Just for clarification, I speak...

[Lance Harrop <lharrop@mrj.com>]

Lord Siguard has asked me to correct some misapprehensions and errors 
from my relating Duke Roland's story.  By the way, Siguard heard this 
story directly from his Grace.

Siguard was talking to Roland about a mutual friend, and how someone had said
that friend would never amount to much as a fighter.  Roland thought that
was funny, becuase every great fighter he knew had someone he "blamed" for
inspiring him to be a great fighter.  In Roland's case, it was the story
related below:
> 
> $#>It seems that in
> $#>his first year in the SCA, Roland went to a fighter practice where they
> $#>had a melee.  The team leaders picked their teams, and Roland was the 
> $#>last person left to be chosen.  One team leader offered to the other
> $#>one of his already chosen men, if the other would take Roland.  Is it any
> $#> surprise that Duke Sir Roland, after winning crown and being knighted, 
> $#>hunted down that team leader and made his life as miserable as possible
> $#>as often as he could?

Duke Roland and said team leader are now good friends, and apparantly his 
Grace has forgiven the other for this slight.  But when he could, Roland made
sure to take that fighter out on the list and demonstrate the prowese he 
had learned, and the endurance he had developed, until the team leader 
was an exhausted wreak.  He wasn't sniping behind the other's back about 
his character, he wasn't saying bad things about him.  His Grace wasn't 
rude, he was merely insistent that the other fighter keep fighting until 
Roland was done.  

Lord Tadhg writes:
> $#Leifr please thank Lord Siguard for a story of how a duke should NOT
> $#behave. The team leader proved himself to be quite rude--and certainly
> $#owed Roland an apology. And Roland made up for it by being RUDER "as
> $#often as he could". If this is a "wonderful story" to you, Leifr, you
> $#are walking on a road of lead.
> 
I can see how, but the way I first wrote this, that it would seem that 
Duke Roland was being unchivalris.  In fact, of course, he was not.  His 
Grace's point, Siguard's point, and My point, if you will, is that you 
can't simply decide that someone "will not ammount to much" and treat 
them accordingly.  Certainly people have been sucessfully driven out of 
the SCA by such attitudes, but others have stayed in, and not all have 
turne out as well as Duke Roland.

Lord Richard of La Rocelle writes:
> $There is a hidden lesson here: Personal vendetta should not be taken on the
> $field.  The first rule of the list states this.  I know of a several 
> $knights who have stopped fighting because there are people they
> $don't want to fight in a personal vendetta.
> 
> The knights to whom I am referring to are most honorable men because they
> consider it wiser to avoid the people they resent than to risk a stain 
> against their honor.   The reverse is true of some other folks I 
> think.  There are two people that I would not fight in the lists under
> any circs.  I think you get the point......
> 
As Richard points out, the honorable thing to do, if you can not control 
your temper on the list field, is to not fight at all.  There is at least 
one person who currently will not fight me because he is so angry with me, 
and not over poetry either.  I respect him far more then I would respect 
someone who decided to use the list field to vent his anger.

Still, my temper is not so constructed that I believe I would bear such a 
grudge, with the possible exception of one individual, but that's not due 
to politics.  And as I haven't had a chance to say this before, I would 
like to note that I admire Lord Michael Limner's defense of "Aspiring to 
be a Knight" versus "Wanting to be made a Knight".  As long as your 
ideals of knighthood are different then your preceptions of the 
requirements to be knighted, then the only course of honour is to follow 
your own ideals.  If that is a path paved in lead, then I will fearlessly 
follow it, rather then join a crowd treading their path of fool's gold.

As for the conversations about cookie lust, cookie suckers and cookie 
monsters, I won't comment more then to say, I watch this with great interest.

Ever In Service
Leifr Johansson
Viking Hal Bard
Seneschal of Stierbach,
AoA, Last Squire, House Frosheim, Protege, Krebshaven.