[Ansteorra] How to choose a persona

Fri Jun 22 03:28:52 PDT 2007

Thank you, your Grace for your series on building personna. I just realized, I should go back and save eachmissive to share with new House members.
  Lady Eithne, GrandeDamme FalconRose

"willowdewisp at juno.com" <willowdewisp at juno.com> wrote:

Again I want to warn people. I am not telling you that you have to have an historical persona. I am saying you should think about these things if you want a believable historical persona.
When you join the SCA usually someone will give you the advice that you should base your time period on the clothes you are willing to wear. This is good advice especially if you are looking at having a basic persona. Wearing a basic T-tunic and claiming to late period doesn't make you believable. Refusing to wear hose makes your Middle period persona look strange. If you want a believable persona you will need to wear something that matches your persona.
The only problem is persona is the study of culture and beliefs. Sometimes the cultural values of a clothing style won’t match your personal ideas. You need to pick a culture you can live with.
You can break up the time period we are studying to three general blocks of Philosophies. 
The earliest block is what I call the Heroic times --fall of Rome to 1066. I used the Fall of Rome because at one time there was a memo from the board that suggested that was our earliest age. That memo was never written in stone so you can go earlier, but you will often run into problems. 1066 is used as the end date because it marks the success of the mounted Horseman. While the feudal system is up and running in Europe a lot of the old tribal beliefs still stand. There isn't a money economy so the glue that keeps people together is Kinship and gift giving. It is called a reciprocity society. There are places that keep these values all the way to later times. Western Scotland was based on those values for most of our time.
The Middle period is the chivalric age. It has some Kinship and gift giving but its interaction is based on contracts. Kinship does affect politics in some strange ways. It goes from 1066-- 1350. I say 1350 because that is around the time the Black Death destroys the feudal system. For much of this time people exchange labor and service for future land. In fact people of this period are sometimes offended if offered money rather than land. Gift giving is important but doesn't have the binding ties that it does in earlier period.
The Late period goes from 1350 to 1600. 1600 is the cut off date of the SCA. Please do not be confused 1650 was never the cut off date of the SCA, but because the printing press really did not started printing a lot of books 1650 has been the cut off for research because there were too few books from before that time. People in the SCA did have a push to make 1650 as the cut off date, but too few members were interested in changing the date. People who go out of period for their persona do get criticized for it. This time period based their inaction on the market place. They believe in Money. The nobility is still in the feudal period and often are banned with interacting with merchanting. So on one level the values of the Middle period are still in place, but kinship is not a really binding force but still is affecting things. Gift giving is still in place but isn't really strong. Gift giving changes and becomes more like bribes. 
Each period has it own code of behavior. In SCA role playing we keep our personalities intact and see how the culture would change us. To start out you need a culture that allows you to be yourself. A generic SCA/Ansteorran persona can span all these time period because Ansteorra can span all these time period, but you might find going from the historical ideals of one to another might be too hard. For example for my Main persona the year is 1207. I live in France most of the time, but I am also the Chief of the Clan Caldal whose lands mostly are under the King of Norway. Norway is going feudal in 1207, but a lot of it is still Heroic. My Willow de Wisp persona can handle early and middle culture but I find the later period just too much of a push. I created an alternate persona to handle those periods. 
Many people with later personas have no trouble dealing with me because I am just an old fashion noble and many of the rules of chivalry still apply but they think my Scottish values are just too back woods. 
We will talk about alternate personas later. I will tell you it is best to establish the main one first. Too many at one time just confuse people and often make people think you are crazy. 
Personas are for showing cultures please do not fracture you personality and have a persona for being serious and one for being silly. It is best to make each persona a complete person. My persona Duchess Willow de Wisp likes to dress up as a fool --Papillion. This isn't a separate persona. This is the person Willow being silly. Henry VIII liked to dress up as Robin Hood and rob people and everyone was supposed to pretend it was not the King. You are supposed to pretend you don't know Papillion is Willow. 
Is this clear??
Willow

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