From the Kingdom List

I trust this is self explanatory with respect to the Blog topic.

This is from a (really long) conversation on the list about Ansteorran history, but given the information mentioned here, I decided it was worth posting here. At the time of the post, some opinions had been stated that were not necessarily universal, prompting disagreements, and so on. This is one of the responses to a response.

Wed, May 7, 2008 at 4:28 on the Ansteorra List.
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I'm afraid I'm going to have to quibble a bit with your disagreement. While early tournament combat tended to be little better than what happened on the battlefield, by the fifteenth and sisteenth centuries, there *were* a fair number of rules about what you could and could not do in tournament combat. For example, when jousting, aiming at the horse, or the opponent's legs was frowned upon and if a fighter dropped something, it was immediately claimed by the heralds (who, in addition to their announcing duties seemed to have had a role pretty similar to SCA marshals) and the dropped weapon or armor had to be ransomed back. Or consider this book: http://www.princeton.edu/~ezb/rene/renehome.html and http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=COMP-1&I=1&M=imageseule from 1460, which includes rules on what armor and weapons could be used, how the list field was to be set up, etc.

Later-period jousting was scored on how well the combatants rode, how good their targeting was and how much of their lance was broken. It's true that deaths still happened, but the fighters weren't actively trying to kill each other; those deaths were accidents, like deaths in modern car racing. Perhaps the ultimate in "sport" jousting was the German style that had specially-constructed armor that would fly into pieces if hit in the right spot. http://www.karlofgermany.com/master25.htm

-Tivar Moondragon
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Lord Ivo Blackhawk
Province of Mooneschadowe
Kingdom of Ansteorra
"God Save the King!"