Musings on Fealty
Jan. 9th, 2007 07:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbakerI 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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: To leap in here...
Date: 2007-01-11 12:13 am (UTC)One thing I feel really strongly about is that fealty is a two-way contract -- and I don't think that the SCA Model in general fits that mold, altho I've structured my household that way. But that's another discussion.
You know I'm a talker, so no surprise I'm going to preface this a bit...
I was not in fealty most of my SCA career, as until just before we
moved to the West, Pelicans in the Mid were not in fealty. Some royals offered the opportunity of personal fealty, but not all. When I was a Kingdom officer, I swore service, but not fealty. Only Knights and Heirs were in Fealty.
I was also a Knight's/Laurel's Consort all but 3 years of my SCA life even before I was a Pelican. There are unwritten rules about being role models for those folks, too.
Once I became a Peer, the description of my job indicated the responsibilities I had toward the people and the Kingdom. I believe there is a contract implicit in that description, altho I don't know how many others see it that way.
And so, as I think about your question, I can't think of anything I might have done differently.
Except, perhaps, argued more strongly with the Curia and Kitchen Cabinet at one point about our habit of merely passing portfolios around rather than training up new people to take on leadership roles. I stepped back from that argument, and I probably shouldn't have. But I'm a lot wiser now about my responsibility to "advise" and speak.
Re: To leap in here...
Date: 2007-01-11 06:40 pm (UTC)Exactly. So...
Re: To leap in here...
Date: 2007-01-11 06:54 pm (UTC)The conclusion I have, other than that the set of swearings-in that happened at 12th Night are politically foolish, is that a) household fealty system/relationships are a lot more fun than Kingdom ones, and b) Most of us who are in a position to swear fealty to the Kingdom have the concept of honor and the keeping of promises deeply inset in us anyway (maybe that's part of those "peer qualities"?), and so other than coping with political foo, we're going to serve and protect the Kingdom to our best ability anyway.