Hi,
just had idea, all my players only generate Amors for rich heiress, because these women can 'get' them something (= a rich marriage). Why would they have an amor for the Earls wife or Guinevere?
What benefit comes from that? Even if the player does not intend to marry (eg for religious regions) he could still pursue the romance and decide later if he wants to accept/refuse the marriage (depending on the situation then). So in order to 'entice' players to have more amors with married women perhaps we should tie the romance glory award to the glory of the subject of the amor. Romancing Guinevere must be more glorious then romancing the local widow with 2 manors. Of course more glorious women demand more from their suitors, which explains why some people prefer the earls wife as they stand larger chance to succeed (as she is easier to please).
Of course appearance should be included as well (each point of appearance over 15, worth 100 glory?) [I never agreed with appearance needing to be over 20 to be special while all other skills/traits are special at 16]
Guinevere has around 3000 glory and 30 APP and should be about the highest reward (100 glory), so effective 3000+1500 ((30-15)*100)= 4500 glory, so per 500 glory of subject, 10 yearly glory, if a successful task has been completed. Tasks get +1 difficulty per 500 glory.

It's rough idea. Opinions?

fg,
Thijs

I believe I have misled us all with my incomplete knowledge, in print.
I will attempt the most important corrections here.



just had idea, all my players only generate Amors for rich heiress, because these women can 'get' them something (= a rich marriage). Why would they have an amor for the Earls wife or Guinevere?


Well, for starters because to be a true Amor the woman must be married.
If she is not, then it is not really an amor.
Flirting above one's class perhaps, Entertaining a lady, certainly. Fishing for properties, absolutely.
Amor?
Sorry.



What benefit comes from that?


Glory for the effort, gifts from the lady, Inspiration for tourneys and quests, the clarity of pure effort for love's own sake, clean fingernails and trimmed beards.



Even if the player does not intend to marry (eg for religious regions) he could still pursue the romance and decide later if he wants to accept/refuse the marriage (depending on the situation then).


Romance has nothing to do with marrying at the end.
There should be a serous problem with someone who is spiritually inclined and obedient to the church, and the pursuit of Romance, which requires a breaking of the laws of man and God.
For the Higher Cause, of course--for Love.

I would like to redo the Romance system, but it's nowhere near ready for any kind of public discussion on my part.

Here is something that I would love to have from anyone:

Challenges presented to the Court of Love (what PCs might do), and any response of the court to it from history, literature, or yoru imagination (cite source please)!

--Greg

Here is something that I would love to have from anyone:

Challenges presented to the Court of Love (what PCs might do), and any response of the court to it from history, literature, or yoru imagination (cite source please)!


I have a historical challenge/response for the Court of Love, and also a challenge needing an answer. Both are based upon the literature’s assumption that love and Romance will be found outside of marriage, not in it.

In his manual for knights, Sir Geoffroi de Charny (France’s top knight of the 1340s/50s) says that (in Pendragon terms) some knights want to get Glory points by making their Amors known – and responds that this is wrong. For one thing, by making the lady's name known the knight reduces not only her honor but also his own. For another, “We should know for certain that the most secret love is the most lasting and the truest, and that is the kind of love for which one should aim.”

But – and here is my own question that lacks an answer -- say a knight wins the heart of a lady, marries her, and continues to truly love her afterwards – but openly now that it is legally permitted. You know, the kind of still-brings-her-flowers, sweet, mushy love that if you saw the pair in a modern movie you’d say “Yup, at least one of them is gonna die.”

Can he still be considered a Romantic Knight?

Thank you very much.

But – and here is my own question that lacks an answer -- say a knight wins the heart of a lady, marries her, and continues to truly love her afterwards – but openly now that it is legally permitted. You know, the kind of still-brings-her-flowers, sweet, mushy love that if you saw the pair in a modern movie you’d say “Yup, at least one of them is gonna die.”

Can he still be considered a Romantic Knight?



I wish to solicit other response please.

But I say "no."

Romantic does NOT mean what it means today, where it can be applied to any couple.
He is married to his lover, therefore it is not Romantic Love, not fine amor, amor courtesie.
It is Love, not Romantic Love

--g

I know it's hard to understand for our contemporary minds what Love and Amor could mean in the late Middle Ages.

I would beg you humbly to imagine and empathize with those knights lives. Let's try to review some of their basic facts and ideas.

First:
You will not choose the woman you will marry. Usually, your family head will choose her for you. Or your Liege lord will. It will be a political decission. Pragmatic and political. No feelings involved. Your knight can not get married without your liege permission.
For your whole life (marriage is for life, remember? Divorce didn't existed at all.) you will live with a woman that surely won't love you a bit. You can consider yourself lucky if you become a friend of her.
Your duty is to have sexual relationships with her in order to have children. A lot of them (the survival of children in that age was worse than Pendragon tables could suggest). Have you tried to have sex regularily with a woman that you don't like and even you can not stand her?

