Duchy ceremonies

Heyup, sorry for the delays in posting, but things have been hectic to the point of sleep deprived lunacy around here. Just between us: never try and reorganise your whole house in the weeks before your Duchy ceremony and at the busiest time of the year in magland.

On the up side, we got the mag done early, for we are godlike!

The downside is at the end of this post because I don't like to start with a grump (it's a doozy.)

Back to the ceremony. I had wanted to do this at Yule because I have never had any big moments in my home barony, so I flew down the K&Q and hoped for the best. Alas, several important (to me (and to others, but I was having a selfish moment)) people couldn't be there, but the majority of people that really mattered to me were. It was especially good to see the Colles gang (Hi Evie! Hi Zanobia!), and Phil came up from Polit specially, which was very sweet.

Thank goodness for Maeve! She spent the whole afternoon helping me out with the enormous list of things that needed to be done. She is an angel.

I, however, am foolish, because I agreed to be the Queen's native shopping guide. I should just have drawn the wonderful Deense some good maps and trusted in Anna's native genius to use them, rather than use hours I didn't have. Oh well.

It was, however, very enjoyable having brunch with Asa, Deense, Maeve and Anna. They are all women that I would like to spend more time with. We had some bad news while in the cafe about a friend that three of us care about and Anna hasn't met, which put a bit of a spanner in the day.

Fast-forward several hours of frantic preparation and the very slow return of J from the tournament and we hit the event with about half-an-hour before court, which might sound like a lot of time if there weren't dozens of things to get done in that half hour.

Quick sidebar here, the hall was fabulous. It had been beautifully decorated and the banners and greenery were such that even before we were able to taste any of the delicious food, we knew it was a really good event. Here's the lovely Stanzi looking very startled that someone is taking a picture of her (she looked great), with J, Mendoza (also looking spiffy in his new mandress), Sir Torg and Duke Cornelius behind her.

Right, so, we'd made it into the vestibule. There were four banners to assemble and my two beautiful apprentices were amazingly useful in getting them together and then, with Maeve, making sure that J was dressed. Aelfled is always a bastion of calm, and Art was amazing, especially with her head wound! (The Rowany pavilion centre pole had fallen on her earlier that day.)

Thanks, too, to Miles the ever-handy for help with both parts of that sequence. Meanwhile Marie and the lovely DV were wrestling with my sleeves. I had made a fundamental error by choosing to wear the chemise that Baroness Helene had made for me. It has boofy sleeves, which were in fact too boofy for my frock and led to some great weirdness. My fault. I just wanted to trot it out for something good given the amount of work that went into it. Thanks, DV! And thanks, Tyg, for not laughing at me!

Mayela and Tyg were calm and angelic, and added immeasurably to the beauty of the procession, and to the sanity. Even with Tyg proclaiming that she had run out of same. Blaeney was manly and carried a sword. It's what he does.

Mendoza was set to herald, which was perfect, because he is brill and also very important to us, so that was a very easy way of working him into the ceremony.

Cornelius and Morwynna, Duke and Duchess Lochac, were very helpful and calm and carried the wreaths that we used instead of coronets (too much faff to get them done, and besides, I spent all my spare money on air tickets for the K&Q!). It was very good to have them there, quite aside from setting a nice tradition of contiguity.

J went first, and his ceremony was very well handled. Although I do not know what I was thinking when I left the word heretofore in. Steffan Glaube and I like that word, maybe Anton and Marie. The rest of the kingdom have it on their Lists of Words for Wankers. And rightly so. My bad.

Once again I was very happy that Draco and Asa had won May Crown. They are so charming and relaxed in court, at the same time as maintaining great dignity and serenity. It was lovely to watch them recognising J's new estate, and also to see Duke C's role in the ceremony. My favourite thing in-game has always been people living up to their titles, and all three conspired to make it a fine moment for J.

As you can see, the wreath was a bit verdant, but I will hasten to point out that it contained many strawberry leaves, as did mine. Thanks, again, Maeve!

Baron Hrothgar later cheerfully pointed out that J would make a great green man. J pointed out that he was far from green these days. Bordering on silver.

After the Duke's ceremony comes the Duchess's, which meant that we needed to get in line and go.

Luckily there were a few hurrahs in between.


Morwynna, Maeve and Marie took their spots around me, with the banner sisters bringing up the rear. I know that I had the courtesy banner, but I forget which other one came in with me, Largesse? Probably, leaving J courage and prowess. I kept thinking, again, how wonderful Tyg, Art and Allesandra had been with their help on these. And especially Marie and Manfred who not only helped with the tech and physical bits, but gave up house space.

As you will have noticed from the photo, my whole role around Morwynna is to make her look taller and slimmer. But she makes me look long-haired ...

So we processed in with Marie carrying a pen and ink, and Maeve a rose. The rose is the symbol of the Queens and ex-Queens, while the Kings get a sword. Seems a little unequal, so I added the pen and ink, because as we all know, good press beats conventional weaponry any day. Well, at least until the Democrats take both houses ...

