Entourage (and spouses) at feasts?

[wdavidlewis]

Is your entourage available at feasts? e.g. if you have a valet for their Fashion skill and a feast card calls for a Fashion roll, are they present?

My current decision is yes, within some limit that we haven't gotten to yet as my group's largest entourage is 1 (not including squires or stewards). Stewards I assume stay at the manor.

Similar question with spouses. I'm assuming noble spouses attend with their Knights.  Lower ranked spouses maybe?

Curious what other people do (or a pointer to the relevant rules section).

Edited January 27, 2021 by wdavidlewis
clarification

[BioKeith]

As long as there is sufficient warning for the feast, then I go with yes - valets and wives (or whoever they might like) are available. If it's a feast after a battle, or some other spontaneous thing - then no.

[Morien]

Kinda of the same mind as BioKeith, albeit with some differences.

Spouses might accompany the knights to things like the Spring/Pentecostal Court, if it is nearby at least (i.e. to Camelot from Salisbury counts as close). I don't see the wives travelling far to Uther's Spring Court, though. Travel is more dangerous than later under Pax Arthuriana, and Uther's court is pretty... frat party-ish. Local liege's Spring/Christmas court events, sure.

Valets could and probably should follow the knights around. They are useless if they are left home, as they are supposed to be the Knight's servant, not the Wife's. So I would generally allow the Valet do his best pretty much in any feast the Knight participates in. If nothing else, he probably made sure that the Knight put on a clean tunic and all that sort of stuff.

[SaxBasilisk]

As with Morien - although I have been making exceptions for weddings of the royal family and the like, as I assume people come far and wide for those.

It does tend to lead to awkward situations sometimes if you're using the cards...

It's probably also bad form if a PK's spouse doesn't attend their marriage feast, allowing everyone to properly watch one of the happy couple fumble a Flirting roll with the other.

[Voord 99]

The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe mentions a couple of details about women at feasts that might be fun to throw in from time to time to vary things:

- on the continent, women are sometimes shown in feasts depicted in art as separated from men at their own table or at the lower end of the table.

- women left the feast before the heavy drinking started.

These are from the preview on Google Books — due to my local university library being closed, I can’t easily consult the whole section to see what else it might say, or pursue those items to the primary sources.  

The second item seems especially tempting to try to reflect by modifying the Book of Feasts (certain cards cannot come up early or late).  But I’d like to have a better sense of what the sources are and how they indicate that it worked.  For one thing, I’d like to know where women went.  It’s comparable to the way in which women in similar situations were expected to behave in other periods of European history, obviously, so it is not all that surprising in itself.  Female knights will necessarily involve modifying it.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Voord 99

[Morien]

58 minutes ago, Voord 99 said:

- women left the feast before the heavy drinking started.

That would be easily modified by either making the last feast round or adding an extra round into a 'mandatory' Drinking round (the PK can pass and roll Temperate for a check, but then he doesn't get any Geniality for it), which the (non-knightly) ladies would not participate in. This would be in pre-Arthur times, though. With Guinevere setting the new style from mid-Boy King onwards, where this kind of heavy drinking is a bit frowned upon and Arthur showing the new custom by retiring with his Queen rather than staying to booze with the boys.

As for where the women went, I would imagine that they retired for the night, and the men staggered to bed in the wee hours or passed out in the great hall.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Morien