I'm currently running through the GPC and am just about to embark on 488. One of my player's knights is enamoured with Lady Jenna, the Earl of Salisbury's daughter.

Now. I'm not going to have him marry her as that will have him as too powerful. I do, however, have a few queries that I would like your take on.

It mentions in the main rulebook that she is just a girl at the start of the game but doesn't mention her age. Have any of you decided on an age. I picked thirteen to start with so she will be about 16 in 488.

It that talks about her dowry being significant, but gives no details. Now I appreciate the knight will not wed her but I am interested if anybody else has decided on what dowry she has.

Finally. It says a number of suitors have put their cases forward, again it doesn't list details. Has anyone married her off to any famous knights or did they make up a knight. Does it mention something later in the GPC that I have missed.

I know I could just decide all of this on my own but it is nice to get a feel for what other GMs have done.

Those details were left ambiguous precisely so gamemasters could make choices best suited to their own campaigns, I imagine.

I play her pretty much the same way and your assumptions regrading her age etc seem sensible. The text says she is not yet "marriagable", so depending on your interpretation, at least under the age of 13 to 15. I started her off as age 13 in AD484. None of my knights have shown that much interest in her, partly because she's fairly plain looking (they find that important) and partly because they're afraid of angering the earl by making an ass of themselves while dancing or flirting with her (my PKs have a surprising talent for Fumbles).

The details for most of the courtly NPCs are sketchy (Sir Jaradan, Lady Indeg, Gwiona etc) but as they don't crop up later in the GPC whatever you choose to do with them is not likely to break anything.

Since my PK was married to Lady Jenna in the second-to-last session of our campaign, I can say that her dowry is 5 Demense Manors, 5 Enfeoffed manors, and the town of Upavon (annual income L12) [from P5E, pp55].

It took me the whole of the Uther period wooing her with gifts and performing extraordiary service to Count Roderick and exceeding 8k glory to be considered. It also put me in the position (after St. Albans) of choosing whether I would support Robert and Ellen or take the county for myself. It made me look at my passions and traits and do my best to RP them.

Cheers for that VillageReaver. I was looking at my 5.1 rulebook which doesn't have them listed. That's a strange omission from a version that is supposed to have the errata in it.

That's a strange omission. You're quite right, the dowry details are missing from 5.1, but they are there in 5.0. Either the details regarding dowries, holdings etc are being rethought or they were simply omitted for space reasons.

VillageReaver - That sounds like an epic amount of effort you went to. Do you feel like giving a bit more detail about your exploits? I've often wondered what lengths my PKs should go to in order to win her hand.

The PK that I've got that wants her hand is a pagan knight. He has just converted to Christianity and is looking to building a church. He has refused any other attempts at marriage and nearly died in 487 but the saxon spear that was meant for him hit his horse instead.

If you read my blog it is Sir Moelwyn. I've got a plan to marry him off in the next year or two but I've got a feeling he is going to turn those down. I might have Salisbury demand a marriage to a certain lady. He doesn't like to refuse his earl.

Great stuff. I'm just reading it now. I'm just a few years ahead of you (GPC 492) so I know the phase you're playing very well indeed. Fascinating to see how another group fared.

I apologise for any spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors there may be. I struggle to write essays of any length as my mind drifts off.

VillageReaver - That sounds like an epic amount of effort you went to. Do you feel like giving a bit more detail about your exploits? I've often wondered what lengths my PKs should go to in order to win her hand.


To start off, we used totally random character generation which started me with a Chaste value of 17, so I (without much effort) RP'd a young man who was intimidated by women. During the events of Your First Adventure: A Hunt from P5.0, pp 193, Sir Ysgarran was reduced to 2 HP (before we knew about KO threshold) while he slew the bear. Upon our return to Caer Craddoc, after the knighting ceremony there was a dance that Sir Ysgarran was not able to participate in because of his wounds and a young Lady Jenna asked him why he wasn't out with the grownups. After a conversation about being injured by the bear and not believing that Ysgarran "soloed" the bear, Lady Jenna was gifted with the bear pelt rug. Ysgarran set his sights on Jenna not because of her "great tracts of land", but because he could relate to her better (at age eight) than he could to any suitably aged woman.

