Nobody, not even your SCA bestie, or any academic, has to fork over their research to you for the asking.
Putting your research out there for free comes with risks of plagiarism and those potentially capitalizing off of your hard work. While plagiarism is, of course, abhorrent, and anybody who outright steals information, images, and other research to make a buck off of it is just fucking shitty, SCAdians and other reenactors are by far the biggest culprits out there and I am not afraid to throw you all under the goddamn bus about it.
“But you have to share with me.” Somebody asked, “You’re one of US!”
What does that even mean? And I do share, this entire blog is me sharing. I embargoed my Hittite for a while because I actually had people, when I mentioned I was going to give it a shot, tell me that they were ready to basically make whatever I put out there without a second thought, or, try to steal my thunder first.
When somebody tells you they are working on a major project, you RESPECT THAT PROJECT. You wait for publication, be it on a blog or social media for free, or in print. You provide citations and contact information when that research is made available. You do not pass it off as your own, you do not take somebody else’s documentation and turn it into your own A&S project, and you do not, DO NOT, try to make patterns off of it and sell it as your own (You know who you are).
A freely shared project is still the intellectual property of the owner, and and those that choose to not embargo should not be embarrassed or have to pursue litigation because somebody outright stole their work. I had to have a paid account on Academia.edu for some time because I had a SCAdian steal my research and try to pass it off as their own while at university. The person has since left the game.
All creators, be it hobbyists or academics, have a right to withhold research for publication until they are absolutely ready to share, and I am going to start recommending that all SCAdians consider waiting to share anything, even pictures on social media, of works in progress. It may sound counterintuitive to the educational aspect of the society, but creators should not have to worry about poachers.
I’m very excited about my upcoming projects, but since I am in the position for academic publication, I cannot share anything about it. I will also be embargoing my dissertation completely until it is also in a position for publication.
I look forward to being screamed at by Le Ancien Regime SCAdiens on Facebook for this.
This is more of a cautionary tale than an actual report of what went down.
Long story short: when you’re a very popular person in the SCA, there’s a good chance that not everybody who wants to get into your vigil tent is going to get in. This is at least thwarted with the usual in-person festivities of a party-like setting with snacks and drinks to sate visitors while they wait.
You get no such thing when your vigil is online. This can make some people a bit cranky that they have to sit around in a Zoom waiting room. I received no major complaints in my direction, other than Facebook messages of, “I fell asleep/I waited too long/I wanted to get dinner/I didn’t want to sit in garb all night/etc.” But that didn’t stop me from feeling bad about it. We did the best we can under the circumstances of hinky tech and overloading rooms. Please keep this in mind as the society as a whole continues to navigate this time of weird should you end up in another digi-vigil.
This is how it went down:
Originally, I was to sit in a tent in a friend’s backyard, at least, to emulate the idea of a larger in-person vigil. There was a nice selection of snacks and drinks for the local crew, and the incense and candles I purchased from an Orthodox Monastery here in the states as part of my almsgiving plan (see forthcoming post about ceremony.) I had my icon of St. Michael the Archangel, a 3D printed bust of Empress Ariadne from the Louvre, and my Tampa Bay Rays ball cap (hey, it was the playoffs and I was missing the game!) with incense and candles as a table nearby. I had printed fabric of Empress Irene from the Hagia Sophia as my backdrop. It was going to be -pretty- and -medieval-.
Except that no matter what we did, the internet refused to comply with me being outside. So, as the waiting room filled up, I couldn’t let anybody in. We hastily relocated me inside to the dining room. The ballcap was lost in the shuffle, and by the time it was found in the dirt outside, the Rays were losing that game to the Astros.
Once we finally got going, I only got a few visitors in before the first major crash happened. It took a bit to rebuild the queue, and Master Herman had to stick around as a tech support presence in the vigil room the entire night to stop subsequent crashes, of which there were two more. But as long as he was “in” there, the room stayed open and we didn’t have to start a new one. In order to help, Mistress Maol created a breakout room for guests to be able to chat in, and other rooms formed as well from what I heard. All I know is that I sat on a wooden chair from 7:30pm to 12am and my legs were none-too-happy about it. Something else to think about. The plus side to having control over who was coming in and out of my room was that I could run to the facilities as needed and get a leg stretch when I could. Something that would have been a bit harder in-person if there was a massive line building.
