Forced Humility

In SCA armoury, we have a concept called a forced change, which boils down to the idea that any change that you have to make to a device to make it fit within the core style rules is 'forced', and thus can't be used as a point of difference when trying to count your required two changes from similar already-registered armoury. I ran aground on this one when performing a conflict-check on the Lochac KLoI this week, not because I missed a conflict, but because I saw a forced change where one didn't exist.

The relevant example in SENA (da rules) is in part A.5.E.4:

Sable, in pale two anchors Or is not clear of conflict under this rule from Per fess sable and Or, in fess two anchors Or because the anchors in the second item are forced to the top half by the field - no yellow anchor could be on the yellow part of the field.

A simplified version of the device in question is Per chevron gules and Or, in base a dog sable, which I contested conflicted with the registered device Argent, a dog sable. There's a distinct change for the field, but I argued that the dog was in the base because it had to be, as otherwise it would lie over the field of division and thus constitute a low-contrast charge with the black dog on the red field, so there wasn't a second distinct change; and thus the devices conflicted.

What I didn't realise prior to being shown by Brian Rocket today and going on a precedent hunt, is that the forced rule only applies in "no-contrast" situations rather than "low-contrast" ones. Which is to say that if in the above example the anchors were white instead of yellow, the fact that the anchors could have been placed in fess on the centre of the field, crossing the line of division, means that this change hasn't been forced in this partially low-contrast situation, despite the difficulty of seeing a white anchor on a yellow field. I've made a handy little guide to remind me of this point.

This is an example of my making an error of judgement where SENA provided only two positive examples rather than a close counter-example to prove the rule, so even though I double-checked my work I couldn't find my error, and I had to go on a precedent-hunt to find the many examples of other heralds who'd fallen into the same trap that I did. If I'd written SENA I'd have included a specific counter-example of a change that looks forced but isn't. Maybe one day when I'm competent enough to not make these mistakes every second time I sit down to conflict-check I'll write my own illustrated and expanded SENA that goes into the details of some of these more border-line cases.

Ultimately, the way the College interprets the rule, if there's any change in tincture between your field and charge, you're fine and any change you make isn't forced, which is a lot less strict than the way I'd been interpreting the rules up to this point. I'll reserve my judgement as to whether this is a GOOD rule, given that it seems to encourage low-contrast situations, but since it should allow for one more happy client than the rules in my head, it seems like a good outcome in this instance, doesn't it?