[SCA-Cooks] Court News from Lochac

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Morgan Cain wrote:


> Anne asked:
>
>>What's the difference between a Court Baron and a Landed Baron?
>>
>
> Landed Baronetcies come with land, and Court Baronetcies don't.
>
> Seriously.
>
> The former are attached to a Barony.  I live in a Barony, we have a Baron
> and/or Baroness.  Court Baronetcies are "ya done REAL good" awards and thus
> are sometimes referred to as "landless white trash," at least in some
> Kingdoms.  And usually by the coronet wearers themselves.


On the other hand, Anne, the place where you, and I, and Andrea, and Devra, and various others from this list live, is a Crown Province, something of an anomaly by SCA-group standards. We function as a barony, but have no baron. (All provinces, in SCA parlance, are like this.) Instead we have a Viceroy and Vicereine, which makes us one of, what, only three or so groups to be so organized. There's a difference in the nature of the fealty between the Crown and a Viceroy, and that of the Crown and a Baron. Essentially the Viceroy, instead of holding the land _from_ the Crown, holds it _for_ the Crown, so technically we are direct subjects of the Crown, instead of being subjects of a baron who is in fealty to the Crown. Remember how, in the Middle Ages, it was okay for knights and such to go to war against the king if their baron rebelled? That was because they were in fealty to the baron, and not to the Crown, so any breaking of faith was no skin off the underlings' noses; the b
aron would take the heat for it. In theory, much as Ostgardrians tend to want to, we can't do this because we are direct Crown subjects.


Okay? Got it? I ask because it now gets complicated ;-).

The Viceroy and Vicereine of Ostgardr (still talking about Ian and Katherine here), who appear in the Eastern Order of Precedence (theoretically a measure of your Official, Social Kewlness), before all the other landed barons, and are de facto the heads of the East's House Runnymede, a loosely affiliated household of Eastern landed barons, although I think each kingdom has one of these, are _also_ a Court Baron and Baroness. So, when you hear people in Ostgardr referring to the Baron and Baroness, it's because a) it makes for convenient shorthand since we function as a barony, even though we aren't one, and b) because they _are_ a baron and baroness.

So they're up there with people like Kiri and Anne-Marie, not like mere
landless, non-excellent, single-peer riffraff such as myself ;-).

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98