Shires in Romania
Herebe someone's explanation of why there formed in Romania a shire for a single city and not nation wide.
This is a long and complicated scandal but here is a short summary.
Originally there were several people throughout Romania who were interested in forming a SCA group. At the beginning they worked well together and all contributed ideas. It soon became suspected that one of the main supporters of this idea was in fact not really in Romania but only pretending to be (I don't know why this person pretended). This person was supposed to be the main contact for people in the south east, particularly Bucharest. So, since this person wasn't there, they appeared communication problems and we lost contact with potential members in Bucharest.
One of the other main people that supported this initiative found many people who wanted to become members but they were students of history and treated the other members with ill contempt because they felt that the non-historian members didn't know something about history. Although they were probably very well educated in history and could contribute much to the group, they were never ready to put their money where their mouths were. That is to say, they never made a single costume or weapon and didn't hold any events or fighter practices. As well, they reacted too quickly when making decisions and couldn't make rational plans. This caused conflicts with the group of serious re-enactors that was forming in Hunedoara.
At this time, the SCA in the rest of Drachenwald was interested in forming a shire in Romania. With the help of the members in Vienna (the Shire of Ad Flumen Caerulum) who offered to the members in Romania several membership donations it was possible for a shire to form. The Kingdom Seneschal at that time, Lord Barcsi Janos, decided that it would be better to form a small local shire of people who had shown themselves capable of running a shire and who embraced the ideals of the SCA than to form a nationwide shire which would encourage further fighting within the group.
Of course, this caused a certain amount of complaints and scandals following the announcement that Hunedoara would form a shire. But that soon passed and the history students went back to studying and things have progressed well since then. It is likely that eventually other shire will also form in Romania but more likely as individual cities and not a nationwide shire as it is more stable for the groups this way. Each can do as it pleases. Probably even those who were against the Hunedoara shire will eventually also form a shire of their own when they become more organised.
The other explanation though, is that it was a very simple and straight forward scandal. The members from Hunedoara city (in particular Dizo Dundanus) never learned how to play together nicely with the other kids, so they threw a temper tantrum when some people wouldn't do as they were told. In order to get their own way, they lied to their contacts outside Romania and said that everyeone outside Hunedoara city were not serious reenactors, were arrogant and egotistical, and lazy. To prove how they had decicated their lives to reenacting and to the great cause of forming an SCA shire in Romania they showed pictures from some one of the open air theatre groups that specialises in the mediaeval period. Of course, they did go to events, but only if the event organisers paid them or if they city hall sent them as one of the city theatrical groups (and paid them). In the end, they got to claim that they were representatives of an international organisation of professional reenactors (which was great for getting more clients), but when they realised that they weren't going to get any financing from the SCA they never finished their application to form a shire. Unfortunately, most of the members from other cities, beleived Dizo's claims that he had "come to an understanding" with the Kingdom officers, and presumed the SCA to be just as corrupt as most Romanian organisations. Subsequently they lost interest in the SCA and either joined another local group or dropped reenacting altogether.
Of course, to an outsider either of these two summaries will seem equally as likely to be true, and most will probably assume that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Pity though that most people will consider the truth to be somewhere in the middle of both explanations because then an honest person's story has no chance to stand against a liars because the clever liar will just make a bigger lie to sway the "middle story" in his favour. And that's how we have come to the present situation of there being NO shire in Romania.
