[Mid] Laurels and Knights

A couple thoughts about a couple things:

HL Christian said something about crowns giving awards
to people who are not as qualified as some might like.
 I will agree that I occasionaly find myself wondering
what the king was thinking when he has given out some
award or another.

Being fair, though, often the king is probably
thinking, "Gee, I don't get to that corner of the
kingdom very much, but the local baron / seneschal /
knight / laurel / pelican recomended him so he must
have something on the ball." Sometime that's a bad
assumption to be making, but then the question is, if
you are going to err, is it better to err on the side
of too many awards or too few. A king from the west
side of the kingdom can't very well go his whole rein
not giving awards to those from the east side of the
kingdom.

Ld. Andrew (aka) Purple made a comment about two
potential laurels. Personally, I could not support
someone for a laurel just because they new a lot about
medieval pottery or because the made pots well. I
want to see the whole package. To put this another
way, the St. Louis woodworkers guild, a hobby
organization, has people in it who would give any SCA
woodworking laurel a run for his money in terms of
pure skill. I am not going to bring these people to
the atention of the laurelate.

As a laurel, if I am considering a fencer or archer, I
want to see prowess (however you want to measure it),
knowlege of the craft/skill/whatever as it was
performed in period, efforts to make the state of the
art in the SCA have more of the look and feel of the
period form (be it in their own garb and equipmentand
or the way they they run activities or whatever).
Sharing their skill with others would be important as
would service to their craft (as a marshal, or what
have you). Amazingly enough, if I were considering a
dancer or a woodworker, I'd look for pretty much the
same sorts of things.

As a point of contrast, if I were to get off my rear,
get in better shape, become a really skilled fighter
and ultimatly become Master Sir Avery I'd have a
really hard problem supporting a candidate who wore a
blue plastic barrel and didn't have some idea of what
the chivalric virtues were, or who William the Marshal
was (or whoever would have been seen as the ideal
knight by their persona).

Avery

From: Avery Austringer <avery1415@sbcglobal.net>
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Received on Fri Oct 22 16:18:55 2004