Part One - The Twelfth Night Plot
Once upon a time, far to the North in the Kingdom of the West, there was
a place where SCAdians began to assemble, hight Three Mountains. And less
than a day's travel further north was Madrone. And Three Mountains did
not at first flourish as Madrone did, but with aid and advice from one
Raymond the Mild, at long last Three Mountains became more settled, until
all danger of the little colony dying out was at an end. And Madrone grew
and flourished, and so did Three Mountains, and there was friendship
between their people.
In AS VI, the year following the foundation of Madrone, Roger the Goliard
and Nancy Current, seeing that the people were scattered and were not
always able to attend the assemblies of their fellows, began to print the
Crier. And as Madrone grew, so grew the Crier.
Presently the Crown and officers of the Kingdom of the West noted that
Madrone and Three Mountains were doing well. And they were pleased. For
though the far northern lands were distant from the heartland of the West
where the Dukes dwelt, yet those lands were a part of the Kingdom of the
West, and the Westerners were glad to see that the land was beginning to
be put to good use.
In May AS VIII, in the presence of King Paul and Queen Carol, monarchs of
the Kingdom of the West, the Tourney of Union was held. And the Crown of
the West signed a Charter there joining the Barony of Three Mountains and
the Barony of Madrone into the Principality of An Tir. And on August 25,
AS VIII, Sir Frederick of the West Tower, the founding Baron of Three
Mountains, was victorious in the lists of the first An Tir Coronet
Tourney. And the King and Queen of the West, Henrik and Seitse crowned
him and his lady Anne of the White Tower the first Prince and Princess of
the Principality of An Tir that same day.
And An Tir grew and flourished, and new branches came to be. The Crier
expanded and began to publish information for the entire principality.
And Adiantum to the south and Lions Gate to the north became Baronies.
But in those days even a lowly Award of Arms was given by the King
himself, not by the princes. And although the Crown of the West visited
An Tir from time to time, few awards were given to those who lacked the
means to make the long pilgrimage down to the heartland of the West, home
of the Western Dukes. And although many of the Crowns of the West did try
to recognize the merit of their subjects of An Tir, the great distance
between the Western heartland and the lands of the North made this
difficult.
Reports made by An Tir's officers to Western officers were sent but not
acknowledged. Sir Jerald of Galloway was persistent in insisting that his
Marshals and Heralds were warranted, but often other officers went
unwarranted through their entire terms of offices.
And people of An Tir sent in their membership fees and their checks were
cashed, but no newsletters or membership cards did they receive. At this
late date it is impossible to say with certainty whether this was due to
incompetence or to a plot to keep the official number of memberships for
An Tir below the minimum for kingdom status.
It was faster and easier to get a subscription to the Crier than to
become a member of the SCA, if one lived in An Tir.
Event copy for An Tir events went unpublished by the West Kingdom
newsletter, the Page, even when multiple notices were sent in plenty of
time, thus denying the events official status. And snide comments were
made in the _Page_ about the apparent lack of activity in An Tir.
Once when King Paul was coming up for a royal visit, an event had been
planned, and not published, in spite of submission in due time. No one
bothered to tell the An Tirians that the King was coming. Grane the
Golden, then seneschal, told me he discovered the impending visit when he
read of it in the Page. The editor questioned how the An Tirians were
intending to entertain the King, so as not to be "guilty" of "noblesse
oblige" (sic).
Now it is true that incompetence, rather than malice, may well have been
behind some, if not all, of these doings. Certainly that proved to be the
case with the notorious Laurel Queen at Arms whose inattention to the
duties of her office eventually caused a three-year Known-World-wide
backlog for the College of Arms. Yet it was not always so perceived among
the people of An Tir, and the deliberately slighting comments directed at
An Tir by Westerners evidenced some malice at least.
