Recently the question came up in an Atenveldt forum from a relatively new member who wanted to add a jaguar-skin sash to his outfit (Aztec persona). He was afraid he'd get in trouble for it because the Masters at Arms or squires might take offense.
Legally, of course, he had nothing to worry about. Society-wide white baldrics (sashes) are reserved for Masters at Arms and in Atenveldt (at least) red baldrics denote squires. But he was still afraid someone might hassle him about it.
And I'm afraid he might be right. In spite of the fact that he is within his rights, there may well be some pompous jerk who will inform him that he can’t wear a sash of any color because baldrics are the mark of Masters.
This isn’t theoretical. In Atenveldt we’ve had people try to extend the circlet of yellow heraldic roses reserved for ex-queens to a lady wearing roses of any color.
These are examples of prerogative creep: Taking a right or custom and trying to extend it to cover things it was never intended to.
I'm sorry to say that this has even been enshrined in Aten law. Coronets, circlets with strawberry leaves for dukes, embattled for counts, and pointed for barons, are reserved for their respective classes of peers. However society-wide, there is no restriction a metal circlet of plain outline.
But in Atenveldt plain metal circlets are forbidden to the general populace. The reason, I am told is that years ago two or three high-ranking ladies objected because plain metal circlets might be confused with coronets and some people (horrors!) might actually mistake the person wearing a circlet for a duchess, countess or baroness. Their subsidiary reason, I am also told, is that the proper coronets were heavy and they wanted to wear something lighter.
When this nonsense was first proposed, the College of Arms attempted to stomp on it by issuing a ruling that plain metal circlets were permitted to anyone in the SCA. Unfortunately the Board overruled them on the grounds that this was a matter best left to the kingdoms.
First off, the justifications given for restricting circlets are nonsense. Even a blind man can tell the difference between a plain circlet and one with points, strawberry leaves, etc. The chances of legitimate confusion are just plain nil. Second, if the coronets are too heavy, then either get a lighter one or don't wear one. It's not going to kill you for people not to realize immediately you're a duchess or whatever.
This is an example of prerogative creep driven by the prerogative creepies' own rather pathetic sense of inadequacy. They do this sort of thing because they're terrified that without all the jinglies they won't get the respect they deserve. (What they miss is that they tend to get exactly the respect they deserve - i.e. not much - no matter how much junk jewelry they can hang on their person. With sane human beings respect flows to the person, not the awards. The ones who respect the awards above the people are likely to have other problems anyway.)
There is another kind of prerogative creep that often doesn't even owe anything to the people it allegedly honors. This is the made-up tradition.
Sometimes the tradition is made up out of the whole cloth, as the long-ago notion that dukes have a royal presence and should be bowed to within a certain distance. Sometimes it is a weirdly distorted version of a legitimate tradition.
Because Atenveldters historically have had an exaggerated respect for dukes, due to the outstanding examples who regularly visited us from the West in the early days, a lot of these phony traditions center around dukes.
One that has proven just about unkillable is the notion of Ducal Privilege.
In its fairy-tale form Ducal Privilege claims that a duke has the right to enter or leave the crown lists at any point he chooses. ('He', because there are no female dukes in Atenveldt.) This is a total misunderstanding of the tradition and even some dukes believe it. We actually had one try to enter the lists by claiming Ducal Privilege a few years ago and at least one Duchess (not his) claimed to me privately that such a privilege exists.
It does not. This is a complete and utter misunderstanding of Ducal Privilege and it has never been applied to entering the Crown Lists in Atenveldt that I am aware of.
Ducal Privilege as it legitimately exists in Atenveldt was inherited from the West. It is the privilege of a Duke to withdraw from the Crown List at any time, not to enter it at any time!
Rumor hath it that the reason this privilege was established in the West was that there were certain fighters no rational person in the West wanted to see on the throne. Since aside from being acceptability to the Crown there were no bars on a belted fighter fighting in the list and since rationality was no more thickly spread in the West than it was in any other kingdom, the better fighters, dukes included, tended to fight in the lists whether they wanted to be King or not. Rather than feign injury, the Western Crown and the Dukes chose to establish the principle that they could withdraw at any point - when the idiots had been eliminated, in other words.
To my knowledge this real form of Ducal Privilege was exercised in Atenveldt precisely once. One of the visiting Western Dukes withdrew from a (non-crown) list simply to establish the principle.
So how did this nonsense about entering lists get started? The answer is that someone half-remembered an old custom and embellished it in repeating it. The person probably wasn't a duke, but he or she was a committed royalist and wanted to build up the image and prestige of dukes in Atenveldt.
I don't think this rumor was even started for political gain. I think it was just an 'old-timer' sitting around shooting the breeze pulling stuff out of his or her belly button. Of course the royalists seized on it and repeated the notion as if it were undisputed fact.
It's worth noting that the duke that attempted to apply this a few years ago and both his ardent supporters on the Aten list in the discussion that followed are royalists of what passes for an extreme stripe these days. (By the way, even if Ducal Privilege in that form had existed, the Duke couldn't have exercised it. Traditions are overruled by law and Aten Kingdom Law has very specific requirements for entrants in the Crown List and their Consorts. This is result of a long run of bad kings and the realization that anyone who might be king needs to be able to handle the job.)
Of course as the Most Ancient of Atenveldt I find prerogative creep highly annoying. I know it's nonsense because I was there. Often I'm the one who explained these things to the other founding members.
I find it really annoying when prerogative creep is used to buttress a particular political/social position, such as the phony Ducal Privilege, and it drives me to foaming fury when it is used for the sole purpose of lording it over other SCA members as in the circlet silliness.
Prerogatives, like traditions, have real uses in the SCA. To the extent that they support and embellish the goals of the organization they are worthy and should be followed.
To the extent that they are used to set up artificial divisions, create useless privileges or are used to try to exalt one person by stepping on others, they are to be ruthlessly rooted out.
To me that is a form of bullying and I utterly despise bullies.
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