[NR] [Northkeep] attributes ?

[Jennifer Carlson]

HL Arthur wrote:
> so what say you northern region?

 
 One of our greatest strengths is our frontier/pioneer spirit.  Being distanced from the “center” of Ansteorran culture, we’re used to fending for ourselves and  looking out for our own.  This is in keeping with our mundane regional personalities: Indian Territory was surrounded by full-fledged states for some time before finally becoming the State of Oklahoma; likewise, I remember my folks talking about when we lived in Amarillo (I was a toddler at the time), and how removed it was from so much of the rest of Texas, and that “those people in Austin just don’t get what we’re like up here.”
  
 If something needs doing up here, we do it ourselves and don’t expect the rest of the kingdom to carry us.  If we don’t get substantial numbers of our Southern and Central and Coastal brethren coming up to our events, we turn to our nearest friends o'er the borders, the Calontiri and Outlanders.  We’re accustomed to only occasional visits from the Royals, but it doesn’t drag down our celebration or pageantry.  We have grand baronial events and courts, the only provincial events in the realm, and our Landed Barons and Baronesses and their peoples are glad to travel to the events hosted by groups without local nobles.  We support each other.
 
 If you take a sociological look at Europe in the Middle Ages, you will see that the major centers of culture and sophistication were in the southern parts, especially the Italian states, Spain, and France.  These “sophisticated” cultures did not appreciate the more northern realms for their arts and level of civilization, as a rule.  
 
Now, among those northern cultures, I’m going to pick out one – not to diss the others, but because it is perhaps the clearest example I can expand upon.  That example is England.
England was poo-pooed by the powers of Europe – Spain, France, Rome, Holy Roman Empire (though the HRE was at times an only loosely-confederated bundle of German states).  For a long time after England ceased to be a Norman satellite, it still tried to imitate France – using French as the court language, for instance.  But as the peoples of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the newer, Norman families, and the Cornish and Welsh and Yorkshiremen, etc., found themselves more and more unified by a common vernacular, a unique and universal legal system, and a thriving system of commerce, they became “the English.”  Militarily, they surprised the heck out of the vaunted French at Crecy, and then again at Agincourt.  When, Spain, the great powerhouse of Europe in 1500, agreed to give one of its princesses as a bride to Henry VII’s son, it was hailed as a recognition that England was finally being admitted into the “in” club of Christendom.  Two generations later, the England of Henry VII’s granddaughter, Elizabeth I, gave Spain a resounding kick in its superior attitude and raised England’s flag as one of the great powers of the Old World.
 
Saller than some kingdoms, but mighty, in presence, strength, and culture.  Everyone going about his own business, but uniting in need.  Not asking for help or handout.  Possessing a culture of literature, art, architecture, and music that rivaled anything on the Continent.  That was England.
 
That is how I see the Northern Region.
 
In servicio,
 
 
Talana