I was told that it was believed in some circles that some of the
Westerners were determined to retain for the Kingdom of the West the
renown of being The Largest Kingdom in the Known World. Certainly the
removal of An Tir from the Kingdom of the West would have left the West
instead as one of the smallest kingdoms in the Known world.
And the people of An Tir grew restive, and began to wish that they could
make a Kingdom of their Principality. But although the Crowns of the West
were sometimes friendly to the people of An Tir, the officers of the
Kingdom of the West appeared to hinder their purpose in every possible
way.
And some of the more active people of An Tir bickered among themselves,
which made matters even worse.
And one day three young gentlemen, discussing the difficulties which the
people of An Tir were suffering from the officers of the West and of the
Imperium, had an idea: why not persuade an An Tirian Coronet and their
heirs to simply declare An Tir a Kingdom? These three gentlemen, so Donn
an Bronach told me, shared their vision with other restless and
dissatisfied An Tirians, and a plan emerged. Various people made
inquiries of legal requirements, and the necessary paperwork was got into
readiness to form a separate non-profit corporation in Oregon if it
became necessary to do so.
Liam of the Barque and his lady Dierdre Muldomnaigh were some of the
finest folk active in those days. They dwelt on the Barque, their
houseboat, and by this time they were publishing the Crier. Many talented
people assisted them in this endeavor, including Donn, and it was not
long at all before the Barque became a center of Rebellion in the Barony
of Madrone. It is to be noted that the Rebels included many principality
officers, especially those who had had difficulties with Western and
Imperial officers.... But not all Madronans knew of the plotting of the
Rebel Alliance.
The entire Barony of Adiantum, so Ulfheddin inn Vegfarandi told me, was
another hotbed of Rebellion, having struggled with the Imperium, and been
ignored by the Western officers, during the formation of their shire and
later when they were working to become a barony. There were a number of
Rebels in Three Mountains, too, although there were also people there who
either did not know what was going on or deliberately ignored it.
And the Rebels were having great fun, skulking about and plotting and
working out ways to deal with any difficulties that they could foresee.
Dierdre Muldomnaigh wrote several songs for the Rebels, Ulfheddin inn
Vegfarandi told me; "Managed by Nerds" was written in his living room
during one of Dierdre's visits to Adiantum.
And some few of the Royalists also had great fun carefully pretending
that they had no idea of all the Rebel plotting going on around them.
And Viscount Sir Edward Zifran, the Bastard of Gendi, won the Coronet
Tourney for the third time, fighting for Alma Tea av den Telemarken, and
they two were crowned Prince and Princess of An Tir on August 12, AS XII.
And although the West had as yet heard nothing of the brewing Rebellion,
Edward was a natural for a Rebel Prince, for he loved to star in dramatic
or humorous scenes, and what better occasion for such than a Rebellion?
And Manfred Kreigstriber, fighting for Koressa Thokubjalla, won the
following Coronet Tourney, and they too were drawn into the plotting of
the Rebellion.
Members of the Rebel Alliance gathered a few at a time, secretly. The
password was "Robert Barker" and the countersign was "Queen for a Day."
Preparations for the coming of Twelfth Night were made at these meetings;
for Twelfth Night was the appointed time when their plot to free An Tir
would finally unfold.
The Three Estates of medieval times, the clergy, the chivalry, and the
civil service, were represented among the Rebels by the most prominent An
Tirians in their fields: Bishop William of the Woodlands, Viscount Sir
Elrond Blacksabre, and the then Seneschal of An Tir, Master Duncan of
Chisholm.
Speeches were written by these three: Bishop William's speech, so he told
me, began "Your Highness, I would like to call you Your Majesty." Sir
Elrond's speech, in a more serious vein, started with "When in the course
of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bonds
... " (For those of you who do not recognize it, the words were adapted
from a famous mundane Declaration of Independence.)
