SCAguests-msg - 10/7/95 Thoughts on handling visitors and visiting royalty from other medieval groups. NOTE: See also the files: households-msg, demos-msg, SCA-PR-msg, travel-funds-msg, courtesy-msg, crown-cost-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: vader at emil.csd.uu.se (ke Eldberg) Date: 2 Nov 91 23:07:11 GMT Organization: The Internet William de Corbie greets the people of the Net! I remember seeing some non-SCA royalty (Acre? Markland?) at Pennsic, and hearing various comments about how they should be treated. Opinions ranged from "They're just a bunch of jerks who couldn't hack it in the SCA, so they formed their own group -- mostly so they could give themselves all the titles they wanted", to "They are nice people, very authentic, very courteous, an interesting group..." The SCA is "the known world". We do not claim to be the whole world, and I have no problem with royalty from "unknown" parts of the world. Their titles should be honored according to what we know about their meaning. If we call someone "His majesty of the Kingdom of Acre", or "Sir Beowulf Burger of/from the Kingdom of Acre", we are not giving them SCA rank, while maintaining diplomatic courtesies. They are simply foreigners from a little-known part of the world. Some people at Pennsic seemed to think that we should not recognize the non-SCA titles at all, and that the foreign royalty should not have been received in court. I think we are so big that we can afford to be generous to other groups with similar interests. It's a test of our courtesy that we are able to admit that there *are* other medieval groups who have the same right to exist as we do, and with whom we might enjoy a fruitful exchange of knowledge. I see no point in being annoyed at them for not joining our particular version of the Middle Ages -- and that's the only real reason I can see for wanting to refuse and ignore them. Whether it's in good taste to march in at an SCA event and claim royal rank, without having been invited as such by the SCA royalty, is a different matter. I think it's presumptous and bad manners. (I'm not sure whether this was really what happened at Pennsic.) Of course, recognition of titles only applies when these people are with us explicitly as foreign visitors, e.g. an embassy that comes to a particular event. If they are also active on a regular basis in the SCA, then I don't think that their ranks & titles should have any weight here. If someone went around at an SCA event presenting himself as "Prince so-and-so" of this or that other group, I would probably ask him whether he had been invited by the ruling SCA monarchs, or if he was an official ambassador from his group -- and if not, I would ask him to stop using his foreign title. William From: whheydt at pbhya.PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt) Date: 1 Nov 91 22:56:46 GMT Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA With respect to the recent thread on how to treat visitors wh have titles matching SCA titles, but from other organizations (including countries . . .) . . . I suggest that proper treatment is to treat such people as if their titles were awarded in the SCA--so long as they are visitors to our events. If they wish to become part of the SCA, then they would leave behind such titles as they had from elsewhere and earn titles the same way that every member of the SCA does. That is to say--if Elizabeth, Queen of England visits the Kingdom of the West, she should be accorded Sovreign Honors and be treated with all the pomp, deference, and honor that the title brings, plus that due to a visiting monarch. Should Elizabeth "Windsor" join an SCA branch in her native land, she would be assumed to be an untitled person of gentle birth--as are all in the Society--and if she wished to become a Sovereign Queen, she would have to take up arms and fight for that honor herself (if she were willing to 'settle' for Consort, she'd have to find someone to fight for her. I wonder how good Phillip is with a stick . . . ?). --Hal Hal Ravn, Province of the Mists, West Kingdom Wilson H. Heydt, Jr., Albany, CA 94706, 415/524-8321 (home) From: storm at hlafdig.stonemarche.ORG (Arastorm the Golden) Date: 6 Nov 91 15:49:47 GMT Organization: The Internet From Arastorm to the Rialto: Greetings: Time for another history lesson! (scip on a bit, brother Maynard...) In the Reigns of Aelfwine and Arastorm of the East and Nicholas can der Nort and Suny of the Kingdom of Acre a treaty was made between the East and Acre (from MSR: Medieval Studies and Recreation). This treaty was written in three parts (unfortunately, since we passed it on, I can't give you the exact wording, but this is what I remember) each written as a medieval statement, but with modern implications: First, all soverign honors would be given to the Crown of Acre, and the titles and estates of their peoples would be recognised by the Crown of the East. (this meant that the Knights of Acre would be allowed to use that title in the SCA when there as knights of Acre*) Second, there would be no taxes, tolls nor hinderance at our mutual borders between our citizens traveling either way. (this means that when there is a discount given to SCA members for an event, proof of MSR membership would get the discount as well.) Third, the citizens of each kingdom would be bounden by the laws in the kingdom where they were visiting. (this means that each person would have to keep the rules of the group who sponsored the event- from armor standards, & rules of the list, to flashbulb and coke can rules.) This was a fairly historic document, since up to then, other medieval groups had been looked on as "evil twins" of the SCA- both the SCA "spin-offs" for example MSR, Far Isles, and Norseland, and those which separatly, like Markland. Many of these groups did (and do) indeed play with the SCA as well as at their own events (who has not heard of the Tuchuks?), but, as has been noted in this discussion on the Rialto, many people in the SCA had negative feelings about letting them come - even if they did follow SCA rules while at SCA events (and which some were not always cooperative about). TMs Nicholas and Suny agreed with us that this kind of divisiveness was great foolishness. (Of course, the was not a universal opinion.) What we are doing is not so very different, and whatever the feelings which started the various spin offs (and we will admit that there were very bad feelings