SC - Peasants and Nobility--starting to get OT

[Stapleton, Jeanne]

I have been in the SCA since 1980, and when I was working out my
personna, no one ever told me that I HAD to be nobility.

	I've been in the SCA since 1976, and one of the first
	things I was told was that we are all assumed to be noble.

	Frankly, I wanted to be.  My own life is middle class enough.
	Why not go for the gusto, thought I?

[snippage of one approach to persona, including incorporating food]
	
I agree with some of the comments I have seen posted....IMHO, the best
does not necessarily exclude those folk not fortunate enough to have
been
born rich.  Not all peasants or serfs had miserable lives.  Many people
can find joy in simple daily life without brocades and titles.

	...but who's saying that brocades or titles are the only
	things providing joy for the nobility?  This is as gross
	an oversimplification as saying "peasants were miserable
	every day of their lives".  

	In my case, the things that I wanted for my persona were:
	female education and literacy, a high priority.  Published
	records, meaning *history*, of some of my interests like
	cooking and dance.  Getting to dress up!  the thought that
	i'd have manors or inheritance enough to support the things
	I would buy.  I *like* velvet!

	Are those not simple, basic things?

  The way
the SCA was explained to me many years ago,  is that we were trying to
recreate the middle ages as they COULD HAVE BEEN.....nothing was said
about limiting our interest or recreations to a very small group of
people who could have lived then.  What is wrong with looking at the
best
parts of the lives of other folk?

	The intent there was to avoid religious and racial persecutions,
	to allow women to be more than chattel, and to not allow one
	group of people to discriminate harshly against another simply
	because of lack of titles--"he's a peasant, so I'm going to make
	him slave for me".  It was to avoid rude treatment even in the
	name of period practice or role playing.

	Nobody's going to stop you from being an Irish peasant if that's
	what you really want.  But please be polite in return and don't
	correct them if they call you "my lady".

	And one general comment:  it's fine to enthusiastically support
	and research your own avenue of special interest--such as a poor
	clanswoman or a landsknecht mercenary or any such thing.  But
	there's no call for value judgments on the way someone else
	has chosen to play, particularly when they're *not* pursuing
	a fringe area (such as an Oriental persona, which is doubtfully
	included in our covered area of pursuit in our Articles of
Incor-
	poration (somewhere)).

	I am nobility by choice, I'm titled, and my lady, I take
exception
	to your painting everyone who chooses to play that way as back-
	stabbers or interested only in titles or fripperies.  I didn't
start
	out looking for these things, they just happened.

  Personally, I find the politics and backstabbing of the nobility of
the middle ages to be something that I want nothing to do with.  Not all
nobles were all that "noble".

	That's very true:  they were *human*.  nor were the peasants
simple
	wholesome upright folk:  wifebeating, childbeating, spousal
homicide
	and a host of other things were practiced.

	Most of the "politics and backstabbing" of the nobility you
speak
	of were in order *to survive*--the Wars of the Roses horrify us
now
	with all the fratricide and mayhem among close kin, imagine how
	horrible it was to live through?

	However, it's true that moneyed classes, the leisured class,
were
	the ones who had the time to pursue things like tourneys, a code
	of chivalry and courtly love.  They, too, dreamed of a better
life
	away from the battlefield!


  To my dismay, this is being recreated right along with the rest of the
"noble" persuits.  I have seen rudeness and vicious backbiting and
plotting and maneuvering in the so-called nobility of the SCA that has
driven many of my old friends to leave.    I have seen kings that had no
idea what chivalry means and ladies who were anything but.  Maybe we
should get back to what the SCA was formed to be....a recreation of what
should have been or could have been instead of spending quite so much
time worrying about what was.  In other words...re-create rather than
re-enact.

	But Caitlin, "what should have been" *is different for
	everybody*!  My should have been and could have been are
	a courtful of my friends and friendly acquaintances all in 
	their best garb, laughing and talking and dancing, nobody
	hiding in corners...nobody trying to read slight into the
	slightest things, just happy to be here and with one another.

	What's _your_ particular dream?  (Not capital, not tm)

Countess Berengaria de Montfort de Carcassonne, OP
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