François Thibault: Stunned

A few weeks before my lady wife and I left the West, our local shire, Crosston, held its annual Ball. Everyone knew we were leaving; we'd told people at Twelfth Night (three weeks earlier).

The Ball went well. The theme was "The Siege of Love"; there was a mock battle where the lords besieged a castle defended by the ladies; I think the point was to settle which of several virtues was preeminent. (I'm not clear on the details because I missed it by being part of the castle: Cynthia was on a ladder at the castle’s highest point, and I was holding the ladder steady.) At the end came a surprise for Cynthia, when the autocrat declared that, clearly, the preeminent virtue was Cynthia Virtue. (This was the real reason I was back there: he wanted me to make sure she didn’t try to slip away.)

And then came Court. (Or maybe it was the other way around. Anyway.) Both Her Highness of the Mists and Their Majesties of the the West were in attendance (which was unusual; we normally don’t get any Royalty at the Ball). Her Highness gave a few awards, including a Leaf of Merit (Kingdom service award which may be given by the Coronet) to the shire’s former Exchequer. Then I was called up. Blink?

I knelt before Her Highness (it was Maeren), and the Herald (Brocc of Alderden) started to read the text of the Corolla Nebularum. I was stunned. She grinned and said, "Gotcha". The Corolla comes in three variants: Arts, Service, and War. Hmm, I thought, wonder which one I’m getting? Probably Service, I thought; I’d been doing a reasonable job as Principality Scribe, but my own art wasn’t all that hot. No, here it comes: the Arts variant, Corolla Vitaea. Nice.

The Herald finished reading the Corolla Vitaea and, without a pause, started repeating himself. Huh? Turned out to be a Corolla Aulica, the Service variant. Stunned. Royal grin. "Gotcha again."

The token of the Corolla Nebularum is a medallion bearing a corolla (a small coronet); the particular variant is indicated by the color of the ribbon it hangs from: white for Service, green for War, blue for Arts. So Her Highness gave me a medallion on a double ribbon, blue and white braided together (by her own hand), and explained that she had received many recommendations, some speaking of my service and some of my arts, and she agreed with all of them; unable to pick which, she finally decided to give both. So I have a Corolla Vitaea et Aulica (or, more likely, Corolla Vitaea Aulicaque; "-que" is a Latin suffix meaning "and"; it’s more emphatic than "et").

Wow. OK, so we were done; I waited to be dismissed. Instead, Her Highness asked me to stand and attend, and the Herald called Cynthia, who received the Princess’s Order of Grace. Yay. (I don’t mean to skip over this one so quickly, you understand; it’s just that the Corollae stick in my mind better. :-) Then we were dismissed, but the seneschale of Crosston (the new seneschale, Cynthia’s successor) came forward and said the Shire had a presentation to make to us, and asked leave of Her Highness to make it then. Leave was granted, and our friends came forward with two stick moose (the moose is...um...I guess you’d say it’s Crosston’s totem animal; it’s not on the Shire’s arms, or anything, but it’s part of our schtick), saying goodbye and thank you. Fun. With Her Highness’s permission, we rode out of Court on mooseback.

OK, Principality Court is over; short break before Kingdom Court. In the few minutes she had, Cynthia (who is very serious about hats) put a veil on her moose.

Kingdom Court. The Herald (Flieg!) called me up, and I knelt before Their Majesties (Garick and Talitha). I knew them because I’d been getting them to sign scrolls (see, when Garick won Crown, I thought, "Hey, I just did a scroll from when they were Prince and Princess; I should get them to sign it...and start doing/assigning other scrolls they did, while they’re easy to find"). Flieg read the text for a Grant of Arms. Wow. His Majesty explained that they were very pleased with my service as scribe, particularly the time at Twelfth Night when I fixed a blotch where Talitha (left-handed) had smeared Garick’s signature. (I’d told them it was no big deal, that I carried the correction knife because I needed to fix my own mistakes regularly, and that I should have had her wait until the ink was really dry; but she was really upset at the time [it was a stressful time for them anyway, the night before their Coronation], and apparently he was pleased that I had handled it smoothly.)

OK, that’s very nice. Then His Majesty asked me to stand and attend. "I think you know what comes next." Flieg called Cynthia into Court. His Majesty was handed a large padded envelope and said something like, "Now, I’m not really known for my talents, but I think this came out well. It’s my second one, and I spent a lot of time getting it right." So we’re all wondering what it is, and then he pulls out...a coronet. As he puts it on Cynthia’s head (seated within the trim rim of her reticulated headress), Flieg starts reading the text for a Court Baroness. Oooh, ahh. (I was amused to think that I had outranked Cynthia [who’s been in the SCA ten years longer than I have] for all of two minutes; but it turned out that I still do, because, in the West, a Court Baroncy carries an AoA, not a GoA. Of course, people react to it as being higher than my GoA--probably because she gets called Your Excellency, same as a Countess. Fine by me. :-)

In explaining why he was making Cynthia a Court Baroness, His Majesty mentioned her many fine hats, such as the one she was wearing right now. At this point, the person who was holding Cynthia’s moose held it up to be seen; His Majesty (and Flieg--I remember that; impressing Flieg tends to stick in the mind) looked up in amazement: in no time at all, a hat had just appeared on this brand-new moose.

Afterwards, we were more or less coherent. Cynthia explained that the main reason the coronet looked right on her headress was that the style was meant to be worn with a coronet of some sort; she had used trim to make a rim instead because she hadn’t been entitled to wear a coronet. I laughed at the boat joke. But I was still stunned. :-)

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