Hail to the Queen
This weekend, it's all over.
For the past year, on as many weekends as possible and with duties that extended into the workaday world, I have been a lady-in-waiting in the train of Alethea Eastriding, Crown Princess and then Queen of the East, in the Society for Creative Anachronism. This coming Saturday, Her Majesty completes her reign, and I -- and a dozen or more others -- step out from behind the thrones and go back to sitting in the crowd.
It began last April, when a friend of my husband's and mine posted to his blog: "Darius has just won crown. My wife is the Princess of the East." Immediately, our hands shot up. Immediately, we went to work, I as a lady- and he as a gentleman-in waiting (or, as he prefers to be called, "the retainer of Lifting Heavy Things"). During events, my job has been to keep the queen on schedule -- a challenge, when everyone wants a moment of her time – or to hand her tissues, or cough drops, or to carry her cup or her knitting, or to polish the fingerprints off the surface of her crown. I've marched behind her in processions, and held a sunshade over her while she and the king knighted a man on the field during a battle. One day, in August, I found myself standing in the woods, watching as she participated in a fencing melee, and hanging onto said crown so it wouldn't get lost or damaged.
I've stood behind her during court, which is lots of fun, because you can see the surprised faces of the people being called up to receive an award. I've chased people down with messages. I helped her to don full court Elizabethan, an hour-long procedure requiring three people. One day, I helped her predecessor into her own, much simpler, gown – by the simple expedient of sewing it onto her as she stood in her tent. And I've put in time away from events, too, embroidering eight feet of Celtic knotwork onto an angel-wing sleeve, and then beading hundreds upon hundreds of tiny pearls in between the lines of the knotwork – with, if I say so myself, beautiful results.
That sounds like a frenzy of activity, but it doesn't reflect the quiet spots. Being part of the royal staff is like being part of the cast in a play. Even though everyone else present is "acting," too, there's more going on behind the scenes than I had ever realized. In January, we went to an event in a convention center in New Hampshire. The event, a Market Day at Birka, focuses on the "marketplace," a huge room full of merchants. But there's more to it -- meetings, classes, and fighting -- that some people never see. It was necessary to hold a mini-court in the rooms where the fighting was, so the royals went there, entourages in tow. As we left the fighting, a friend who was also retaining looked aside at me and said, "I never even knew that side of the event existed!"
It's like that. I've learned a lot about protocol, and how the magic is made, backstage. The best part is, I've gotten to know, or to know better, a number of people who I have admired from afar for years. Those relationships, and the memories I've gained, will be what I treasure, going forward.
In the SCA, though, royalty serve terms of a year, six months as heirs and six months reigning, and then they're done. My queen is a librarian in daily life; her king, a friend from New Jersey, is a pipefitter. Come Saturday, she'll be a countess, and he'll still be a duke ... and she'll be a librarian, and he'll be a pipefitter. And Lady Muirgheall, attendant to the queen, will be back to being Lady Muirgheall, Lady of Clan O'Riein ... and Stephanie Ryan, newspaper editor.
But the magic doesn't stop being magic, just because you know how it's done. For that, I am grateful.