From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Grand Pennsic
Date: 20 Aug 92 03:08:45 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: SCA

Unto the good gentles of the Rialto does Hossein Ali Qomi send greetings and
prayers for the blessings of Allah.

Master Bertram recently wrote:

>The recent attempt to change the Pennsic Wars into "Grand Pennsic" 
>(to try to coin a phrase) at Pennsic XXI is an interesting one.
>I believe the intention of the change was to minimize ill-will
>between the combattants and to recognize the fact that Pennsic
>has become something more like a cross between a great medieval
>fair and a grand tournament.  Considering the event a "Grand
>Tournament" rather than a "war" may well be a good thing.
>
>I'd like something cleared up, however.  As modern people, we think of
>"tournaments" as "all in fun" and "wars" as being "terrible" and "bloody."
>My surmise is that tournaments were every bit as rancorous and nasty as
>many wars (thogh with fewer dead peasants) and that wars were often 
>more civilized than our contemporary notions of "total war" (I'm thinking
>about the notion of ransoming prisoners being more valuable than killing
>them, for example).

I intend to post something more scholarly on medieval tournaments and wars
and comparisons of each to the other when time permits, but I have a
general observation about the decision of their Majesties of the East and
Middle.

It strikes me that renaming the Pennsic War the "Pennsic Grand Tourney"
in order to avoid hostility on both sides is rather like telling people
who've been doing this for twenty years that we're all a bunch of daft
buggers who can't tell the difference between reality and a game unless
the _name_ of the thing is changed.  This is patently absurd and profoundly
insulting on the face of it.  Surely there have been an occasional hothead
or two, but to think that this is a solution for that is positively
Orwellian newspeak.

What is more important still is the public repudiation of tradition by those
who are the bearers and guardians of our traditions.  The tradition created
by Cariadoc of the Bow and Andrew of Seldom Rest was one of the oldest and
most enduring in the Society.  There is nothing else which we do which
gathers so many of us together.  Tradition is the only cement which binds
our Society together -- traditions of chivalry, traditions of nobility,
traditions of friendship, traditions like the Pennsic War. The monarchs of
the East and Middle forgot that they stand on the shoulders of giants --
they would not be where they are without the giants who created those
traditions.  It was shameful that they chose that elevated perch from which
to insult those who created what they now enjoy.

Furthermore, their decision to hold a "Pennsic Police Action" (I intend the
sarcasm) was hatched in secret -- for months they had recruited allies and
bid them gather their armies for a war.  They negotiated from falsehood and
broke their given word.  When they told the allied monarchs -- the day
before opening ceremonies -- they bade them to keep it secret, especially
from their own people of the East and Middle.  I know this for a fact -- I
was present when His Majesty of Ansteorra was given this request.  It had
the unsavory flavor of a betrayal conceived in darkness lest it be disclosed
by the light.  It was unworthy of the Dragon and Tyger Thrones.

I don't think that many of us need to be told that the guys on the other
side of the shield wall are our friends.  _We_ know that.  What I didn't
know before Pennsic XXI was how little faith the Crowns of the East and
the Middle had in the rest of us.

Deeply saddened at the repudiation of twenty years of tradition,

Hossein/Greg
From: Bob.Upson@f333.n142.z1.fidonet.org (Bob Upson)
Sender: Uucp@blkcat.UUCP