August 30th is the 55th Anniversary of the Kingdom of the Middle.
Probably.
I say “probably” because records from those early days are difficult to come by. Many of the people
who were there are no longer here. Over the years some have moved, some are no longer involved
in the SCA, and some have passed away. The best resource for early Kingdom information comes
from the “Collected Brief History of the Middle Kingdom” by Orlando Ambrosius, and even it is sparse in its recounting of the earliest of times. This is due to many factors, but chief among them is that the Society itself was just beginning at that time. The SCA was a mere handful of years old when the Middle Kingdom became a kingdom, and even the BoD/West Kingdom did not have its own affairs well sorted.
What I can tell you is this:
Having won the first Crown Tournament at WilCon on July 4th weekend, Prince Cariadoc set about
making the foundations of a Kingdom. The only other person present at that tournament who really knew the SCA was a visitor from the East Kingdom, Adrienne of Toledo. She gave that event legitimacy and knighted Cariadoc in the name of the King of the East. Even in the earliest days that seemed improper in retrospect, and Cariadoc would later, prior to his coronation, visit the West where King Siegfried von Hoflichskeit knighted him. The Midrealm Order of Precedence gives the date of his knighting as July 9, 1969. That was the Wednesday after the Crown Tournament event, so you can see how these ancient records may be unreliable.
The coronation of Cariadoc of the Bow and Diana Alene happened at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in St. Louis, Missouri. This annual convention, known as WorldCon in the Sci-Fi fandom, ran from August 28 through September 1 of 1969. MiddleWiki gives “September 1969” as the date of the coronation. Ambrosius does not mention the day or date. Looking back at the calendar for 1969, August 30 was a Saturday, so I am arbitrarily using that date.
Cariadoc and Diana Alene were the Middle Kingdom’s first and third King and Queen. They would go on to be the eighth and fourteenth King and Queen of the East. It was their idea to have an annual war between the Middle and East which we know as the Pennsic Wars. In fact, they were King and Queen of the East at the very first Pennsic.
Pedantic dating specifics aside, one thing is certain: we at least know which weekend is the
anniversary of the Kingdom of the Middle.
Draco Invictus!
For this article and many others on Middle Kingdom history please visit https://history.midrealm.org/