Dear Michael
It wasn't the choice of the Bards to kill the College. The Queen Bards 
was destroyed by the Crown. There had been a movement to split 
Ansteorra into Principalities and the Bards in Ansteorra spoke up for 
the Kingdom. Master Robin performed a major piece. The Love that the 
Bards bought to Ansteorra and the unity upset the plans for some very 
powerful people. Also the Bards taught people about good Kings and 
nobles. Some of the nobility did not want to live up to the historical 
concepts of a good noble. The Crown put someone in as head of the 
college that had problems with the College. This was done on purpose. 
I heard this from the mouth of the King who did it. We started to have 
problems. King William the Bear, who had problems with the bardic 
contests and wanted to win bardic contest with non period songs, told 
us we had to change. He didn't tell us what we had to change. King 
Suitan, on the advice of some powerful nobles put together a council 
to rewrite the bardic college charter. They were told to make the 
Bardic College into an Educational thing. We were to stop influencing 
people. The bards in charge rubbed a lot of people wrong. The end  
product was something that many of the old Queen's Bards could not 
live with. A compromise was made and the new college was called the 
Royal College of Bards. The Bardic college was not strong enough to 
handle the disapproval of the Crowns.  Many of the old Bards stopped 
performing at this time. The new crowns were afraid of the powerful 
nobles and refused to sponsor performers. The Bardic point was dropped 
from Gulf Wars and we even dropped the performing aspect of Kingdom 
A&S. The rumor was started that Bards didn't want recognition. The 
powerful noble told everyone that they didn't have to listen to 
performers and that it was the duty of the SCA to entertain them not 
the other way around. They didn't have to be "hostage Dinner theater". 
The powerful noble felt that good performers were inhibiting the 
natural performer and if we did away with all standards then bardic 
arts would flourish naturally.  The old powerful noble went away and 
it became obvious that we needed people who would keep the old legends 
and songs and poems alive. We needed the voice that inspired people. 
The other nobles realized that maybe the theory of no standards and 
the natural way were not  working so they decided to try going back to 
the old way. The kings starting with King Bar  started sponsoring 
performers. When I became Premier Bard I closed the Charter written 
by  the council and wrote a new one. I had a theory that there is a 
historical pattern to being a bard and if we got rid of the other 
patterns and stressed the historical we would fall to the historical. 
I did not know that the Royal charter still was irritating people. 
Once we had a new Charter that basically said nothing exceot that old 
charter was gone and we could start anew. Many of the old people 
started coming back. We create pathways over which we could talk. It 
is interesting that the New Ansteorra Bard is following the same path 
as the old Ansteorra Bard. That path is the same as what the ancient 
bard walked. 
Here are some points I would like to make
We did not fail. We succeeded and had too strong an effect on the 
kingdom.
We had flourish with standards. 
Ansteorra had flourished with the bards as an active part of the 
community. 
We would have been able to work our problems out if we could had told 
everyone else to get out of our business. 

Now we have problems because we have to overcome this weird cloud of 
doubt that hangs over our heads. A cloud that was put on us by nobles 
and peers.
Willow de Wisp a bard of Ansteorra 


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