Tales of the 1st Crown Tourney

Dominique Charles de Blavier

As one would imagine, people came from all corners of Ansteorra to fight in our first Crown Tourney. There were also many from other parts of Atenveldt, including our King and Queen, Theo and Salene, and many Aten knights. Many of the fighters were unbelted. One such was Otto the Merciless, from The Shadowlands.

Then, as now, all combatants in the tournament had to list someone in whose favor they would fight and who would become their consort if they won the right to be crowned the first King of Ansteorra. Otto had no one in particular so he asked an “SCA adjacent” friend who agreed to let her name be given so that he could fight.

Otto won his first-round fight but that wasn’t really a big deal because half all of the fighters won their first round fight. What was remarkable was that Otto kept winning his fights and advancing from one round to the next.

The more Otto won, the more nervous his named consort became. She had never really been in the SCA at that point, I think that Crown I was, in fact, her first SCA event outside of The Shadowlands. Eventually, our reigning Princess, Tessa of the Gardens, and our reigning Queen, Salene of Mightrinwood were sitting next to her trying to keep her calm and telling what she would need to do that day if Otto won. They were trying to take years of SCA experience that they had between them and begin to educate her on what it meant to be a Queen in the SCA.

Sure enough, Otto made it to the final round and was faced off against the most recent past King of Atenveldt, Johnathon DeLaufyson Macebearer. The fight was a good one but, in the end, victory went to the most experienced fighter and, thus, Johnathon and Willow were recognized as the first King and Queen of Ansteorra.

But what, you might wonder, became of her who came so close to being our first Queen? Well, she began to be more active in the SCA. She got her AoA in January of 1984 and, eventually became the first woman to win a Crown Tourney anywhere in the Knowne World and the SCA’s first Sovereign Queen… Her Grace, Duchess Rowan Beatrice von Kampfer.

Dominique Charles de Blavier

Friday night, the night before Crown Tournament I (May 12, 1979) was to start. I sat in a tent with Tivar and one or two other people (I can’t remember who but I remember that there was at least one female in there with us).

Tivar had been given his White Scarf two months before (Tournament of Chivalry or, as those of us who were there took to calling it, the Tournament of Shivering – March 10, 1978). While I told Tivar that night after Court for the Tournament of Chivalry that, since we wanted a peerage award for light weapons fighting, White Scarves needed their own Squires, only they were going to be called Cadets and they would wear a Red Scarf… oh, and that I would be his Cadet.

The next month, at Queen Willow’s War (April 7, 1979), after the day’s war had ended, and after I beat the Midrealm King’s fencing champion as Tivar’s appointed Champion for Ansteorra, at Court around the campfire that night, Tivar officially made me his Cadet.

So, we’re sitting in the tent and I’m talking about how much I want to get my White Scarf one day. Well, Tivar gets into teacher / mentor mode and says that if I want to be a White Scarf, I have to be able to do more than fight. I had to know courtly graces and know my medieval history. He then began asking me a series of questions which he seemed surprised I was able to answer. This went on for like a half-an-hour but the only question I clearly remember was “What is the difference between a Grand Duke and an Arch-Duke.” I remember that because, after I answered it, he admitted that he hadn’t known the answer, he just got frustrated that I could answer all of his questions and he was just pulling stuff that out of the air to try to stump me. Soon after this it was time to get rest before the next days activities, because were going to need to be rested up. So, I wandered over to my tent. On my way there, I was walking along the edge of a creek that ran through the site and at a weak spot, it gave way out from under me. So, I found myself waist deep in very cold creek water. I pulled myself out and made it the rest of the way to my tent, but I didn’t have a towel to dry off with so I laid down, wet, on top of my sleeping bag and fairly quickly (which was NOT a normal thing for me) drifted to sleep.

When I was awakened the next morning, my legs wouldn’t work. I mean that I could literally not stand up, much less walk. So, I was helped down to where I would be sitting to do my work as the Master of the List. (There is more to that, but it will be in a story of its own.) Well, the long hours passed and finally the Crown List was ended. Next would be the Light Weapons list. By this time, I could stand and move around some but my legs were still weak. In basic terms, I knew that I in my fights, I would have to make them fast because a long-drawn out fight would put me at a big disadvantage.

About my legs, the only explanation I could come up with at the time had to do with going to sleep all wet and cold. As I’ve thought about it over the decades, however, I have no doubt that it was psychological. I was scared to death about what I was going to be doing, my responsibilities as Master of the Lists, and that I would be interacting with a King and Queen, and a Prince and Princess, and nobles and famous knights from foreign lands. I was about to enter onto the grand stage and I didn’t know if I was up to it.

So, the Light Weapons Lists began. There weren’t all that many of us there. I think we only had enough fighters to go three or four rounds. After winning my first fight, in my second fight, I was paired off with Tivar. Now Tivar and I had fought MANY times over the course of the previous year, starting with me coming in second place after him in the Light Weapons List at our first Shadowlands tournament… the Tax-Day Tourney, One Month Late (May 15, 1978). And then in the Fall of 1978 every weekend at the Texas Renaissance Festival several times each day, with practices between he and I in between the demos. Anyway, I knew what he was like as a fighter and, again, I was scared… of making a fool of myself in front of Kings and Queens and Nobels and Knights and Peers of the Realm(s).

What all of this meant is that, while I knew how Tivar fought, I think that he was preparing for how I USUALLY fought, which was with flourishes and spins and general insanity. That isn’t how I fought him that day, though. I still clearly remember the entire fight. It went like this…

Tivar – Lunged
Dominique – Parried by swirling my sword around his and then thrusting.
Dominique – turned and walked away
Tivar – fell dead

I then raised my swords crossed over my head, looking up at my household and crying out “Drekaheima.”

It was over in mere seconds… and it was probably one of my worst moments in my entire involvement in the SCA. It took time for things to play out but, I think I shamed Tivar. It wasn’t my intention, I just won quickly, and then I crowed about it. Tivar wanted his time and I think I stole it from him. After that, things changed and my best friend in the SCA started drifting away from me. The last positive interactions with him that I can recall was driving he and Adalecia to the Steppes with me for Crown II. It was the last real and good conversations I can remember having with him.

In any case, the final round came and it was between Dominique and Luigi di Donate. I think that Gino had been paying attention to how I had fought my previous fights. What resulted was the really long fight that I had been dreading. I was too weak to push through any of my attacks and he couldn’t get past my defenses, which was pretty much all I was doing at that point. The fight went on seemingly forever. In my mind it went on for about 45 minutes but, of course, that couldn’t be the reality outside of the field. All I know is that eventually His Majesty Theo had enough and ordered the fight to stop. I think the real problem was, even more than the time it took, our fight was boring to watch because nothing really happened. So, Luigi and I were holding each other up as we approached the Thrones and were declared co-winners. King Theo gave us the two prizes that I had donated from my recent adventures in England… a decorative rapier and a mug of milky white glass. I let Luigi have the sword and I took the mug. Later, after Court, I approached His Majesty and gave him the mug in gratitude for what he had done to make Ansteorra a Kingdom of it own. I don’t remember what exactly I said, but he got teary-eyed and gave me a big bear hug.

Now, the Light Weapons portion of the Tournament had no real meaning. We were specifically told that it was in no way a crowning of a Champion, especially not a Queen’s Champion. So, all that we took away from it was that we had been allowed to have a Light Weapons tournament at the very first Ansteorran Crown Tournament in front of a King and Queen from faraway lands. Everything else came from that.