On prowess

[edricus]

A question was asked in a FB group "The Circle - chivalric discussions" about what does prowess means for different peerages.

"Question for all peers.

There is always the discussion of prowess with fighters of rapier and heavy fighting.....
Knights and MODs can you explain prowess in your own words?
Pelicans and Laurels....if you were to use prowess to define something in your peerage what would it be any why?"

My response:
As has been mentioned prowess is skill or mastery, as a pelican it is a bit more difficult to judge the skill of service. It is not like you stand and watch people make the dishes and can judge how good their service is.

I think that it is important not only to look at the what but also the how of the individual. So the event was good but how did the individual work with others, lead, coach, solve disputes, deal with problems.
We must be carefull not to equate sucess with service, yes service needs to be sucessfull but if we only look for sucess we might reward the wrong behaviour. In heavy if you only go for winning then you might very well turn into somebody with a reputation of being a rhino. A person who only looks for sucess and award might produce very sucessfull events but step on everybody they work with. Also somebody might do a big work of service, but due to no fault of theirs it was not sucessfull.

Another aspect is that service is not sacrifice, I know kind of a paradox for us pelicans, but a person needs to have the skills to know themself and others so that they do not sacrafice either.

Also prowess is not enough

Edricus (OP) Drachenwald

The group in question, the questions in this group are interesting and the discussions are at the moment usually quite good.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/306122960422599/?multi_permalinks=310672623300966¬if_id=1593145103137661¬if_t=group_activity

Comments

[gothwalk]

I've been thinking about this, and my own tendency toward skulking well behind thrones, preferably in a different room, and making things run smoothly from there. I think it's very hard to pin down in even a few sentences what prowess in a Pelican is, other than "without them, things would not function as well" - and that can be hard to pick out. So I suppose the recipe starts with "First, identify the shadow in which your potential Pelican is lurking..."

[korpikuusi]

I would like to think that Pelicans are islands of sanity, one way or another. Like all ideals, this of course also falls short.

When I map SCA peerages to fantasy archetypes, I think of Pelicans as counsellors, wizards, witches, spies, the competent underlings under a less than competent monarch.

Vimes is a Pelican. So is Tyrion. And even Yennefer.

[edricus]

If I am to challenge you I would say "identify the shadow in which you are lurking"

But yes the function as prowess is not a bad way of looking at things.