Inspirational Equality
From MiddleWiki
As an aspect of courtly society, members of the Society often dedicate their efforts to an "Inspiration". This would include the traditional stereotype of a Lord fighting for the honor of a Lady in a tournament. This is used for some leadership roles in the SCA, including the Royalty, the Baron or Baroness of a group, etc. Sometimes this relationship is considered where the other party is the Consort (and sometimes referred to as such).
Traditionally such pairings had revolved around gender roles (i.e., one party was male, the other was female). Beginning roughly 2011, concerted efforts were made to permit consorts of the same gender for the traditional roles. In many cases, such roles such as the Royalty were written into Corpora or Kingdom laws with specific gender pairings in mind. For example, until 2012, Corpora stated:
"[...] section IV Royalty sub-section B paragraph 1: “'Each competitor in a Royal Lists must be fighting for a prospective consort of the opposite gender.'”
In December 2012 Corpora was changed to permit same sex couple in crown Tournaments at the discretion of the individual kingdom Crowns, changing section IV.B.1. to reach, “Each competitor in a Royal List must be fighting for a prospective consort of the opposite sex unless the Crown has elected to permit a competitor to fight for a prospective consort of the same sex.”
In 2019, an effort began to request a change to Corpora to simply require that competitors in a Royal list to fight for a prospective consort. Thus, inspirational equality was to be made non-optional to the various Kingdoms. (Letter from Viscount Seamus O'Caellaigh to the BOD, May 28, 2019) (Letter from Messer Giuseppe Francesca da Borgia, first same-gender couple to sit the Baronial thrones, May 30, 2019.) This culminated in a further change to Corpora IV.B.1 in October of 2019 - the Society Board of Directors unanimously amended Corpora to simply state: "Each competitor in a Royal List must be fighting for a prospective consort."
See Also
- Crown Tournament
- Coronet Tournament
- Right of arms
- Women Reigning by Right of Arms
- Ladies of the Chivalry
