Come West.
What happened to Flieg and another of our spearmen is something that just wouldn't happen out here. There is a post in there from Jarl Valgardr on page 9 that speaks to this:
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"People have expressed incredulity that Flieg would have shown up not knowing the rules of the marshal's court. In fact, that is what he did. He expected, naively, to simply show up, tell his side of the story, and be done with it. Palymar noted that Flieg should have brought witnesses with him, but how was Flieg to even know that, when the very idea of marshal's coruts is anethema to the chivalric culture in his home kingdom? Palymar should have suspended the proceedings while Flieg gathered witnesses to support him (of which there were more than a few among the Western fighters). I think in this the court failed.
This is not just the case of one fighter having a dispute with another fighter. Nor is it just a case of interkingdom anthropology. This is a fundamental difference in the idea of what the SCA is, what honor is, and what fighting is. While expressed roughly and obviously intended to provoke, Balin's comments should not be dismissed out of hand. He expresses something which threatens the fabric of the SCA, but which is also a pillar of what makes it great. It should come as no surprise that someone from Arizona would express the views that he expresses, because they are typical of a South-Western United States attitude toward lawyers, courts, and bureaucracy in general. Read The Nine Nations of North America (or read my book on the SCA) to get what I'm saying: our ideas of what is proper grow out of our regional mundane attitudes, filtered through class and out personal experiences. Balin expresses the Western (and by that I mean John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Western) attitude toward lawyers and courts: they may be civilized, but civilization sucks. Lawyers are sophists, twisting words around, making people believe things are right when they are really wrong, and bringing down good men not through deeds but through words. Courts are an inherently dishonorable in this world view, because the honorable thing would be to say "You say he is guilty of the crime, I say he is innocent. Let us fight and God will decide who is right" ("My German friend has a keen understanding of the law.") Balin's attitude is also chivalric. Courts are medieval, but courts of law were, as we all know, challenges to the authority of the Chivalric class. Balin's rejection of them is more than period, it is ideally chivalric. Hence his attitude that what happened to Flieg was not honorable.
Marshal's courts are just one of many things that are to the marrow of their bones insulting to many knights in Atenveldt, the West, and An Tir, which are accepted as necessary, even beneficial, to knights in many other kingdoms. This is the real issue here, not whether or not Flieg charged an archer and tried to tackle her. In a modern society we live with the understanding that courts often convict people who are innocent (as happened here) and let off people who are guilty. We are supposed to accept that. In medieval Scandinavia it was understood that he law had nothing to do with justice: it was a means of settling disputes. As a Viking I can accept that the court gave out a decision that was unjust. Flieg paid the weregilt and that is the end of it. It is as a knight that it offends me to my core. "
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The thing to understand about the SCA is that it is world wide. There are over 35,000 members across 19 Kingdoms and 46 years of being. With economics and distance it has become somewhat harder to keep homogenized & still separate without having problems (Estrella Accords anyone?).
Basically, it is what it is. I am doing what I can to make it better and so are many others but I think it takes things like this to make us stand up and go "Whoa! Wait a minute!" and I think it will.
-Ivan
BTW Flieg dropped folks off for the First Party in Berkley in 1965 and has been involved ever since. Flieg reigned as King of the West in 1981 and King of the East in 1981. I truly believe that he does not blame the archer at all, nor Palymar. I feel he blames the system they inhabit and this has found a thing that he wishes to change in the SCA even after 46 yrs.
Flieg.
