Rank

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(Needed: a description of what "rank" is)

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(A "keeper" posting from the Steps, Feb 2006.)

(Origins of the SCA Ranking System)

[...] our system of ranks is not particularly closely related to any actual historical model. We do play at using historical models for certain purposes, but our system of rank was put into place long before the SCA got serious about historical models, and it's probably far too deeply entrenched to do anything about it at this late date.

[...] the original inspiration for SCA culture was tournaments. Not real life, not even medieval real life, but the play of manners and gentilesse surrounding the fighters' competitions and the Court of Love shenanigans that got the ladies involved. Our sovereigns are sovereigns only because they fight to crown their consorts Queen (or King) of Love and Beauty - and a good part of our Society's culture, the way we do it, has deliberately been filtered through the idealism of the Victorian Gothic Revival which attached to certain medieval and pre-medieval legends and then modified by the idealism of modern sensibilities and certain 20th c. medievaloid fantasy, notably Tolkein.

That's not the limit of what we do nowadays, but it is still at the base of it all the structure to which we have attached everything else in our cock-eyed counter-culture. We've pruned away the elves - officially - and the other non-humans, but they still hang on at the edges.

[...] And [remember] that origin of the SCA dates back to the mid-sixties of the last century! The mundane culture was rather different then, and our founders were just playing; they had no idea that the SCA would outlast them or expand as enormously as it has.

Sister Guineth, playing this sometimes silly game since AS XIII.

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I was at an event a couple years ago, late on Sunday there were several of us policing the site picking up trash and the then Baron of Wealdsmere, Sir Brandt, was among them. Some eager young stick jock trotted up and asked him "Why are you picking up trash, you're the Baron!", Brandt just said "Oh, you know...".

My son happened to be close by and he chimed in with "He's picking up trash BECAUSE he's the Baron."

That was one of those golden moments. At that point I knew that the kid GETS IT. He understands the whole concept and idea and he knows that rank carries responsibility. He understood that setting an example, in the trenches, comes with the territory when you are a Peer of the realm and it is not just a way to get there.

I was as proud of him then as I was when he received his AoA a year later. At 16 years old.

Arnora

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