Re: What would your three questions be?

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Apologies for the delayed reply - just took me a while to get a chance to get here with sufficient 'space' to write a somewhat coherent sentence.

Firstly, I accept the likelihood that trumps were also structured in a more or less hierarchical fashion - we need only look at the definite structure of the Mantegna to see that.

On the other side of that, there are (the later) Bologna decks with the four Moors - of equal rank. Not much of evidence, but nonetheless somehow acceptable for certain games.

All I'm stating with my comment, of course, is that it is possible and, in its earliest days, I would even state LIKELY that formal rules of play were not fixed, ordering and ranking not fixed, and that there is no reason to assume that, for example, even the Bateleur would not, on some occasions of play, 'trump' even (for example) Justice!

To assume later rules of the game as applied to a 'new' game that was developing at around the same time as other games that indeed had hierarchy does not mean that the deck HAD to have an hierarchy for its gaming aspect, even though its sequence of imagery does, outside the context of a game, suggest such an intrinsic ordering (with or without the evidence supported by, for example the Boiardo poem).

But I may be stating my thoughts more strongly than intended...
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