"It's quite safe, nobody will read it"
Right, well, if you've read the darker piece below (almost too dark to be termed satire), you may have had your taste whetted for more chapters on How to Be a Good Baron.
So I intend to try and oblige, only in a matter-of-fact rather than satirical vein. This is mainly because I love transparency, because I believe it helps people do things better - myself included.
My primary audience is my Baronial cousins, present and future -- including our eventual successors. Plus anyone else who'd like to know a bit more about what things look like from the inside of this ridiculously demanding role.
I don't know if this experiment has been tried elsewhere - when we did our research before stepping up, katherine and I found precious few resources around the Known Worlde besides Hrolf's and Madelaine's general guide for B&Bs. It's very good, but doesn't go nearly far enough.
This exercise will badly lack context unless I include a lot of my perspective on Southron Gaard and its recent history. Thus, when you read, keep these things in mind:
1) While I have what I think is a fairly balanced view of events and personalities, you'll still have to apply whatever bias filters you think are necessary. Don't be offended if you were involved in something and have a significantly different picture from mine. That's just plain normal in my book. Comment away here, or in your own blog.
2) Naturally, other Baronies have other needs and other sets of circumstances. Though there are common cycles and problems, the particular solutions and tactics that have pre-occupied us so much can't be guaranteed to be optimal or even necessary elsewhere. To us, they just seemed like the best ideas available for the circumstances applying at the time. Your mileage may vary.
3) If you form the impression that katherine and I have been willing to go to great lengths to make things go a certain way -- and then to take some credit for it here -- you're at least partly right (we've had a LOT of help). In our view, we have left precious little to chance so far in our tenure, because SG needed and deserved a period where it simply scored successes, with few downsides or setbacks. And the Barony also needed its culture shifted so more people were able to learn more easily how things work. As time has gone on, SG has become more resilient and capable. That should continue. Hence, for the rest of our tenure, less from us, more from everyone else.
4) If you can't figure out whether it's me or katherine speaking, it's me. But there's precious little we haven't talked about, endlessly, when it comes to this role, so you'll find I's and we's scattered with gay abandon. None are the Royal we, just more pertaining to the role as a shared one.
Ok, enough caveats. Next time, some meat.
