[MR] Queen's Corner - Killing Off Royalty at Coronation

[E. L. Wimett]

Well, for many years it was customary in Meridies that the transfer at
Coronation involve some sort of violent act.

And a lot of people blamed me.  Not quite true, but it is true that it all
stemmed from a casual suggestion in a conversation between Yosef Alaric (now
of the East but then living in my group in Meridies), the second King of
Meridies and myself (autocrat for his successor's Coronation) some time
before Coronation.

The King was Orlando Cavalcanti (later infamous as the Mystery Burgundian)
who was doing a lot of theatre at the time and wanted to try and figure out
some way to bring in some mock swordplay at some point during the event.
Yosef, who had started playing in the Middle in the early 1970's, and I, who
had played with Sealed Knot and some Agincourt re-enactment groups in
England, were farbling with him and suggested that we could always stage a
mini-play wherein his successor REALLY claimed the throne by right of arms.

Things rapidly snowballed and Orlando ended up coming in to the actual
Coronation court fairly heavily made up as an old man (a rather nice
allusion since for various reasons his reign had been extraordinarily long
from mid-July to mid-March).  John came in to challenge for the throne and
they had a bit of live steel swordplay in which Orlando was a bit more
athletic than his role allowed and John was a bit more klutzy than safety
demanded, but eventually Orlando died reasonably spectacularly and John took
the throne.

That might all have ended there, but at the end of John's second reign his
successor François decided that he did not wish to take the crown directly
from John and wished a fairly elaborate quasi-religious coronation ceremony.
This ended up in a complicated scenario in which Bearkiller was himself
killed by a bear (a gentle in a bear suit).

The Society being the Society and Meridies being Meridies, what was done
once was custom and what was done twice was immutable tradition so that for
years Meridian coronation ceremonies routinely involved the death of the
outgoing king.  A number of other kingdoms used some of the scenarios from
time to time, but as far as I know, nobody else made it a tradition.

Alisoun, who is feeling VERY old tonight