The other option we employed was the digital vigil book, which can still be found at www.annasvigil.northernarmy.org. As of this point, 2 weeks after the fact, I still haven’t read it because I’ve been so busy working on our next military move to Virginia, so all SCA is in the backseat until I know our lives aren’t going to shatter along with our TVs again. I’ll get there when I get there. My online presence was coordinated by Master Richard leHawke from the East Kingdom, since it didn’t require anything local.
Here’s my list of Digi-Vigil Pros and Cons:
Pros:
-Easier to sneak away for breaks.
-Being able to see friends from all around the world, and not just who’s at the event. I had several from Lochac (Australia), who were sharing their morning cup of coffee with me.
-You can record it and keep it forever.
Cons:
-Except for your local crew, nobody gets snacks.
-Tech can, and will, go down.
-It definitely pulls you out of the medieval experience.
To conclude, here are some tips to help those that are leading up to their own virtual events that I can only give because things broke on my end. Hahahaha, er…
1: TEST YOUR TECHNOLOGY. Do a tech week in advance. When we did our tech week, we thought a different router would help. NOPE. Get this worked out before you sit down.
2: MAKE SOCIAL MEDIA EVENTS FOR THIS. We referred everyone to the Trimaris Populace Facebook page. Bad idea. A Facebook event would have been better, and we ended up doing that the next day for the actual elevation.
3: BE PATIENT. Jeff kept going, “Semper Gumby” to me, over and over. But when your husband is used to nothing going right in the Navy, and you have generalized anxiety disorder, maybe consider medicating instead. >.<
4: REMEMBER TO EAT AND REST AS NEEDED. You are not strapped to the chair. Scream for snacks, and actually don’t take a visitor for a few minutes so that you can consume said snackery. I did not. I was HUNGRY when we left, even with a plate of food there. I did eat it, mind you, but probably not as much as I should have.
5: MAY I SUGGEST A NAP BEFORE SITTING UP ALL NIGHT? Oof.
Next post: A Peerage in the Time of Plague, Part 3: “Hey, remember I’m still a classicist!” Pouring a Libation to Poseidon.
This entire year has been rough on all of us, and the lack of in-person SCA events has definitely taken a toll on the organization in many ways. No, virtual events are not the same, and likewise, a virtual elevation to a bestowed peerage won’t be either. I’d like to think I did the best I could considering the circumstances, but I also admit that I was considerably comprehensive in having a solid ‘In Case of Peerage’ plan. (I will be making a post about that concept separately.)
This series of posts talks the method behind my madness of my 3 weeks from announcement, to vigil, to virtual elevation, and how my small bubble here in Castlemere pulled everything off in record speed.
And also, how everything that could explode, DID explode, and did so colorfully in only a way that I could manage.
“A laurel, and a hardy handshake! – er, sorry, no handshakes during COVID!”
Initial Planning
After the shock wore off, I realized I had a lot of work to do. The original plan was that it would be me in my wedge tent with the computer, sitting outside of our townhouse for vigil, and figuring something out for elevation. Thankfully, the Castlemere Bubble came to the aid, and decided this would not do. It was coordinated to be in a member’s backyard where there was space for everybody to social distance, but allowed for an actual proper looking site with a tent, hors d’oeuvres table, and likewise space for an outdoor elevation the following day as long as weather cooperated. It was short notice, but it was going to be now, or at a time when I could fly back to Florida from Virginia safely. Master Herman had already coordinated ethereal courts, so it seemed like a good crew to work through the elevation protocol. Their Majesties Trimaris were super flexible with whatever we needed, which was also super helpful.
Fortunately, I had a solid plan of what ceremony I wanted from De Cerimoniis (The investiture of a girded lady patrician/zoste patrikia) and the approach I wanted to take as far as regalia and appearance went, so that saved me a lot of grief. An additional post on the ceremony will follow this one.
This post is about the Garb!
I started my elevation planning shortly after I received my Eastern Maunche in 2014. When I started to see fabrics and trim I wanted to incorporate into an eventual ceremony, I bought it and squirreled it away. This saved my butt, because we decided to turn around a fast elevation from announcement since our next military permanent change of station is imminent. While it would have been nicer to have had the time to devote to rich embellishments and friends pitching in for the full shebang, Etsy has a treasure trove of sellers from India who work exclusively in recycled sari borders and materials for crafters around the world. Leaf motifs are very common in Indian designs, and it’s relatively easy to find something extremely passable for Byzantine bling, which is why I support the use of recycled saris for simple beginner or camp-grade SCA Byzantine. This is one of those cases where working smarter and not harder pays off.
Plus! It is SUPER PERIOD to procure materials via import and varied guilds for a Byzantine, . Please do not murder yourself, your household, and your friends making insanely embellished clothing when buying materials is more authentic!
Vigil Tunic:
For my vigil, I actually just wore the chiton I made for my Vestal Virgin. It saved me time, and seemed oddly fitting.
Elevation Dress:
Since I had the materials set aside regardless of geographic location, I decided to go forward with my plan for a full 3-layer ensemble that consisted of the body linen (esophorion), underdress (kamision), and dalmatic (delmatikion). Fortunately, I got lucky with highs in the 70s, so I didn’t feel totally melty.
Esophorion:
I rarely wear the standing collar esophorion, but I figured that for what was such a high court event, I needed to suck it up, comfort be damned. My body linen was constructed out of linen gauze — This sounds more romantic and lovely than it sounds. The fabric is beautiful, but it is hell to work with. Even the parts where I would normally hand sew entirely on the collar construction, I resigned to use machine, because my stitches were just not working the way I needed them too. The fabric pulled, warped, and did whatever it could despite careful cutting, frequent ironing, cursing, and candle lightings. I have no pictures of me wearing JUST it, because of the sheerness and my own modesty. the collar ended up being too big, so I pulled the placket over more to get a better fit. I think next time: NO gauze, and eliminating the Manazan collar construction for a shoulder seam split, and see if I can achieve a closer fit. Length is to my calves, and the gores go into the arms in the Manazan exemplar.
Kamision:
This was a simple tunic dress construction based on my preferred pattern with side gores and a rounded underarm from the “Persian Style Tunic” at the Met. The fabric is an orange linen twill from Sartor, and the trim was cut from a brocade I have in my stash. Collar is self-faced and tacked down with a blind hem stitch, and the cuffs and hem were whipstitched into place. Main seams were all machine for time crunch reasons. I had to wear something orange, of course, even if you can’t see it at all under the delmatikion.
Delmatikion:
I decided to use a different construction on the delmatikion than I normally would, in an attempt to stretch the fabric a bit more for a wider garment. It really didn’t work, and caused more frustration in application of the faux-tiraz bands on the sleeves. This is what I get for trying something -new- for the sake of authenticity, rather than going with my preferred fit. There’s more than one way to cut a garment, I just wanted to drive myself batty, I guess. Rather than having triangle gores from the waist, I have trapezoidal ones that come down from the sleeves as I did with my pilgrimage garment. This actually creates a great vertical seam that would work for potamioi embellishment, but that is out of period for my impression. This style DOES allow for keeping the hems very even, if you’re like me and end up with random excess length in places as a result of bad math. Fortunately, the collar neckline with the shoulder seam keyhole is something I’ve done a few times at this point. It creates a nice clean line at the neck when embellishment is elsewhere.
I constructed the sleeves first, as they would be the most time consuming with the lining, followed by the neckline, and the hem facing. After that, it was basically putting puzzle pieces together and closing the side seams into a finished garment. The neckline, trim, and hem were all hand-finished.
The main fabric is a silk brocade from PureSilks.us that has ridiculously long weft floats on the backside. This made it uncomfortable to sew by either machine or hand. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to line an entire garment. I just lined the sleeves, and I still have floats that wanted to come out. The hem where the roundel silks are turned up? Oh boy. It looks like it’s FRAYING. I will have to apply some kind of fall or facing on the inside in order to control it for future wear, I just didn’t think this through, and you know, you’d THINK with LAUREL ELEVATION GARB, I would have paid more attention, but nooooooo. Murphy was well and truly sewing with me the whole time.
The roundel silk is a samite from Sartor. I only had two yards of it, so I knew that it had to be trim, plus, that many roundels on purple would be well and truly presumptuous to the throne, and while wearing purple when being invested into a high office was fine, there were still limits on the types of fabrics one could get away with.
Sleeves are bag lined in a lavender-white shot silk dupioni.
The trim was a lucky find on Etsy from a sari shredder in India. I was able to get 9 yards of it shipped via DHL quickly, so I had it on hand when I got to this part. They did have green leaves, but when I saw the orange, there was no turning back
Maphorion and Zonarion:
Nothing special to see here, but I needed a plain white maphorion, or hooded/semicircular veil, and a new belt, since, well, all of my belts are green! The maphorion should be stiff, so I used pure white silk taffeta versus linen or dupioni as my previous attempts. It ended up wrinkling too easily, so I wonder if adding the eventual fillet for the kharzanion will help it stay in place better.
The Regalia:
I’ll go more into this with the following post on ceremony, but I chose to mimic the investiture of a Zoste Patrikia because of the extra bling involved, because WHY NOT? The Zoste was the only woman permitted to wear the loros aside from the empress. Plus, it just made sense to be invested as a “mistress of the robes” when elevated as a costume and material culture laurel.
I outsourced the construction of all of these pieces to very caring friends and the husband who were happy to take the burden off of me while I screamed at my silks.
The Loros:
The loros was constructed by Lady Margaret. We were able to come up with a simple pattern on graph paper to aid her in getting the measurements right. It’s a golden silk taffeta, with more amazing sari trim from the same dealer as the orange leaves. It is deliberately longer in the back than the front which allows me to hold it, or pin it to the front of my garments. This served as my “robe”.
The Medallion:
The medallion is in the form of a thorakion, or body chain. This typically signifies the holder of an office. After checking out some extant chains full of fancy openwork, The Norman Husband cast the chain links in pewter using a 3D printed original that was used to form a silicone mold. The results were unreal. 60 links total were made that portrayed my heraldic dolphin, initials in Greek letters, and the laurel wreath. As a consolation prize, he also made me a cookie press from the same rendering.
The medallion itself was also 3D printed using our resin printer to emulate intaglio carnelian. Unfortunately, he ran out of time to make the silver setting for it, and the aluminum wire bezel failed. (Watch for this blooper during the ceremony in the next post.) C’est la vie when you only have three weeks to pull it off. While Gieffrei is learning the intricacies of openwork and lapidary, it will be after his retirement from the Navy before he can devote significant time in working in these techniques. Until then, I think the use of modern technology to pump out affordable, good looking jewelry is a great option, especially for newcomers who are daunted by more advanced hand techniques, or for people who can’t afford more authentic pieces from our amazing artisans (who are worth their prices!).
Propoloma and kharzanion:
Mistress Christine was kind enough to take on the burden of my propoloma, which was trimmed in fancy, but heavy, beaded leaf trim that was another killer Etsy find, and set amethyst cabochons for baronial coronet “pearls”. This is a more 12th Century than 11th Century style, but the single stripe of leaves from corner to corner didn’t have the same aesthetic.
The kharzanion, which is a specific type of praipendoulia worn between the veil and propoloma, were put together by Gieffrei, and are constructed of pearls, chrysoprase, and amethyst, with glass leaves. For the elevation, I attached them to the hat to eliminate a step, but they should be hung from a fillet that keeps the veil in place. If they didn’t have leaves on them, I probably could have worn them on a band, but hindsight et al.
Other accessories:
Earrings:
The earrings in my first whole were made for my by Maestrina Chiaretta di Fiore as an elevation gift, based on Byzantine examples. She even used a thicker wire to make them more comfortable in my stretched holes. My second holes had museum replicas from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Fillet:
The fillet I did wear was in place to pin my veil. Since it already had leaves on it, I didn’t want it to be presumptuous of a wreath so it was hidden. The band itself was cut from the longer bands worn by Mistress Ellisif for her virtual elevation earlier in the year, another event that took place because of an impending military PCS, since she didn’t have the time to make me a new one after her OCONUS move to Drachenwald. We’ve decided that this could become a tradition, and the next poor soul who is dragged from post to post and elevated to the Laurel will also get a piece, and so forth, and so on.
Enkolpion:
I wore one necklace, a replica enkolpion, or reliquary cross. Rather than show the crucifix, it portrays the Virgin Mary, and possible an artifact of the Marian Cult, which was huge in Constantinople as it was the home to her relics. As my persona is very superstitious, and believes in the power of Mary versus Jesus (this is a heresy, btw, but a common one), this was a solid choice for low-key authenticity points.
Some pictures of me during the test wear, and from my elevation!
Next in the series: How we broke the internet during a virtual vigil!
On Saturday, September 26th during the Ethereal Court of their Majesties Trimaris at Village Plague, I was sent forward to contemplate my elevation to the esteemed Order of the Laurel.
My vigil will take place on the evening of the 16th of October, and my elevation the following day, on the 17th, which also marks the Hellenic Festival of the Khalkeia, which celebrates craftsmen under the patronage of Athena and Hephaestus. (The 18th is the anniversary of the Battle of Dyrrhachium, but we aren’t going to talk about that.)
This will be a virtual event, with only a small team present here in Castlemere to make this safe and socially distant. More information will be posted as I receive it.
Coming soon to a mailbox near you!
If you don’t have a subscription, I will post an update as soon as the stock clerk has them available on the SCA website. I plan to also purchase additional copies aside from my author copies, and have them available at Birka.
I know I haven’t been posting as much as I used to. I do have content coming, but I was focusing on getting this off the ground, and, preparing for another fun-filled exciting cross-country move back to the East Kingdom from Caid. I was hoping they’d give us another winter in SoCal, but nooooooo. 😦
So, while I’m taking a short break from heavy SCA sewing and research, I want everybody to help me keep my brain ticking.
Every week, or however often I get questions, I’m going to have a question/answer column here on my blog. Feel free to ask me anything about Roman and Byzantine history, textiles, clothing, etc, and I’ll give you a complete answer, or as complete as I can, with citations to send you on your way. General ancient and medieval history questions can also be fielded if you’re looking for something more broad.
If this gets busy, I don’t know how many questions I’ll be able to answer, but I’ll do my best to make sure that everybody is covered.
Well, I’m moving, anyway. I’ve successfully completed my masters program, and I’m relocating to join my lord husband across the country at his naval posting. I have lots of cool stuff on my master’s thesis I can’t wait to share, but this blog will be on hold a bit while I pack up here in the East Kingdom, and get to my new home in Caid. I expect it will take several weeks to really settle in, considering I’m as East Coast as a hurricane smoking a clove, and I’m being transplanted to California.
I am teaching at Pennsic, (Yes, I’m flying from CA to PA, I’m insane) and will be posting more on that next month.
I hope everybody enjoys the start of summer, and I hope to see you all at a Caidan event soon! In the meantime, here’s a photo of me wearing my master’s project. Yeah, I got to make garb, talk about playing off of your strengths.
This is a very short disorganized blurb, and I apologize, but I wanted to get some notes down from what I’m exploring as far as my thesis goes.
As I’ve mentioned previously, my master’s thesis is exploring the last will and testament of Kale Pakouriane from 1098. I’m going into her inventory and trying to reconstruct her life from her material culture. One thing that really sticks out is the amount of mantles she has.
There are three different words for “cloak” or “mantle” in her will: mandyas, which I’ve already written up as the semi-circle one last year. The sagion, which was evidently shorter, apparently knee-length versus ankle-length, this is something Parani points out in Reconstructing the Reality of Images, and then the one line where my translation was getting extremely confused because of words is a garment that was allegedly called the thalassa, or “sea”. It was another type of cloak, but according to Dawson in his article within Varieties of Experience, there’s only a few mentions of it in written history, namely De Cerimoniis, where Constantine Porphyrogennetos refers to it as a gift for royalty, and in Kale’s will. He’s not sure why it’s named this, but narrows it down to having to do with a particularly luxurious fabric that could vary from a specific shot silk from the Arabian peninsula, or a blue/green/gray dyed COTTON from Persia or Hindustan. We just don’t know, and may never know.What this does mean, however, is that it was particularly luxurious.
What this project has taught me so far was that these mantles were a way to show off wealth and probably protect your equally luxurious clothing. Kale had an impressive wardrobe. I just ordered the French translation of the will and the scans of the actual Greek document. $200 later. Academia is stupid.
I know this is going to raise a lot of questions, but I don’t have all the answers yet. Please be patient while I work on this. My mundane life and graduate degree must come before anything SCA. I just wanted to get this information out. These little nuances will greatly change how we should project ourselves in 11th Century Byzantine clothing.
Oh red shoes. Byzantines and red shoes. Wear ALL the red shoes, but…should we be wearing the red shoes?
In the SCA, we’re all playing nobility, but we still have a hierarchy. Granted, it’s nothing like a true feudal system, but we still have ranks and titles that come with it certain privileges in dress. A knight or master of arms is a fine example with their right to wear a white belt or baldric. In the case of the Eastern Romans, shoes played a huge part in who you were and what job you did.
Red shoes are imperial in nature. Done. Story over.
This is me getting my dreams shattered.
This started because I was pondering joining the Red Shoe Club under the urgings of a duchess friend from Artemisia. Prompted for documentation that women wore them, I turned to my favorite, expensive source on the matter: Reconstructing the Reality of Images by Maria Parani. (Best $300 I ever spent on one book.) I seriously refer to it as my Book of Armaments.
Oh Lord, bless this my book of Byzantine goodness so that I may dress snazzily, with thy mercy!
Parani pulls no punches in that she states that documentation for women wearing the red shoes is scarce (pg. 30.). I have yet to follow up her footnotes, but she cites Michael Psellos on the fact that the Empresses did wear the red shoes, and then Anna Komnene on that women wearing them in the absence of a male heir was rare. Veering away from shoes momentarily, this is something I’m noticing a lot in the ways of court dress and titles: the women often wore what their husband were wearing. They took their titles, and they took their clothing privileges. So in the case of a solitary female ruler, she may not wear the red shoes in the lack of a male consort. We look at this now as incredibly misogynistic, but this is how the world worked for centuries.
In period, I would have a husband, and he would be the hypatos (consul), therefore, as hypatissa, I would be allowed to mimic his clothing and regalia for court functions. In the SCA, my husband is not a baron, so I stand alone as a baroness. This is common in the game we play. So this is when you need to think with your persona, versus thinking as a SCAdian. Of course, if I really thought as my persona, I wouldn’t be in Byzantine dress most of the time anyway, I would be in Norman dress. Gross. But I digress.
So, if red shoes aren’t an option unless you’re on the throne (and consequently, a royal peer having already been ON the throne and have in excess a wardrobe of royal lovelies) what choices do you have?
Parani herself seems to uncover several color options. In addition to the Imperial red, there’s yellow, blue, and green. Like all things Byzantine, these change over the course of history depending on what the emperor ate for lunch. There is one citation she gives in which in a manuscript dated to the 10th Century, Pontius Pilate is seen wearing red shoes. (pg 82.) Is this evidence that non-imperials were wearing red? Hard to say. Personally as somebody who’s been reading up on iconography, such things could be used as symbolism. Perhaps to this artist, Pilate had feigned imperial power?
The general information I can compile (without just regurgitating Parani’s words, which is uncool anyway) at least for the re-enactor/re-creators looking for shoe ideas, is the following:
Yellow: Prefects, and then later the panhypersebastos (patrikoi within high favor of the Imperial Family) (pg. 71-72, 82.)
Blue: The Kaisar and Sebastokrator, usually immediate family members to the Emperor and maybe in line for the throne. In the Palailogos Dynasty, the Sebastokrator would have eagles embroidered on them. (pg. 71-72)
Green:Protovestiarios, the head eunuch in charge of finances. (pg. 71-72)
Red and White with eagle embroideries: The Despotes, title of the heir-apparent during the Palailogos Dynasty. (pg. 72)
One red, one black: Chronicled by Arab geographer Ibn Hauqal as being worn by the Prefect in the 10th Century. (pg. 71 n. 83.)
That doesn’t leave a lot of options for SCAdians looking to stay in their persona. It would make sense for the Prince and Princess to wear blue, and I don’t know many eunuchs (not that they’d tell me anyway.)
So this really narrows it down to well, yellow. But who would wear it? Well, in some definitions, prefects were regional governors. In Greek the term is Eparch. From what I can gather, an eparchy was more of a district than the themata, which were ruled by the anthypatoi, or proconsuls.
But in the SCA, who would we place in these positions? My previous post discussed the equivalence of the anthypatoi with landed baronage, and hypatoi with court baronage. A barony is still an administrative area that was governed. But is this something that should be limited to just the SCA baronage? Ehhhh…maybe? I think this is going to be one of those “let your persona do the walking” things. I have yet to see a kingdom in our game that has sumptuary laws on shoes. Your best bet would be to study your own period and come up with who you want to be. Nobody is going to stop you as a lord or lady from wearing red shoes, but do you personally want to feign claim to the throne? Impostors got blinded in period. That doesn’t sound like much fun. And as far as the panhypersebastoi are concerned, that was any family that was in high favor of the Imperials in the mid 12th Century. So if you’re a later persona, that’s an option, especially if you’re in a kingdom where populace swearing fealty is common. If you’re in an office that swears fealty, absolutely.
On that note, I’m going yellow shoe shopping.
Friendly note: Historians love to argue, and this is information from ONE source. Although Doctor Parani’s work is very thorough and well cited, there are possibly other historians that disagree with her and have their own evidence. Don’t take this as the gospel truth, and feel free to explore other resources.
Anna's New Rome 
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