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?

Conflicting Interests

Karl Crux (Principal Herald of the College in Lochac) said nice things (in public, too!) about my device conflict-checking the other day (I still know absolutely nothing about Names), and I'll admit it made me feel good, because Crux is a mean conflict-checker himself and he compared my self-taught method to the one he was taught at the knee of Master Giles the Extraordinary. It came with a challenge, though, if I'm going to conflict check, I should try to show my working to help others do so, and be ultra careful that I don't stuff the whole thing up. Oh, the pressure! I know not to let Crux down, too, or he might write a song about it.

Conflict checking is essentially a logic puzzle in which the herald needs to prove that their device had at least two distinct differences from everything remotely similar. I'm a decent logician, often being accused of thinking like a computer programmer, but conflict checking can be made a lot easier by the application of a little bit of intuition. SENA rules give us a lot of leeway to clear conflict, just two elements need to be different, so for more complicated arms, a lot of work can be saved by picking the rarest elements to check against.

Take these arms I recently checked to cause Crux to say nice things. It just so happens that before he said those nice things I was composing a post about checking them, so strap yourself in for a look into my brain for how I conflict-check, and let me know what you'd do differently.

<Per chevron inverted azure and argent a sinister gauntlet aversant and two arrows in saltire all within an orle of chain counterchanged>. It's a big blazon which looks scary, but it can be easily broken down. There's a field, a primary charge group made up of the gauntlet and arrows in saltire, and an orle of chain. In order of commonality, I'd expect the field and orle of chain to be the rarest, thus requiring me to check against fewer devices, so I'll try them first, then progress to the arrows and gauntlet if I need to later, besides, I hate dual primaries, so I'll avoid them if I can.

For plain fields, using the Field Division - Tincture section of the ordinary is hard work, but for a more rare field division like Per Chevron Inverted - Azure - and Argent, it's actually only a small list of devices (21, as of April 2014) that we have to look through, and it has the added bonus of including things like <Argent, a pile azure>, which need to be checked against but aren't always intuitive. To prove a DC for tincture, I have to prove either that nothing in this category has the other elements in my design, or that those that do have two DCs to my design. Since there's only a few items, I'm choosing to go through it manually, always a better idea if it's feasible, as that way I'm much less likely to miss anything by a poorly planned text search.

I'm looking for anything and everything that has anything remotely like an orle of chain, a hand or a saltire of arrows. If I'm not sure, I look the charge up, and then I'm learning other stuff (this keeps an otherwise boring process interesting, too), it's not uncommon for me the end up with 30-40 tabs at the end of a good session of conflict-checking, but then I'm easily distracted... In this way I learn that a senmurv is a mythical bird like a roc, and a chamfron is armour for a horse's head, but find nothing remotely like my charges. I find a couple of devices that have dual primaries countercharged like my device, but they don't have an orle, so I've got two DCs, one for the type of primary charges (a bear is different to a hand) and one for the orle (if this gentleman hadn't been a knight, his arms would conflict...maybe that's why he's never submitted them?), so I can discard them and happily declare that everything else remotely similar has a DC for the field.

At this point I forget that I was going to search the orle next, and foolishly load up the Hand - 1 - Argent category. Not too bad, though, just 170 odd devices, and I'm planning to just do a simple text search here to ensure I'm clear. At this point I already have a DC for the field, so for everything outside this category, including other tinctures and numbers of hands, I have a DC for the hand, enough the clear the device. I check the category for every key word I can think of to describe the other primary charge, arrow, bolt, quarrel and saltire, and find it well clear of them all (can never have too many search terms, particularly if I'm worried about variable spelling). There's a couple of cases of a hand grabbing some arrows, but I'm satisfied that it's clear.

At this point, I comment on OSCAR (the first time I've ever posted methodology instead of wimping out and just saying "No conflicts found), and sit back to see other heralds identify what I've missed. I think the only likely possibility is it there's another synonym for arrow or a similar charge, but as I then went back and double-checked through Orle - Multicolour, just to be sure, I'm quietly confident that we're fine and that I've done my small part to help make this knight a proud armiger of Lochac.

And there you go, that's the whole process. It probably took me twice as long to write it all down than to do all of the checking.

Who am I and why am I writing about heraldry?

In the Society for Creative Anachronism (your local medieval loonies) I'm known as Oliuier le Floch (for now, anyway, I still haven't documented the thing), and for the last year or so I've been slowly learning the art of the SCA herald. I've been doing this by watching and listening and reading everything that I can get my hands on, and also by being wrong in a variety of online environments, allowing my fellow heralds to teach me the true path. I say online environments, because as of yet I've still not actually attended an SCA event, save one college AGM which really doesn't count.

Nominally, though, I belong to the College of Blessed Herman the Cripple (mundanely Adelaide University), the Barony of Innilgard (South Australia) and the Kingdom of Lochac (Australia and New Zealand). Even though I'm not a practicing medievalist, I've found the support of the populace, and the Lochac college of heralds in particular, to be invaluable to my learning. When I asked questions, they answered patiently. When I kept doing it and started into the terrible habit of punning at the drop of a hat, they made me a Macer (trainee herald) and pointed me in the right direction to find the answers myself.

This blog is my way of trying to give back a little. I hope that it will help me to be a better, more confident medievalist and give those who can be bothered another chance to correct my errors, but I also hope that by documenting my mistakes and rambling on a bunch of topics heraldic I can help prevent another from making the same errors. It's not an official SCA blog in any sense of the word, and I like it that way.

So, be welcome, grab yourself a glass of something (I don't drink, but I appreciate those that do, particularly if they also sing), and enjoy your visit.