During the scripted events of the GPC Sir Ysgarran:
Provided security for Merlin for his retrival of Excalibur,
Assisted Madoc with his naval raids and impressed the Prince with hatred of Saxons and blood-lust,
Assisted Madoc in the war in France,
Captured Octa's banner in the Battle of Lindsey (Lindsay?) and was the only PK standing,
Didn't voice discontent/disloyalty regarding Uther's attempted seduction of Ygraine,
Personally slew Douche Gorlois in the battle of Terrabil,
Participated in the slaying of the witches of the Capercoertin Forest and freeing Sir I-forgot-his-name from his curse of being a giant man-eating cat-monster (In all honesty all I did was take a critical hit from one of the witches so that the rest of the party survived and managed to stay alive, but others played up my role in the retelling)
Was railroaded on the charges of kidnapping the King & Queen's son by that filthy devil-worshipper Merlin and his lackey Brastias the Coward and subsequently exonerated by The Waterman, (although I doubt that this helped my case at all...)
Personally saved Count Roderick from a Saxon ambush on our way back from negotiations with the Centurion King,
Made alliances with King Nanteleod of Escavalon and King Dirac of Estragales (which was the "big push"),

In courting Lady Jenna, essentially all Sir Ysgarran did (we succumbed to 20th century sensibilities here and gave women the right to chose their suitors) was gift her with animal pelts from his hunting exploits until another knight took pity on Ysgarran and told him that she hated the dead animals and liked art. After this, Ysgarran spent easily 100L on paintings and tapestries for her.

But by far the largest contribution was the 7500 Glory Sir Ysgarran had accumulated by 494-largely due to his Briton Christian Religious bonus and 26 Hate: Saxons and other notable passions. Additionally, Sir Ysgarran has an extremely high CON (24) and always survived battles that laid low his companions and thusly spent more time at court than most PKs.

Wow, just discovered a very interesting discrepancy regarding Lady Jenna... namely that in 485 she could scarcely be a toddler if Countess Ellen's birthdate (from p. 11 of the GPC Gamemaster Characters) is not in error. That document states that Ellen is twenty-nine in 496, having been born in 467, which would make her eighteen years old in 485. As marriageable age is sixteen, this means Jenna cannot be older than two unless she is in fact not Ellen's daughter. This little fact has given me the seed for a totally awesome Anarchy Period plotline which I am reticent to go into here because the original poster, Lusus Naturae, plays in my Exile Sons campaign. Too bad these forums don't have a spoiler tag.

Wow, just discovered a very interesting discrepancy regarding Lady Jenna... namely that in 485 she could scarcely be a toddler if Countess Ellen's birthdate (from p. 11 of the GPC Gamemaster Characters) is not in error.

That PDF has a number of errors and problems to do with dates. As another example Uther is described as being "almost 40 years old" yet Madoc is said to be 33 years old. So there's lots of room in there for either creative story lines or to shift ages and dates around to make your campaign work.

I kept Ellen's age as being the one given and had both Jenna and Robert born in the early years of the campaign. However the idea of Jenna being the daughter of a previous wife and the trouble that this could cause in the Anarchy years is brilliant. I wish I'd heard it before I started my campaign off :)

Oh, that's only the beginning. It gets far, far more evil than that. Muah ha ha ha ha. ;D

Finally. It says a number of suitors have put their cases forward, again it doesn't list details. Has anyone married her off to any famous knights or did they make up a knight. Does it mention something later in the GPC that I have missed.


I'm 120 days late to the party, and this'll be my first post, but WTH.

In KAP4e it says of Upavon:
"Although located upon the Salisbury plain, Upavon is actually part of the 10-manor fief of the Duke of Leicester."

This meshes quite nicely with the information about Lady Jenna's dowry in 5e. She married the Duke of Leicester/Lindsey!

Cheers, all!

This meshes quite nicely with the information about Lady Jenna's dowry in 5e. She married the Duke of Leicester/Lindsey!

Or someone who became the Duke at least. Duke Corneus is somewhat old for Jenna, but his heir* Derfel ends up inheriting towards the end of the Anarchy and this match is the sort of dynastic alliance building that the magnates go in for. Mere knights, even exceptionally glorious ones, don't get a look in when it comes to the children of the greater nobility - hence Romance, Courtly Love and all that.

WRT Jenna's age, if you're not happy with her being a toddler at the start of the GPC (hence marriagable as the Anarchy kicks off which is a nice bit of spice to add to the post-St Albans stew IMO) then you can make her the child of a previous marriage, in which case the political spice she imparts turns on who her maternal relatives are.

Regards
Luke

* GPC says that Derfel is his nephew, but in my game Derfel and Lucan are Corneus' sons (with Bedivere his acknowledged bastard).