[UA] More on auctions

[Adrian Long]

On 08/01/2008, Fidel Santiago <pperez333 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The greatest buying opportunity comes on Dec. 18, when Sotheby's auctions
> off what it calls "the birth certificate of freedom": the Magna Carta
> (above), one of 17 originals that still exist and the only one in private
> hands. Signed by England's King John at Runnymede in 1215 to appease his
> rebellious barons, the charter was revised over the years until the 1297
> version became the foundation of English liberties.

I can't remember if I ever mentioned it here or not, but I ran a UA
Larp in 2006 which featured the Magna Carta quite strongly in it's
plot.  That's what happens when I live a few minutes walk from
Runnymede...

The general backdrop of the game was that an individual was trying to
subvert and replace the current true king archetype, ascending in his
place replacing the current arthurian ideal of a noble ruler with a
more modern (or perhaps older) leader...  all realpolitik,
brinkmanship and abuse of power.

You can get a whole lot of symbolism about the ideas and trappings of
royalty and those who support it.  Handily, where I live there's lots
of bits of random statuary and public-space artwork based on those
themes, which is handy.

For example, there's a life-sized but chunky sandstone king with a
sword held in front of him, point down, poking into the ground with a
bit of black metal ivy crawling up it.  You could look at this as an
expression of the king's power over the land, the king's inactivity
(the ivy growing up the sword), the king's assault on the land (he's
sticking a sword in it!) or any number of other things.

There's also a monument to the magna carta in the form of a water
feature - a big lump of rock with a copper parchment on it and a
helmet lying in the pond.  Water runs down the whole lot... which to
me shows the magna carta cast aside and left to rot in the rain amidst
the detritus of an old battlefield.  I think it's meant to show the
Magna Carta rising up from the battlefield, but it really doesn't look
that way to me...

There's *another* magna carta monument actually on Runnymede, put up
by the American Bar Association (about 2 minutes walk down the hill
from the JFK memorial, and a little further from the WW2 Air Force
Memorial...  it's a good place for leaders and remembering battles &
the dead).  The memorial may or may not be in the right place, but
it's the place everyone knows, so it's better for cliomantic charges
than the actual spot...  So naturally it was spiked by the sleepers...

But Runnymede has an older history to do with rulers and royalty than
that.  It was one of the places where the anglo-saxon Witan Council
(or Witenagemot) met... who amongst other things, were the people who
decided who the next king would be.  Essentially, it was signed
somewhere where rulers were chosen and laws were made for centuries
before...  A seat of power (albeit a somewhat muddy and uncomfortable
one) for pre-norman england.  The history may not matter that much
intially, but the symbolism that goes with it can become important if
learned and obsessed over by the right people!

There's an actual play thread from the LARP and a post game (brief)
summary over at RPG.net:
Actual Play:  http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=244693
Post Game:  http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=272597


-- 
Adrian Long
Currently GM without portfolio
http://www.eggbox.org.uk/ (rather out of date now...)