Representing the rebel populace, these leaders of the Three Estates were
to present a petition to Prince Edward in his supposedly final court that
he declare An Tir a free and independent Kingdom, crown himself King and
his lady Queen, and declare a date a short while later at which Manfred
and Koressa would be crowned An Tir's second King and Queen.
And after all, what could the West do? The Rebel Alliance had already
prepared for the possibility that the SCA, Inc., would disavow such a
declaration, and alternate corporation documents and a corporate name
were ready and waiting.
In this atmosphere of excitement and anticipation, someone told Baron
Gerhard Kendal and Baroness Amanda Kendal, rulers of Lions Gate, what was
being planned and when. And the Kendals, vassals of the West for An Tir's
newest Barony (at that time Lions Gate had been a Barony for less than a
year) were appalled. They told their neighbors to the south, Baron
Theodulf and Baroness Anne of Madrone, and called the King of the West,
Paul of Bellatrix, and the members of the Board of Directors (who were
all Westerners in those days).
King Paul, when he heard of the Twelfth Night Plot, was so angry that he
almost went berserk, so I was told by a Western Royal Peer who shall
remain nameless. Some of the leading Rebels had been intimates of his;
and Paul, so Grane the Golden told me, had long been a champion of
independence for An Tir, but was totally innocent of possible plots of
the Western Great Officers and the BoD. King Paul took the Rebellion very
personally; he felt that the disasters starting to be uncovered during
his reign were an affront to his longstanding support of An Tir, and
failed to understand why the Rebels had not brought their complaints to
him to resolve.
Panic and chaos ensued among many of the Westerners, I have been told.
The Board of Directors immediately called Prince Edward at work, at
daytime rates, and chewed him out royally. It was rumored that the BoD
had threatened to remove all the rebels from their offices and forbid any
of the rebels ever to hold office again, that the rebels would be
stripped of all honors for life. But most of the officers were rebels;
what this would have done to the Principality of An Tir was evidently
considered, because none of that never happened.
Barons Gerhard and Theodulf were appointed Viceroys, An Tir being in
rebellion, and it quickly became obvious that there was a considerable
schism within An Tir, some being Royalists and some being Rebels.
Ugly things happened. Some of the rebels were harassed and threatened
anonymously. Sir Elrond received a call from an anonymous villian who
threatened the life of his infant son .... And the feeling of excitement
and anticipation turned into a feeling of anger and frustration and
dread.
Twelfth Night AS XII came, and with it came Duke Paul, who strode about
the halls dressed in black, his long black cloak swirling behind him, his
mein murderous. Present also were the Viceroys, bearing black and white
striped staves of office. Baron Gerhard, with characteristic talent and
energy and considerable tact, had embroidered a needlepoint cover for his
Viceroy's staff of office, so that the staff itself was not directly in
view, so I was told by Andre Lessard.
Determined to salvage what they could of the disaster, members of the
Rebel Alliance had hurriedly consulted with one another. They had already
determined that gray, being the color of An Tir skies proper was the
correct color for Rebels (a bit of creative anachronism, that!). In a
display of solidarity among those who stood for an independent An Tir,
the Rebels wore gray armbands on Rebellion Twelfth Night, that their
Prince could look out among them and see how many supported the cause of
freedom.
The speeches were made and the petition for a declaration of independence
was presented, but neither Edward nor Manfred felt that he could declare
An Tir a kingdom in the face of the vast rift within An Tir herself.
Edward received the royal crowns which had been prepared for him and his
consort and declared they would be kept in trust for the day when An Tir
would be a kingdom.
Some of the rebels disappeared, unwilling to continue playing in such a
foul atmosphere. Some of them hung on grimly. (Some of them, more than 20
years later, are still hurt from the harassment and threats they suffered
then.)
And some of the rebels gathered up the shreds of their plot and began
quietly to weave anew, waiting and watching for opportunities to have fun
quietly spreading the word of the Rebellion, teaching the Rebel songs and
tales, and looking for subtle and amusing ways to forward the cause of
Freedom.
