Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kitchen_maid) wrote2008-03-20 09:12 pm
kitchen_maid) wrote2008-03-20 09:12 pm
Royal Christening
The christening of HRH Merriman, Crown Prince of Ambergeldar, goes off with all expected pomp and circumstance. Certain things, most things, have been drastically scaled back, in light of last fall's ruined harvest, but the public parts of the christening are not. Amy and Perry have decided they are good for morale.
Prince Merriman has thirty godfathers and ten godmothers and while most of them are exactly the sorts of people one would expect to see, a few raise eyebrows. Really, one must wonder where on Earth the Queen meets all these people. Even the archbishop looks a little intimidated by the first of the prince's godfathers -- the one whose name he shares -- an impossibly dignified man who makes the usually impossibly dignified archbishop feel like the youngest of the altar boys.
There are whispers and nudges about the woman only a few here know as the Lady Door, whose dark and somewhat fantastic garb has more than one courtier wondering if the King and Queen have actually arranged a fairy godmother for their son. Her husband looks slightly uncomfortable, glancing up at stone saints and stained glass, but who wouldn't be, married to a fairy?
There's a bit of commotion in the middle of the service, when the very bored Princess Royal escapes her nurse and goes tearing down the central aisle. Before any of her various utterly mortified nurses can react, Logan (who is, after all, her godfather) sweeps the now delighted princess up, grins and winks at the Queen -- in the cathedral! scandalous! -- and carries Susan out to chase ladybugs in the cloister garden.
And when all the pomp and ceremony are over, after almost everyone else has filed out, when the whole cathedral smells of just extinguished candles, the Lady Ingress slips back in, finds what seems to be the middle of the room and calls out, in nonsense syllables, just to hear the echo. (Her laughter echoes, too, a moment later, as does Tom's, when he comes to collect her, and the verger gives them stern looks which they completely ignore.)
The reception in the palace that follows is considerably scaled back from that thrown for the prince's older sister. Amy and the protocol officer have argued over almost every detail, for weeks, but in the end, this is an affair in keeping with the difficulties facing the kingdom. The fare is lighter, the pile of gifts is smaller, and it ends an hour before sunset, to save the cost of candles to light the rooms.
But it would be wrong to say that the event is austere -- there's laughter and conversation, meetings between old friends and new. The Lady Rosalind links her arm through Meg Giry's almost immediately; it's been far too long and they've ever so much to catch up on, and has Meg heard that the former Beast she named "Fluffy" married Princess Persephone of Plumblossomburg last month?
Henry Wellard, too, has been here often enough to have made friends with a group of noble younger sons who've gone into the Ambergeldan Army and Navy, and if there are more of these noble younger sons than one might expect to find here, well, surely the Queen had her reasons for inviting them.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds makes quite the dashing figure at his godson's christening, and wisely refrains from telling his godson's mother that he's worn his "boy whore" clothes in honor of the occasion. Inana could no more look out of place in a room like this than she could fly around it, and it is quite reassuring to see that the Queen knows some respectable people.
Later, when the sun starts to set, the King and Queen and their children and friends will adjourn to one of the smaller parlors, and here there will be candles, and the laughter and conversation will continue late into the night.
All in all, not a bad way for a prince to be named.
Prince Merriman has thirty godfathers and ten godmothers and while most of them are exactly the sorts of people one would expect to see, a few raise eyebrows. Really, one must wonder where on Earth the Queen meets all these people. Even the archbishop looks a little intimidated by the first of the prince's godfathers -- the one whose name he shares -- an impossibly dignified man who makes the usually impossibly dignified archbishop feel like the youngest of the altar boys.
There are whispers and nudges about the woman only a few here know as the Lady Door, whose dark and somewhat fantastic garb has more than one courtier wondering if the King and Queen have actually arranged a fairy godmother for their son. Her husband looks slightly uncomfortable, glancing up at stone saints and stained glass, but who wouldn't be, married to a fairy?
There's a bit of commotion in the middle of the service, when the very bored Princess Royal escapes her nurse and goes tearing down the central aisle. Before any of her various utterly mortified nurses can react, Logan (who is, after all, her godfather) sweeps the now delighted princess up, grins and winks at the Queen -- in the cathedral! scandalous! -- and carries Susan out to chase ladybugs in the cloister garden.
And when all the pomp and ceremony are over, after almost everyone else has filed out, when the whole cathedral smells of just extinguished candles, the Lady Ingress slips back in, finds what seems to be the middle of the room and calls out, in nonsense syllables, just to hear the echo. (Her laughter echoes, too, a moment later, as does Tom's, when he comes to collect her, and the verger gives them stern looks which they completely ignore.)
The reception in the palace that follows is considerably scaled back from that thrown for the prince's older sister. Amy and the protocol officer have argued over almost every detail, for weeks, but in the end, this is an affair in keeping with the difficulties facing the kingdom. The fare is lighter, the pile of gifts is smaller, and it ends an hour before sunset, to save the cost of candles to light the rooms.
But it would be wrong to say that the event is austere -- there's laughter and conversation, meetings between old friends and new. The Lady Rosalind links her arm through Meg Giry's almost immediately; it's been far too long and they've ever so much to catch up on, and has Meg heard that the former Beast she named "Fluffy" married Princess Persephone of Plumblossomburg last month?
Henry Wellard, too, has been here often enough to have made friends with a group of noble younger sons who've gone into the Ambergeldan Army and Navy, and if there are more of these noble younger sons than one might expect to find here, well, surely the Queen had her reasons for inviting them.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds makes quite the dashing figure at his godson's christening, and wisely refrains from telling his godson's mother that he's worn his "boy whore" clothes in honor of the occasion. Inana could no more look out of place in a room like this than she could fly around it, and it is quite reassuring to see that the Queen knows some respectable people.
Later, when the sun starts to set, the King and Queen and their children and friends will adjourn to one of the smaller parlors, and here there will be candles, and the laughter and conversation will continue late into the night.
All in all, not a bad way for a prince to be named.