Musings on Fealty

[madbaker]

I am a Peer. I swore fealty to the King and Queen when I was elevated to the Laurel. Why didn't I go up to affirm my fealty at Twelfth Night? This is some rambling I wrote down to try to clarify my feelings on the matter.

The short version: the Royalty was having the Laurels swear only to the Queen, with the Chivalry swearing to the King and the Pelicans to both. This bugged me on a nonrational level; it felt like more of the same "some animals are more equal than others" that can happen when any one of the peerages has more cachet then others. In the West, it's the Chivalry. In Caid (at least when I lived there some years back) it was the Laurels.

The longer version:
This is personal fealty, me as a Peer. It is completely separate from fealty which I swear as a greater officer to the Coronet of the Mists. If this happened at the Principality level, I'd still go up for my office because that's a responsibility of the office. A few years back there was a greater officer of the Kingdom who refused to swear fealty as an officer because she had personal history with the Crown. (To which I say: bollocks. Then resign your office if you can't stomach it.)

First the legal argument. Corpora says that peers, including Knights, are in fealty to the Crown. Which is defined as both the King and Queen.
This has no emotional weight, of course. In the West, the Knights have always sworn to the King only since time immemorial and no legal ruling will change some Knights' feelings on this. I remember the shitstorm the first time a Queen dared say "So also say I". It goes back and forth depending on the views of the K&Q - and if they care.

I empathize with this - one of our values in the SCA, especially here in the West, is the weight of Tradition. This Is The Way It's Always Been, with the subtext that It Always Will Be That Way. Why change the lightbulb? (And I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way. One of the things I miss about the Bard not reading the roll of past Princes and Princesses at Investiture is the weight of history, of all those names rolling off. But I digress.)

So, legally, it doesn't matter what the K&Q say: I am in fealty to the Crown unless and until my peerage is revoked or I renounce my fealty. It shouldn't matter and I should have gone up to affirm my fealty regardless.

But it does matter to me. Here we get to the heart of the slight: the emotional component.

The SCA is a game, a leisure time organization. Fealty has no legal weight; it only exists in the SCA insofar as we recognize it. Like the Crown's authority, it requires everyone's buy-in. To be summoned up in the solemn rite of Coronation and to be effectively told that half the Crown doesn't want my fealty - that's a slap in the face. Unintended I'm sure, but that's how I perceive it.

I feel no need to affirm something publicly that isn't apparently valued by the recipient.

And all His Majesty had to do was say "So also say I" to make it a non-issue.

Comments

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

That's.. fascinating background. Thank you. I thought this was a recent devlopment, but it is more meaningful if this is a deeply-held position of his.

Valuations

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

My feeling was not particularly that he didn't value the Laurels, although as mentioned above he did essentially say that during one reign. It was that it felt like he did not value my Order's fealty. So I chose not to affirm that oath to the Crown this reign.

Re: Valuations

[tshuma]

And that, I think, is perfectly understandable.