[Sca-cooks] OT- Peerage Oaths

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> They don't call up the knights individually to give their oaths?

You mean, one at a time? Cheez, dude, we'd be in court all day. As i said, sometimes the peers are called up in groups: knights and masters of arms, then laurels, then pelicans; and sometimes all peers at once. I suppose it depends on the King and also on how much business court needs to contain.

King Radnor kept an sand-glass on the table between him and his queen and when the sand was all at the bottom, in 90 minutes, court was over. The vast majority of the populace was quite grateful.

As i've said, most of our kingdom events - 3 Crown Tourneys, 2 Coronations, Kingdom A&S, West-Antir War - are camping events (only Twelfth Night Coronation and our one or two Collegia are indoors) - not to mention most events in the Principalities of the Mists and Cynagua (my apologies to Oerthans, i've never been to your fair principality). Even in the summer, it's in the 50s at night, and often the 40s, no matter how warm during the day.

I remember bailing out of a court with some friends - court had started around 5 PM, and we left at 8 PM. We had a child with us who needed to be fed. It had already been about 3 hours. I don't know how much longer it went on. This was, fortunately, atypical.

But if all the knights were called up one by one to swear fealty at every event, sheesh!, that alone would take at least 1/2 hour, and probably much longer. We have a number of active people who have been members of the Chivalry for almost 40 years and some even more than 40 years.

So why do knights swear fealty individually, but laurels and pelicans don't? They are all peers, after all, and they're all needed to make the events, and the SCA as a whole, be what it is.
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita