[Ansteorra] Principality?

[Don Riney]

First there are a couple of points I thought would be good to mention.

Should Principalities be formed they exist within Ansteorra. There are many 
Principalities in the Known world that have been Principalities for many 
years and likely will continue to be so (just check out a map of the Kingdom 
of the West some time) So the assumption that the only reason to form a 
principality is to eventually become a Kingdom, to me, seems flawed.

Should Principalities be formed and one does decide to petition to be a 
kingdom, well then I guess that would answer the question of "who is going 
to give up being an Ansteorran?" pretty decisively

In answer to Lord Duncan's question of whether or not the Northern Region 
has enough membership I should think the fact that there are 4 Baronies and 
a Province in the Northern region would suggest there is a rather large 
populace there even before we start counting Shires and cantons.

However I don't think the question asked today was actually in concerns to 
just the lands north of the Red River but rather concerning all of us. In 
the past when I have seen discussions of this issue I have seen much 
discussion, usually very heated discussion.

I believe Don Alden is right. We have discussed this before on multiple 
occasions and we always hare about the same things, so let's talk about 
something new. or at least looking at it in different ways.

1. What does creating Principalities do to support our populace?

2. In what ways do we believe it might hurt our populace?

3. Currently we have problems in the Kingdom keeping offices filled, can a 
principality administrative structure be supported and sustained?

4. In the past we have many times spoken of simply changing from 5 regions 
to 5 principalities, however it's not the _Only_ way this concept could go 
forward, are there any other Ideas of where lines would/could be drawn?

5. is there actually enough support for this idea at all? in the past 
discussions we argued, cried, screamed, and argued some more. then we went 
to our respective corners and fumed about why the other side wouldn't listen 
to us while not always being sure who the "other side" actually was.  I 
don't think we ever got around to any kind of informal or formal show of 
hands concerning weather or not we supported it in the first place as a 
populace.

I am sure other people can think of more good questions to add to this list, 
so if we're going to talk about it lets all take a deep breath count to 10 
and have a discussion of the _Idea_ of Principalities.

In Faith
Darius of the Bells, OL