NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/org/sca/17226

Text File | 1992-12-31 | 2.7 KB | 52 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!newsgate.watson.ibm.com!yktnews!admin!siena!mittle
From: [e-mail] (Josh Mittleman)
Subject: Re: Non fighting royalty
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Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 19:14:27 GMT
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Greetings from Arval!

Palymar made a very good point, that there is no reason to believe that
non-fighters will make better rulers than fighters unless the system itself
is designed to choose good rulers.  One can argue that championing might
work that way: If a fighter is going to put his own reputation on the line
to let someone else rule, he may take care to be convinced that they will
do a good job.  I don't think that's a particularly good argument, and no
other method of choosing royalty that I've heard seriously discussed seems
to me to be guaranteed to produce better rulers than the one we've got now.
That having been said, Juan asked:

> Given that having interests other than fighting does not make a a couple
> less suitable to rule than a fighter, what is so objectionable about
> giving non fighters a chance to rule?

That isn't how we do it now.  Twenty-seven years of tradition has value,
and should not be lightly discarded.  That is not to say it can never be
discarded, but it must be clear that the new alternative will benefit the
Society in the long run.  The current system produces a military
aristocracy, which matches the historico-romantic picture that we have of
medieval society.  For many people, that is an important, central feature
of the SCA.  If we are going to change that feature, then most of the
Society should be convinced that the benefits of the new system will
outweigh the loss of that feature and the end of a long tradition.

Why do people want to change the method of reaching the throne?  Because,
as William has observed in another thread, an enormous amount of practical
and symbolic power is concentrated in the Crown.  Giving more people a path
to that focus of power is one way to make the system fairer, but no matter
how the Crown is chosen, very few people are ever going to reach that
office.  There is another solution to the problem: Distribute the power to
more people.  If the Crown were less powerful and less important, then the
question of how we choose the Crown would be correspondingly less
important.

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Arval Benicoeur                                       [e-mail]