ANST - Restrictions on Reigns

[Gail P. Taylor]

Okay...I'm going to be devil's advocate here....

In one kingdom, where a particular martial activity just became legal, the present
King mandated that certain, excessively restrictive, rules be followed that he
helped establish.  He declared that if these rules were altered in the subsequent
reign, he'd win crown again and abolish the activity altogether....

Since I've been in Ansteorra, nearing 4 years, we've not had any repeat reigns,
nor any reigns that caused particularly strong or sustained consternation amongst
the populace, as far as I've been able to discern.  Ansteorra seems to presently
be self-limiting in terms of reigns and our Royalty is doing a good
job....again...as far as I can tell.  We have a decent sized pool of people who on
any given day, could rise to become our next king or queen and who, I trust, would
do a good job.

But what do the kingdoms do that are having repeat Kings and Queens who are
uninterested in doing the subsequent, amazingly difficult and "life"-consuming job
of actually "playing" the role that one day's martial activities earned them?
People who like power, prestige and attention...but who's subsequent behavior is
harmful to the organization to which we belong?  Couldn't these people simply come
back into office and change a Kingdom law limiting their terms?  Or refuse to
establish it in the first place?  And I really don't think that subsequent
King/Queen So and So will come in and intentionally re-instate it...unless they
wanted to raise a whole lot of bad blood amongst noble cousins.  Of course, I may
be wrong about the Crown's ability to alter this type of Kingdom law...please
correct me if this is the case.

I guess that this problem comes down to:  Do we want the Board poking into
additional aspects of Kingdom sovereignity?  Can concerns be addressed locally, as
people are suggesting...or is Kingdom law so changable that local control would
prove ineffective?  Are conditions so bad elsewhere, and there is no other way to
address these problems...than to set up this type of limit from on high?    I
don't really know...but do resist the idea of having such a law in place if it's
not direly needed....

HL Isobel Hadleigh
Cadet to Don Kazimir
Bjornsborg




Steafanmac at aol.com wrote:

> Many Ansteorrans, most recently Baroness Hillary, wrote words to this effect:
>
> >  I would suggest that instead of the BOD making a blanket policy that would
> affect
> >  all Kingdom's, that those Kingdom's that are having specific problems add
> >  changes to their Kingdom Law.
>
> (OK, so Hillary actually wrote the words above, but others had the same idea.)
>
> Earlier in this thread, I commented that reigns be restricted so that
> Counts/Countesses must wait out one reign between their last and their next
> reigns, and Dukes/Duchesses should wait out two.

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