could move the sun itself. The bow represents how they aim for their goals and reach out for it, the motif of wings would get that point across.
There you go, the first horseman, Conquest! That's not that hard is it? A tyrannical God-King/Queen, dressed in white and wearing a crown. We've seen that hundreds of times! You could easily get any of those character archtypes and turn it into the first Horseman of the Apocalypse. Look, just get the first example you could think of and you'll realize that they're actually the embodiment of the first Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Alright so divine ruler dressed in white with a crown... well.... the first person that comes to mind is... is... is......
