Code of Chivalry

What is all this ‘Chivalry’ stuff anyway?

For those of you that love a good read, the Wikipedia article is fairly comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chivalry

To quote directly from the article itself:

“Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It was associated with the medieval Christian institution of knighthood;[1][2] knights' and gentlemen's behaviours were governed by chivalrous social codes. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature, particularly the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, and the Matter of Britain, informed by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written in the 1130s, which popularized the legend of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.[3] All of these were taken as historically accurate until the beginnings of modern scholarship in the 19th century.”

So, much as strange watery people lying in ponds and distributing magic swords is no basis for a system of government, these codes are very much of their time and do not apply to how we roleplay in the Lions today because of all of the obvious reasons. What we should take away from them as a faction is that ‘chivalry’ dictates a set of codes of conduct that the nobility of the faction should adhere to and it’s up to us to define what those codes of conduct are.

The ten commandments of chivalry penned by historian Léon Gautier in 1891 are as follows:

1. Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches and thou shalt observe all its directions.

2. Thou shalt defend the Church.

3. Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.

4. Thou shalt love the country in which thou wast born.

5. Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.

6. Thou shalt make war against the infidel without cessation and without mercy.

7. Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.

8. Thou shalt never lie, and shalt remain faithful to thy pledged word.

9. Thou shalt be generous, and give largesse to everyone.

10. Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.[20]

There are obviously issues there - who are the ‘infidel’ for example? Why are we waging war on them other than because some old dusty book tells us to? Certainly in a modern context this is… bad and open to manipulation by far-right groups who want a bit of ‘remember when things were like this’. Let’s be clear that those people have no space in the faction or in the game. That said, we have used this as a basis for the chivalric code for the faction.