Retaining for Royalty in the SCA
This past weekend was another local event. In our kingdom local is defined as anything that is within an hour and half drive, at least for the “peasants”. Royalty is supposed to make as many events as possible. Depending on where they live this can be difficult with mundane lives and how far some events are, but I digress. Not only was I going but I had decided to have a new experience and retain that day.
Retaining is where you follow a member of royalty around and fill their cup, hold whatever they have in their hands (sans their cup), and make sure they don’t do anything really. For some royalty it’s an easy job, for others it’s not. It depends on the person, what they are doing, time of day, etc. I had volunteered to do it, provided I could fight later in the day. And when the schedule came out I was retaining for the King first shift, 10-12.
This event was an hour away. Being how I am more active this time around in the SCA I wanted to attend. A friend of mine was going and so we decided to carpool. It is also nice that he has a big van so he drove and we could pile all our stuff in his van. Unfortunately the morning was not to be ours. We got a late start. And we got lost a few times. I kept calling my friend Sven for directions. I was grateful for cell phones more than ever on this day. We arrived 20 minutes before I had to retain. I had been hoping to get there early enough to get my armor inspection and then change into my other garb.
Instead I had to jump out at Troll (where you pay the site fees), jump back into the car to be driven down to the field (too long to walk), change into my dress garb in the van (again thankful for tinted windows), then race to find the king and arrive just in time to begin my retaining time. Luckily my friend unloaded all my stuff and set up my cover shade for when I was done.
Retaining is at once boring and very interesting. You have to be deaf for the most part, especially with the king or queen, since they talk about the most important things. The worst part about my retaining was the first forty-five minutes when the king had a meeting with several knights. I will be good and not say what it was about since I was trying to be deaf. It was terrible standing in the sun. At 10 am you would not believe it would beat down so much, but it does. I spent part of the time watching a hawk flying in the sky and a good deal watching across the field for people I knew, seeing who was arriving and setting up their sites. The rest of the time wasn’t too bad. Some in the royal tent where I could watch the list field (and yell at one of my friends as he was authorized and the king just laughed at me). At one point I even saw one of my friends get squired to one of our new knights. I cried at that.
I was glad to be done though. Standing for two hours is hard when you are not used to it. And even though we spent part of the time under the pavilion, we also spent enough in the sun that I got sun burnt (no time for sunscreen with when we arrived remember?). I would do it again but probably not at every event. Unfortunately the heat and sunburn made me not up to fighting. But one of my friends did put it in a good perspective. It’s a hobby, do what you want.