So I’ve seen a ton of messages on Facebook and elsewhere online about the recent decision of the Board of Directors of the SCA to not create a new Rapier/Fencing Peerage. I’ve heard a lot of arguments on all sides of the issue, and recognize it’s a sticky situation.

I had a dream last night that presented a possible solution. At 2 AM it seemed perfectly reasonable and logical to me. When I woke up properly this morning, it seemed to make even more sense. I spent my morning commute thinking the idea over in detail, and the more I thought about it, the more I think my idea could work. I’m interested in hearing what others think though. After you’ve read my proposal, I’d appreciate feedback – if I’m wrong in part or all of my assumptions on this, I’d like to know why. My ego is not at stake on this being a good idea – I believe it is, and if it is not, I would appreciate being corrected as to why.

Before I get into that, a quick disclaimer – I’m not a fighter – Armored, Rapier, or otherwise. I literally do not participate in martial activities AT ALL. I never have, and although I’ve learned to never say never, I probably never will participate in martial activities. It’s just not where my interests in the SCA lie. But plenty of my friends do. These are people I have a great deal of respect for – people in the Armored, Rapier, and Archery communities who are exceptionally skilled at their chosen martial form and also demonstrate the Peer-like qualities that the Orders look for in their members.

But I don’t personally have any irons in this fire. I’m not going to elevated to the Chivalry, or any new martial Peerages that may be created as a result of the ongoing discussion. This isn’t going to affect my day to day feelings about the SCA much, aside from giving me the warm-fuzzies for my friends getting the recognition they deserve for practicing the martial activity that they choose. Having said that, the continued lack of a forum for Rapier fighters to get Peer-level recognition seems like a slight towards them.

A lot of the discussion revolving around the issue seems to hinge on a few key points. The first key point being that the Chivalry is unwilling/unable to accept other martial activities into its ranks. Whether or not they are unwilling, I can definitely see difficulties – it is my understanding that one of the things the Chivalry does when evaluating a candidate is looking at their combat prowess. The styles of fighting (Armored vs. Rapier) seem substantially different enough that I think that would be hard – I’m not sure an Armored fighter would be qualified to properly evaluate the combat ability of a Rapier fighter. This is not a slight on the Armored fighters – the styles are just substantially different. I would expect that the same problem would exist if the roles were reversed.

So I’m not sure the Chivalry would necessarily be qualified to make that determination. Rapier fighters would best know how to judge Rapier fighters, and so on.

The next key point I’m hearing is that maybe the rest of the martial activities (i.e. everything but Armored combat) should all be grouped together in one Peerage. I think this has the same problem – the Rapier community is not well-equipped to evaluate the combat prowess of the Archers, or those who participate in Thrown Weapons. Additionally, it puts the Chivalry in a position where it can easily said to be “above” the other martial Peerage. There would be the Chivalry, and “everyone else martial”.

The key difference between hypothetical martial peers of all stripes, is the form of martial art that they choose to do. Considering there are many other criteria that matter beyond just combat prowess, I can see where the argument for grouping all the martial Peers into one Peerage would come from – pretty much every other criteria that would be considered for a potential martial Peer would be the same, regardless of their chosen form of combat.

But I do think that chosen form of combat is a very important distinction. There is nothing we do in the SCA that has as many rules as our combat does – and that’s for many reasons, most important among them safety. If someone does something wrong, someone could be seriously hurt or die. So we have standards – standards about how armor must be, standards about what valid properties of weapons are. We have rules about how the martial activities are run. Even setting that aside, the forms of combat that are practiced in the SCA are so varied as to be nearly unrelated. Much of that’s for safety reasons. We don’t want Target Archers putting actual holes in Armored fighters, so we separate those activities, where they would have gone together in period, during actual war. We setup our martial activities to be exercised in as period as possible a fashion while still safe for the participants. Each form of combat has its own issues and considerations, and I think these distinctions are important enough that any Orders composed of martial artists should logically be segregated along those lines.

This leads me to the proposal that came to me in my dream last night – the essence is this: “A Peerage is not the same thing as an Order”. Currently and historically in the SCA, the words mean essentially the same thing. But do they have to? Here is what I’m thinking. We create a new Peerage – the name that came to me initially was “Defenders”, but I’m not wed to the name so much as the concept. This would mean we’ve got Laurels, Pelicans, and Defenders. Unlike the Laurels and Pelicans, the Defenders as a Peerage is NOT an Order. In this case, the Peerage contains multiple Orders. The Chivalry would be the first such example. They could continue to function in the same way they do now. As it seems appropriate, additional Orders could be created, all of which fall under the blanket Defender Peerage, but have their own customs, titles, symbols, heraldry, etc.

In short, all members of any of these Orders would be members of the Defenders Peerage. The Peerage does not need to have gatherings or meet necessarily – and the Peerage cannot induct people directly. For matters of great import, I could see the Orders of the Peerage meeting together – but for day-to-day business, I don’t think it would be necessary.

I feel like this solves several problems. We don’t tip over the wagon of the Chivalry and force them to change their Order and who they accept. We are able to recognize individuals who participate in other martial arts in the same fashion that we currently recognize the Chivalry, without making them feel like second class citizens. We don’t force all the non-Armored forms of combat into one mold. They can each have their own traditions. This increases the richness of our game. We also leave the door open for future forms of martial activities – as there is sufficient support for a given martial activity to have a Peerage, it can be created – and I believe the time is now for Rapier.

I’ve heard several repeat the argument that if we don’t include all the non-Armored forms of combat in one peerage, we’ll just continue to have to keep creating new Orders. This might be true to a certain extent, but it seems somewhat self-limiting as there are only so many different forms of martial arts in the SCA and it takes substantial time for a new form to become popular and develop enough of a following to support an Order. Additionally, not wanting to do something because it will cause future work is not really a convincing argument. We should be so lucky to have 30 different forms of martial arts with followings equivalent to those that the Armored fighting and Rapier fighting currently have – that would be a much larger, healthier, more vital SCA than the one we have currently.

I also recognize that several among the Laurels could easily argue (and have seen it written), “but we lump every different type of Art and Science together – why shouldn’t they have to do the same thing?” I don’t have a perfect answer to that, although I think my discussion of the substantial differences between these communities and their forms of activity starts to answer the question. Also, it may be worth considering that while many individuals in the Arts and Sciences can take a strong interest in other Arts and Sciences than their own, and indeed can pick up a lot by just reading about them, it is much harder for the martial community due to the hands-on experiences required to be a practitioner of their arts. While a cooking Laurel can appreciate the construction of a beaded veil, I think it’s a fair sight harder for an Archer that doesn’t fight Armored to fully understand and appreciate Armored combat without taking on the art themselves. This is as much due to our complicated rules as any other reason.

Additionally, the question arises – does creating this structure hurt the Laurels in any way? If it does not (as I believe), and if it will improve the enjoyment and stability of the Society (as I believe), is it not worth pursuing?

I’m very interested in hearing people’s opinions on this. I’ll be collecting opinions via a post linking to this on Facebook and also on Reddit. If you don’t specifically want your opinion visible online, as it would be in either those places, please feel free to email me at danmcgillen@gmail.com if you feel you have an insight you’d like to share.

I plan on taking everything I learn from you all and submitting my comments and this idea as a suggestion to the Board of Directors of the SCA. Thank you for your time and your feedback.