Awards and Coronets

[James Crouchet]

Yes, the Centurians were made a polling order.  It was an odd situation. 
Inman made the White Scarf a polling order which could be construed as 
making that order more "peer-like", but at the same time created the CSS 
and made them a polling order, which could be construed as saying, "No, 
you WSAs not like a peerage, here is another grant level order like yours 
for armored combat." What was his intent? I don't know.  There didn't 
really seem to be a great need for a new armored fighting award, and it's 
creation left a glaring hole in the rapier hierchy -- either at the CSS 
level or the KSCA level according to your point of view -- if you compare 
the two (many people do).

Just to confuse things more, the WSAs were converted from swearing 
service to the queen to swearing fealty to the crown at the same time 
these other changes took place.  Note that this was a change in tradition 
made at the request of the crown, not a change to kingdom law.

Confused yet? As a White Scarf, I sure am. 

By the way, I know there will be people new to Ansteorra or not in
Ansteorra reading this and to some of them making a fencing peerage may
seem like blasphemy.  That's ok -- different strokes.  I am not even
suggesting that it should be done; I'll save that discussion for another
time. But here in Ansteorra it is an idea that comes up from time to time
and sees some debate.  Many in the rapier community see the WSA as a
defacto peerage. Before you go flaming me realize that my comments above
are just my observations set against this background. 


Savian


On Fri, 24 Mar 1995, Wendy E. Erisman wrote:

> >I am intriqued by the various awards that give a Grant of
> >Arms. In the two kingdoms where I have lived  (Atlantia and East), they did
> >not do much with grants.  What does receiving a Grant of Arms allow the
> >recipient to do?
> >
> >Baroness Clarissa
> >----------------
> 
> Basically, a Grant of Arms allows the receipient to designate him/herself
> as the Honorable Lord/Lady SoandSo and gives them precedence immediately
> behind Court Barons/Baronesses and immediately before the AoA level awards
> (of which the grace awards carry the most precedence). The White Scarves
> (who are called Don/Don~a) were recently made a polling order. I am not
> sure if this is the case for the Centurions -- as Lorraine pointed out, it
> is a new order and most of us are still a bit confused about it.
> 
>                                         Gwenllian
> 
> Wendy Erisman                                   Lady Gwenllian ferch Maredudd
> Dept. of Anthropology                           Halberd Pursuivant
> UT Austin                                       Barony of Bryn Gwlad
> werisman at mail.utexas.edu                        Kingdom of Ansteorra
> 
> 
>