Kingdom of Ealdormere Coronation

Last Saturday was Coronation in Ealdormere, the event where we crown our new King and Queen. It's handy to have a new set of Royalty every six months. If you don't like the current set, you just have to bide your time and they'll go away without all that messy Civil War stuff and lopping off heads.

Stepping up to the thrones were Princess Dagmar and Prince Quilliam. I've know Dagmar for some time and she is a very nice and talented person. I know less about Quilliam other than he seems to have a good head on his shoulders and is an amazing fighter. I'm looking forward to this reign.

The event itself took place at a campground near the city of Kingston (Greyfells in the SCA). The site has a large main building with three floors of space so there was plenty of room, even if the weather had not been absolutely gorgeous, which it was. There was also a duck pond near the building which had all sorts of interesting water fowl, including several different types of ducks and geese.

We headed out from Guelph on Friday morning for the drive to Gananoque which is where Eve's mom lives. The site is about a 30 minute drive from the site, which was very handy. We got to Gan and Eve's mom made us a nice roast chicken dinner with potatoes and mixed vegetables. It was very yummy.

Both Eve and I had projects to finish for the event. Eve had two awards scrolls to complete plus finishing work on her new gown and I had 50+ miniatures which needed to be based (have sand and static grass applied to them). I spent until about 1 am working on my stuff and Eve was up to 3. This seems to be par for the course for most events but at least it wasn't a two hour drive away.

We headed out with Elizabeth at around 9:30 am and got to the site just after it opened at 10 am. Being there early helped get us a great parking spot. Eve changed into her new dress, a Gothic era gown in a warm red-brown brocade with fur trim, and it looked fantastic. She would get several compliments on it during the course of the day. Eve made sure she got her scrolls delivered and I was on Elizabeth duty until the end of First Court. Elizabeth looked very sweet in her purple dress and we went outside almost immediately as the hall was rapidly filling up and was getting quite noisy. Elizabeth has a tonne of energy and it's fun trying to keep up with her. She liked to be near the duck pond and it was an interesting time keeping her dress clean. The geese could be a bit aggressive so I had to keep an eye on them. Sometimes I followed her, sometimes I lead her, and we went all over the site including the upper and lower parts of the hall. It was quite tiring but fun in its own sort of way. Court was quite long and I only caught bits of it as Elizabeth made her way through the Hall. I did get to see one of Eve's scrolls get given out and it looked really good, even at a distance, with the main motif in gold based on a piece of Norse era metal work and lettering in Runic.

Court ended at 1:30 and I switched off with Eve and headed over to the fencing list where things were starting to get going. There were about 15 fencers at the event, about twice as many as the RMIC probably expected. I got to see people I haven't seen in years like Gavin and his Lady, Estienne. We ran some authorizations, including a reauthorization for Lady Estienne who was back to fencing after about 10 years. I also reactivated Gavin as a Rapier Marshal and got Lord Daffyd started on the Rapier Marshal in Training process.

The tourney was a fun format, a round robin with a twist which the RMIC referred to as Fermat's Lst Tourney, as it employed three geometric shapes, a circle, a rectangle and a triangle. These shapes were marked out on the ground in rope and the idea was to keep at lest one foot in the shape. If you incapacitated your opponent you scored two points, and if you forced them out of the shape you scored one. The top winners for each shape would face off in the final. I did pretty well, but not well enough to be one of the final three, which were Lady Cristabell, THL Wilhelm, and Lord Daffyd. IIRC Wilhelm won first place and Cristabell and Daffyd tied for second. Lord Archibald was at the event and wanted to play Cut & Thrust with me and we had a lot of fun. I gave as good as I got, which pleased me as Archibald is a very good fencer and a lover of period fencing manuals and techniques. Wilhelm invited me to play at longsword, but we couldn't use C&T as he wasn't armoured for it. We, mostly, avoided doing any percussive cuts. All in all, it was a very pleasant afternoons fencing and I came out of it relatively unbruised. Thank heavens I remembered to put on my knee pads as Archibald did a beautiful stroke right across the side of my leg at knee level. It would have been right on bone but the knee pad absorbed most of it.

After the tourney was over I sought out Eve who was tired and needed to go back to Gan to rest. The only rest she'd had was taking Elizabeth on a trip into Kingston for some lunch and Elizabeth got to watch part of Wall-E on DVD. We said our goodbyes to some friends and headed out. Eve had wanted to stay for Second Court and see her other scroll given out, but was way to tired and we had run out of drinks of Elizabeth.

We drove back to Eve's mother's place and I volunteered to walk downtown and pick up a couple of orders of fries. The place we like to get them was closed but I found some really nice fries at a local pizza place. We had them along with hot chicken sandwiches and gravy. It was delicious, and I was ravenous by then as I hadn't had much for lunch. I spent the evening chatting with Bernita, Eve's mom, as Eve and Elizabeth crashed out. It was really fun to talk to her, and it was one of those neat meandering conversations touching on everything from Elizabethan naval tactics, to favourite SF writers, to silly TV shows. She enjoyed it because she doesn't get many opportunities to have an intellectual discussion except online and face to face is much more personal.

We all slept in the next day and after breakfast I tried to take Matthew to the local toy store, whose Sunday hours are apparently "By Chance", and we were out of luck. We did manage to get some neat Lego cars and a Hot Wheels car at a local department store. After we got back, I cut Bernita's front lawn, which had gotten a bit shaggy. It's the first time I'd pushed a mower in about 20 years as I've spent most of that time living in apartments. Next we packed up our stuff and headed back to Guelph. It was a good drive home, even when crossing the top of Toronto. We were glad to get home and the cats were happy to see us. I had a fun time at the event and in Gan. I think the next event I'll be at is called Fruits of Our Labour (FOOL) where I'll be running fencing for the day and Eve will be teaching. I'm also expecting Mark over tomorrow for a game of War of the Ring which I will hopefully write an entry on.

That's all for now.