when the the people who created MSR left the SCA to do so), since the vast majority of the people who had joined since then knew nothing of the original problems (or, at least, it was not personal with them), it would be silly to promolgate old bad feelings, and not get on with it. For example, in the MSR the requirements for knighthood are somewhat easier to complete than they are in the East- but this puts their knights in a more realistic social position. Each has it's advantages, and obviously we prefer ours otherwize we would change it. Other differences are similar. My observation is that most differences between the SCA and most of the other recreation groups is that they have much smaller time frames, and therefore the possibility of greater internal accuracy. However, our size and loose framework make our events appealing to their members- not always, but occationally. (Pennsic is a unique experience which any historical combattant wants to share in- we are lucky we don't get Rev War reinactors crashing it.) *In fact, there are (in my observation) many people who have memberships in both MSR and SCA and while they use the same names and devices (good heraldry is good heraldry, and it's hard to get your friends to call you Kirstin and Magdaline the next) they don't generally ask to use their MSR ranks at SCA events. Problems can arise when, for example, a person in MSR gets their arms passed and makes a lovely heraldic banner, robe, etc. (as a Crusader era group, they have a lot of lovely heraldic display), and comes to the SCA where our heralds notice that the arms they are displaying were recently given to some other SCA person. It was our intention that we could encourage the groups to work together to avoid such problems- after all, the college of heralds of the SCA is an incredible resource, but one can see how they wouldn't want to invest time in checking on the arms of people who might not come to SCA events more than once or twice. Recently (I was told by some MSR folk- I think their Queen) the SCA BoD made a ruling that the SCA won't acknowledge any other groups of recreationists. I think this is to avoid the complications I was talking about (can you imagine the amount of work involved in trying to process all the heraldry for all the various medieval groups everywhere? Wo!) On the other hand, this means that even when the East is running the War, they can't honor the treaty by letting in MSR folk at the same rate as SCA folk, and the East and Acre have been ratifying that same treaty off and on for the last 10 years. (currently "on") This is another case of the BoD claiming that they butt out of the medieval aspect of the game, while actually intruding. I suppose they would say that petty little kings and queens have no right to make decisions which involve finance, but what we were trying to do was important, and I think it went a long way to healing the breach between the East and Acre. (What the BoD did to the Far Isles is another story, and we couldn't heal that- let's just say that it ended with Baroness Heloisa dropping a tea bag in Boston Harbor (England) and keeping a good 50 people who were recruited for the SCA by Baron Patri from becoming an SCA barony.) To return to the current discussion, I will recount an incident from our reign. In our understanding a Vice-Roy was the person who stood in for the King when the King wasn't in the Capitol. He was kind of a replacement Baron who did everything a Baron did for a barony, but when the King was there, he was nothing. For many reigns(Angus, Akbar, Murad, etc.) the King of the East had been from the Crown Province, so this was fine. (To put this all into perspective, you must remember that during this period, the East consisted of Murkwode, Bhakail, Coill Ohrda (a shire in NJ), the Nameless Province, Barony Beyond the Mountain, and Carolingia. Events did not overlap. Indeed, if Carolingia had a fighting practice or dance practice, the King might well show up. Things were different then. Kingdom events might pull in as many as 60 to 80 people.) But by the time we got on the throne, the Crown Province had been functioning fairly independantly for some time, and even when the Crown did live in 0stgard (Aidan and Setanta or Sigfried and Wanda) Ian of Clan Mitchel and Katherine fulfilled all the duties that one would expect of a baron, so we decided to make them Court Baron and Baroness so that they would have rank of their own. Now at this same time we had been talking to Nicholas and Suny about healing the breach between MSR and the SCA, and so when they showed up at the Ostgardr event we were thrilled and invited them up to sit with us. I think that this was the first instance of an SCA Crown (at least an eastern one) invited the Crown of a forign power to sit with them. We thought that since the people who had started MSR were mostly from 0stgardr, this would be seen as a fine gesture. Little did we know that we were almost assasinated that night by people who thought that we had pre-arranged this with the Crown of Acre to insult the people of 0stgardr. (apparently the bad feelings between Acre and the SCA were *focused* in 0stgardr, not milder there) This was made worse because we did not invite the Vicroy and Vicereign to sit with us (well why would we? they had no special rank until we gave it them that night.) Anyway, so you see how these things come about. If there is one thing I would like everyone to know, it is that the King and Queen are not omnicient. Sure they TRY to find out everything pertinent- but often fail. Even I who have been there keep forgetting it. So I keep reminding you. At any rate- in the East, at least, there is a treaty which requires the Crown to accord the soverign honors to the people of Acre when they visit the East, and to allow those who choose to visit us from Acre in their persona for Acre to use the rank and titles they have earned there. Luckily the East does not have sumptuary laws which would cause difficulty with these visitors. (I am still collecting sumptuary laws, and still hope for reports on AnTir, Trimaris, Outlands, Atenveldt, and Ansteorra) I do wonder if there are other medieval recreation groups which have spun off from other kingdoms, or is the East the only kingdom which breeds the type who becomes dissatisfied with the level of authenticity in the SCA and goes off to start a tighter group. Edited by Mark S. Harris SCAguests-msg Page 5 of 5