Note Marie's sexy hat. It's not actually hers. Her one is still half-made because I wanted to have a tidy and organised house. Alas. Still, everyone looked very good, although I can't see Maeve in that frock without the mental image of her unhooking a few clasps and stepping out of the farthingale, forepart and petticoats to tuck up the red skirts into her bike shorts and step into a sailboat. Remarkable engineering.

What's that? back to the narrative? Sure. The K&Q said nice things about me, they took the wreath from Duchess Lochac and gave their accolade, and then gave me a pen and ink and told me to write. I can't believe they let me put that in the ceremony; like I need encouragement.

Duchess Lochac welcomed me to the club; I gave her the first rose and mentioned what an inspiring model she had always been to me, which goes back to my early days in the SCA, then handed the second rose to the Queen in token of her joining us in a month. All very nice.


We then swore an oath to the King, Queen and Kingdom, which is a little different to the standard fealty. It reads:
Here do we swear, by mouth and hand,
fealty and service to the Crown and Kingdom of Lochac.
As we have ruled this Realm in faith,
so shall we keep that faith henceforth,
that we may, by our example,
foster chivalry, courtesy, and honour throughout the land;
until the Crown depart Their throne,
or death take us,
or the world end.

Which I liked because it gave us a clear job description. I should have mentioned that the whole cermony was a merging of West and Caid ceremonies, because we wanted to recognise both of Lochac's parent Kingdoms. Benedict from Ildhafn suggested this idea many months ago, because he is a darling. Another big thank you there.

During the fealty, J dropped his sword. Which means that it is now tradition! Duchess Lochac and I hatched a plan that I will bring a sword to Draco and Asa'a ceremony, as back-up in case nothing has clanged to the ground by the end.

One thing that was forgotten was my dubbing! The most important bit! I didn't feel at all real. Asa blamed Draco, Draco blamed Morwynna. Morwynna called for a sword and did the job herself, which was stylish, classy, sensible and funny and has gone down on my shortlist of top SCA moments.

(Draco let me punch him gently in the ribs in complaint without having me banished or executed, he's a lovely king! He also promised to vote for me on the Chiv the minute I'm ready, so one day I finally will get a dubbing from a Crown. If I train a lot. Eh, it can be done!)

Finally, here are two of the banners, which you can see better if you click on them. We gave Art courage because she was so brave about the head wound; Tyg had Largesse, because it's pretty and so is she. Aelfled had courtesy, because that's her one! and Mayela had prowess, because she's good at practically everything.

But I really must make the lettering at the top heavier ... in all my spare time ...

The rest of the night was weird. I kept trying to spend it with people who had been important to me during the reign, but kept being snaffled instead. Some snafflings were fine, such as when young Robert took me to talk to his mum. Others went on for ages and were with people who normally don't talk to me. Yay for the rockstar approach to the SCA. Oh, hang on, that's sarcasm. Sorry, I try not to slip below irony.

Meanwhile, the people that I care about were treated to drive-by visits and quick chats. At least I brought champers and strawberries ... It was all very frustrating, and I can see why Cornelius and Morwynna bunked off immediately after their ceremonies.

At least I was able to see Helen for the first time in years and meet her lovely chap, Nick. He's ace, and I don't just say this because we seem to have lived parallel lives ...

Right, back to the downside.

On the downside, the house is still a teeny bit of a shambles and we didn't get to the event at the time other people would have liked us to.

To which I say: you pay for the King and Queen to visit your home Barony out of your own pocket and then feel free to come and whinge to me. 7.45, people. We knew there was a second court at 8.15 scheduled, and it's not like everyone had even finished first remove.

It rather annoyed me [pissed me off immensely] that a select band of people harped on about this. I'm not talking about our actual friends who said "Are you guys OK? We were worried." because that's fine. I'm talking about the people who, instead of saying "Yay, congratulations, bet you're excited!", started with "Where the hell were you?" and then nagged mercilessly.

Well, we were dealing with things going wrong and then people calling every five minutes to add a bit more stress. I reiterate: 7.45. This is only scary late to six year olds.

There was one person only who had a right to be annoyed at the timing, Cornelius, Duke Lochac. He had a bike meet on the next day. We had left it entirely up to him if he wanted to come to the event. He chose to (which was a very welcome choice). We also sent messages that we would understand completely if he wanted to leave, he chose not to (again, something that we appreciated). We apologised to him afterwards for delaying him an hour, he said that it was all fine. I have immense respect for Cornelius's ability to make his own decisions and be forthright in communicating them. If the one person who was inconvenienced had the grace to be offering congratulations and support, you might think that would be the model to follow.

As it was, I spent much of the last week following the other Cornelius model, where he rolls his eyes and then looks a little unfocussed as he mentally slaps gits. I feel I have a lot to learn.

What did I learn from it all? That I am very grateful for my friends, that some peers rock, that ceremonies should have meaning and aren't just for the punters, and that some people will take a happy, shiny moment and be an utter cock about it.

What I'm trying to learn is how not to let the last group upset me. But as J wisely said: "The people who have any understanding of all this are Cornelius and Morwynna, Draco and Asa, and our closest friends and household. They were all happy and supportive. No one else really matters."

Which is not at all true, and quite wholly true at the same time.

Off to Hobby Horse Crusade in the morning, must get some sleep so that the kids can climb all over me with impunity.