From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Choosing barons
Date: 2 Oct 92 17:45:16 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, but especially Franz Yoder, who responds to my question
of whether local baronial election is feudal:

>However, I find the discussion a little surreal at this point.  Our game world
>can be any way people like, and it probably won't disturb me; but if something
>is for real, I care not in the least whether it's period until after the
>options have been reduced to those I (the 20th century person) approve of.  If
>there is no palatable period method, then use a palatable method in a mundane
>setting and pretend it doesn't exist at events.  This works with the BOD.
>
>It is, of course, more fun if your "for real" things are also period, or at
>least periodoid.  But we don't release plague rats to increase verisimilitude,
>and we oughtn't use "it's period" to justify autocracy.  (I am not asserting
>that you did so, lest you misunderstand; but your statement seemed to be shaded
>in that direction.)

You are right; I should be more clear.  There are two entirely separate 
grounds on which we might support a way to appoint barons within the SCA.  
One is that it works for the mundane people in the group.  The other is 
that it is appropriate to the medieval "worldlet" we are recreating parts 
of.  If the first _can't_ be made to work, the second is clearly irrelevant.

(On the other hand, in most baronies in most of the Known World, my under-
standing is that what usually happens is that the outgoing coronets make a
recommendation, the crown reviews it, and unless the crown has strong 
reason to think it's a disaster, the crown does it.  This is no more 
democratic than the crown making a decision on its own: but it does have the
virtue that those making the decision, we hope, know the people involved
reasonably well.  Their judgement and intentions may be better than, worse 
than, or the same as the crown's: what we really have more reason to trust
is the data they're using.  This has sort of generally worked for 26 yrs,
giving solid evidence that democracy is not the only form we'll accept.)

The baronial question is not as simple as the BoD issue, since the BoD 
has no part in our recreative actions, while coronets are a focal point 
of it.  Hence there is a strong argument that, as some of our most powerful 
medieval symbols (along with Crowns and the chivalry), the "flavor" of 
our barons/esses and their relations to each other and the crown should 
be in some way periodoid, or we will have so watered down our recreation 
setting that very little periodoid stuff will be left.  Also, as many 
have argued, there is a difference between variances-of-omission (not 
doing things that were there) and variances-of-commission (doing things 
that were not done, and that were not consistent with what was done in 
deep and important senses, including violating world view, violating 
technological constraints, and yes, violating fundamental political, 
social, and economic structures).  Still, the selection process can be 
"papered over".

What I was responding to was, in this case, _not_ the question whether 
the selection means should be medieval, but the claim that election (or 
any other form of "the barons tenants choose the baron, and the king has 
no particular say") is a _feudal_ model, or a particularly common medieval
one.  The recent article by Finvarr (do I have that spelled anything like 
right? mundanely, I believe, Steve Muhlberger, or something much like 
that) in _TI_ talks about medieval democratic-like structures, and some 
of the restrictions on them.  From what I can tell, the restrictions
are _very_ important, and leave a structure few of our mundane real selves 
would be real happy with.  But --

What I was asking was a separate, historical question, quite independent 
of how we choose to do things: is this model, which people are calling 
feudal, actually a feudal model at all?  If so, where and when? I am 
interested in the answer, regardless of how it maps on the SCA.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry