On the Heraldic Submissions for the Ranged Weapons Peerage

The introduction of the proposed name and insignia for the new ranged-weapons peerage has provided a rare glimpse into an uncommon occurrence in the Society; a decade has passed since the last time this happened, and it’s unlikely another will be added any time soon.

As shown on the August 15 Laurel letter of intent, the proposal is for the name “Order of Esperance” and a tinctureless, fieldless badge of “A set of nesting scale weights within and conjoined to a mascle fleury at the upper point.”

Name

The name has provoked some consternation, due in part to its use of an unfamiliar term; “esperance” is an old word with meanings of hope, expectation, or determination for the future. (Early versions of the proposal used the French-derived spelling “esperaunce,” but the “u” appears to have been dropped following feedback.)

Some folks have focused on a casual gloss of the word and objected that “hope” seemed passive — “oh, you’re going to give up and just hope for the best.” However, others have clarified that the period connotations of the term are more active, and include confidence about future accomplishments or striving towards a desired outcome.

Indeed it is just such a positive determination for improvement that I had in mind when I wrote to the Board in April, answering their question “What virtue will [this peerage] embody?”

I would say that the members of this group embody the virtue of ASPIRATION — they aim high, always seeking to get closer to their goals, to demonstrate even better form than they have in the past, to accomplish things that previously seemed impossible.

Despite the apparent similarity of “esperance” and “aspiration,” they seem to have diverging etymologies — esperance deriving from the Latin “spērō” or expectation, and aspiration from the Latin “spīrō” or breath — but I am pleased with the similarity.

Badge

The badge has likewise been the subject of much discussion. Cormac Mór’s article “How to Create a Badge for a Peerage Order” does a good job of laying out the timeline of how the team landed on this design, starting with their search for not-yet-registered charges, the discovery of the period charge of a marco, and their effort to find a variation or combination of charges which was free of conflict with Society registrations and protected non-SCA insignia.

I will never be a member of this order, and so my personal feelings on the subject are of little import, but I do feel like the proposed badge is a little fussy, lacking the simplicity of the single-charge-type insignia of the other peerages, and the “we thought the marco was an archery target but it turned out to be nesting weights for a hanging-balance scale” backstory highlights its contingency.

If I had been part of the team working on this, I would have proposed the simpler badge of “a rustre fleury at the upper point.” The rustre is a period heraldic charge formed by a lozenge pierced by a roundel, and is heraldically distinct from the mascle protected by the Geneva Convention. As with the proposed badge, the fleur helps to clear potential conflicts; in fact at the moment the only Google search result for “rustre fleury” (or “rustre flory”) is my own illustration thereof.

Regardless, as Cormac pointed out in his earlier post on the proposed order name, these markers of the order will gain their ultimate significance from their association with the order, and that meaning will be far more important that the pros and cons of any specific symbol.

I look forward to following the commentary as these items move through the heraldic decision process.