Second:
Of course that you will have strong feelings for other women. But they are NOT your wife. Every relationship outside of marriage is considered adultery and punished by christian law. So it is supposed that you cannot reach sexual relationship with other women outside your marriage. It's forbidden.
As you can imagine, ther is a diferent point of view if you are the MAN in the relationships. Although it is forbidden for you, it is widely understood that a MAN usually have sexual relationships outside marriage. But is NOT for a WOMAN. It is supposed that married woman cannot have sex at all with anyone but her husband (do you remember we have speaked anything about political reasons regarding marriage?)

Third:
So you cannot touch a married woman. The great knight are admired people. People that pushes the human limits to the boundaries of what it is possible. Great warriors. But Guinevere realizes that there is other limits the knights have to struggle with. Their own desires. At least that is the idea that is behind the Romant

I believe I have misled us all with my incomplete knowledge, in print.
I will attempt the most important corrections here.

[...]

Well, for starters because to be a true Amor the woman must be married.
If she is not, then it is not really an amor.
Flirting above one's class perhaps, Entertaining a lady, certainly. Fishing for properties, absolutely.
Amor?
Sorry.

Greg, I think you or onto something important here, both in terms of history and game context and balance.

There is a good wikipedia article on this subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtly_love). It may not add deapth to this subject, but it do have some useful links.

For exampel one to the great scholar and medivalist Georges Duby. "The model is simple. A female figure stands at the center: a "lady" (dame). The term, derived from the Latin domina, signifies that this lady is in a dominant position. It also defines her status: she is married. A young man, a jeune (at the time the word referred to an unmarried youth), notices her." This quite clearly states the case.

I think the The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus could be quite handy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_amore_(Andreas_Capellanus)). It is avaible on line, in latin ... but it evidently contains just the kind of cases Greg are looking for. I found three of these on another web page (http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/medieval/love.html):

"Andreas also provides legal cases! Supposedly, the history of love included Courts of Love ruled by the ladies. There's no historical evidence that this ever took place, and it seems pretty unlikely, but Andreas' material has been referred to so often that it has come to seem true.
Here's one case: a woman's husband has died. Can she accept her servant as her lover? The decision: no, she must marry within her rank. This is not to say that a widow may not marry a lover, but then he would be her husband, not her lover.

Another case: a knight is serving his lady by defending her name. It's getting embarrassing and she wants it stopped. There is much debate about this case. The decision: no, the woman is wrong; she cannot forbid him from loving her.

A final case: two little kids were playing in their medieval sandbox and noticed all the fine ladies and gentlemen engaged in the new love fad about them. They imitatively also agreed to a contract between them: that they would share a kiss each day. They years have passed and this guy keeps showing up at the door every morning for the kiss. The woman wants to be released from this juvenile contract. Does she have a case? The decision: granted, because the rules specifically state that one cannot be about the business of love until one is around the age of thirteen. Therefore all those kisses given since that age must be returned. (Huh?)
So is this all a joke? Andreas also offers a retraction -- an about-face at the end. And he mentions a "duplicem sententiam" (a double lesson). Finally all seems sinful and love a heresy."

As for Romance in game, I think a more historical approach solves a problem with the romance system: it is too good. No sensible player would not want his knight to have an Amor: you get loads of Glory - 3 200 I think for a completed Amor - and a very useful Passion. And if you chose an unmarried lass, without all the trouble of a jelous husband with a bunch of brothers with Sword @21 and 6d6 in damage ...

Now, looking at the literature, Romance is a bother. It ends in tragedy, not in happy marriage. Lancelot and Guinevers romance destroys the Realm; poor Tristram spends a miserable life wandering the earth (aggravated by his tendency to think that any girl namned Isolde that he meets is his girlfriend). And as for Palomides, read TH White.

I think Romance should be about Roleplaying. It should give great glory and a great Passion, but make the PC life miserable. It should not be for everyone, but for the young and landless knights.

So give us some new rules, Greg!

I believe I have misled us all with my incomplete knowledge, in print.
I will attempt the most important corrections here.

[...]

Well, for starters because to be a true Amor the woman must be married.
If she is not, then it is not really an amor.
Flirting above one's class perhaps, Entertaining a lady, certainly. Fishing for properties, absolutely.
Amor?
Sorry.


Greg, I think you or onto something important here, both in terms of history and game context and balance.



Great back up here. Thanks.



So is this all a joke?


I think of the participants seeing it as more like a game.
Rich married women of all ages fill their courts with handsome young men flattering them. They give out gifts to their favorites.
Their husbands are gone. They don't love them anyway.
Young men, including every landless gadabout and social climber with blue blood, jockey about at court for her favors.
Social stricture is tight, even for these high class ladies. Dalliance is forbidden, condemned by God and man. All the rules officially say, after all, that this is a chaste operation, and is is just a game, and surely no one does anything other. Except...
I assume some population of these debutantes and dowdy old matrons are like many modern aristocrats--infidelity is less important than discretion. I am sure that a part of the vast Arthurian court is as shallow and decadent as court at Versailles (but without the Maîtressesse-en-titre). Skilled, intelligent women trapped on a manor or in a castle, barely seeing the outside world, have dreams and intentions, and their personal agendas do not always make them obedient subjects, no matter what the system says.



Andreas also offers a retraction -- an about-face at the end. And he mentions a "duplicem sententiam" (a double lesson). Finally all seems sinful and love a heresy."


Christian guilt, I am sure.
He wrote this book, the first half anyway, when he was young and ambitious and new at court, eager to please his patroness. He finished it later, I am told, and stuck that last in because he had to. I imagine him becoming popular at court for what he'd written, then being stopped by the authorities, finishing the book because he had to (for his patroness) and adding that in to assuage his bosses.




So give us some new rules, Greg!



Workin' on 'em.
I'll need some recovery time from the labors of BoB and BoA though. :)


--Greg

This is a little off the main topic but still concerns Romance.

My players are all in the Uther period (496) so Courtly Love etc and especially Amor do not exist. However, I have my players doing all sorts of cartwheels to try and please the power ladies at Court (Adwen, Elaine etc) in the hope that they can marry them and get access to the wealth they have.

Now I know this is not quite correct but I have a simple system whereby each success the knight has while flirting, dancing or whatever with one of these ladies slowly lowers her resistance to him, with some ladies being more resistance than others (this is just a modified version of The Lover's Solo system from KAP5 p.202). When the resistance falls low enough the knight may make a marriage request with reasonable chance of success.

Now my question, although my knights may just be after money here, can they not also fall in love? It may not be the norm but I can't believe every wife is loathed. There must be *some* marriages somewhere that do actually work. Thus if my knights requested a love(wife) passion would it be reasonable to allow it?

Now my question, although my knights may just be after money here, can they not also fall in love? It may not be the norm but I can't believe every wife is loathed. There must be *some* marriages somewhere that do actually work. Thus if my knights requested a love(wife) passion would it be reasonable to allow it?


Yes, it would. Id allow it in a jiffy. Also, I think PCs should run the "risk of love". Force one of the materilastic, manor hunting casanovas to roll a Love (woman he is courting) passion; thats the way love works after all. Could be a lesson to the other knights too ...

The reason you can not have an amor with an unmmarried woman is because there simply arent many eligible unmarried women. when they come of age they are married off. If a woman is not married then she is a nun or something. even if u start to romance before she gets married it probably wont last very long before her father marries her off. Also a girl who is yet to be married is probably a virgin. U see, she will be getting married one day and she knows it, so she wont want to have pre marital sex....it might offend her husband when that day comes. Thus only married woman that are not virgins can really maintain a successful romance. a woman that is 18 and not married is an old maid. I suppose u might justify a romance with a widower, since there is the danger of angering her earl or duke who is in charge of finding her a suitable husband. I just dont think its a romance if there is no RISK. There has to be negative consequences upon being discovered , or ther is no real glory. If no one cares that you are boffing the woman then why get glory 4 it ya know? anyway that is my take on it. Maybe im wrong? :)

Now my question, although my knights may just be after money here, can they not also fall in love?
It may not be the norm but I can't believe every wife is loathed. There must be *some* marriages somewhere that do actually work. Thus if my knights requested a love(wife) passion would it be reasonable to allow it?


Sure, of course. Absolutely so. It happened and still happens, though rare enough to be commented upon.
Here are three kinds of love in KAP, according to the stuff I am bashing my head on now. (it can always change by publication).

Love of Family. The automatic, biological affection that people feel when they are raised together, reinforced by the absolute social support for it. It is universal (though not always strong, and sometimes becomes Hate). Everyone, as a rule, trusts their families first and never acts contrary to the collective kinship will (as expressed by the leaders of the family). If a member is bad he must be protected anyway. Consider how the Fisher King reacts to protect his demonic, invisible brother against Sir Balin. It is possible to expel a family member, but this is considered extremely radical—he must have done something against the family itself for this, and even then it’s not required. Consider how Sir Gaheris remains among the Orkney kin.

Love (Intimate). Eros acts here, a physical and carnal love in which Lust is a bonus and pay off. Copulation itself is no passion, just the trait of Lust. This is a positive emotional attachment with a person that includes making love. It is not necessary for a knight to love his wife whatsoever, although they will still conjugate to add mutual, legal children to their bloodlines. Nonetheless, sincere passion is known to develop between mates. Love (Wife) is a common entry.

Amor (Lady Love). Love for the sake of Love, for the sake of Service to Women, for the liberation of the lovers from the cruel world of imposed obligation, Love as a way of life. This is the new thing, the latest discovery of humankind in our quest to make the world a better place where our ideals can exist. For this Amor the world is turned upside down: no church or law counts, only the whim or passion of the Beloved Lady, who is the Liege to her vassal lover. Knights, who bow only to their liege, submit, surrender and yield all to Love. It is madness.

Love of God, Love of Goddess, Adore and Admire and other such affections are all outside of this discussion.

--Greg

I'm unsure whether Love of Family should be included in with the other two, Greg; like the others you mention, I think this one is on a whole other level of passion; I'd keep it in the Universal Four realm.

Unless I'm missing something, too ... most people would even go against the wishes of their family (dear to them as they are) for True Love ... or, the more common Intimate Love.