Monday, October 22, 2018

THE MONARCHY

THE MONARCHY OF THE KINGDOM OF SCONE 


At the apex of the Sconnish state stands the Sovereign, and alongside him, the Royal Family. The Sovereign stands as living symbol of Sconnish sovereignty and unity. 


THE ROYAL ARMS OF THE KINGDOM OF SCONE



 THE SOVEREIGN



His Majesty King Erik II. [Biography forthcoming]

OUR SECOND KING: KING EDWARD



His Majesty King Edward I (now HRH the Duke of Montbarry) began his citizenship journey by carving out a niche for himself in the field of heraldry. He would eventually found and preside over the Sconnish College of Arms as Ilion King of Arms and later as Great Marshal of the Kingdom of Scone.  

Edward would eventually catch the notice of the Royal Court, finding himself invited by his predecessor, King James, to be initiated into the ranks of Sconnish royalty.  He and his colleague in the College of Arms, Sir. W. Moray, would both be tapped to join James in forming the Kingdom of Scone's first royal house, which would be christened the "House of Mountwelland." 

On 12 December 2017, Edward and Moray were formally cloaked in the royal purple by King James, who bestowed the dignity of Prince of the Kingdom of Scone upon both men. Edward became His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, Moray His Royal Highness The Prince Patrick. 

With an eye on the future of the Sconnish Monarchy and recognizing the need to designate an heir apparent, James decided to call upon Prince Edward to accept the honour and the burden of becoming the Kingdom of Scone's first Prince Royal (the title given to the Sconnish heir apparent). Edward pondered the invitation for some time before finally consenting to the King's proposal. 

On 13 April 2018, Prince Edward Patrick Theobald Louis Alexander Barry was solemnly invested as the first Prince Royal of the Kingdom of Scone, with right of immediate succession to the Sconnish Throne upon the death or abdication of the Sovereign. 

It was announced at the same time that King James had decided to declare himself lawfully indisposed to attend to the duties of the head of state for a time, and that the newly-elevated Prince Royal would soon, therefore, take on the role of the kingdom's Regent. 

As Regent of the Kingdom of Scone and of the Glennish Empire, Prince Edward exhibited a reassuring executive presence within the apparatus of the state. Parliament would be prorogued for its annual Summer recess, and a period of calm would follow.

As Prince Regent, Edward would establish the Noble Order of the Baronial Eagle, the first ever Crown honour instituted by a person other than the Sovereign. The remainder of the Regency found itself blessed by the quiet of Summer, with the Regent and King James consulting occasionally, the latter hoping to acquaint the Regent with the responsibilities of his role. 

The tranquility of the Summer months of 2018, as it happened, did not portend placid waters ahead for the Prince Regent. Soon, Edward would be summoned by history to assume his ultimate role as a Sconnishman. 

On 15 September 2018, His Majesty King James, in his first appearance since the beginning of the Regency, delivered a semi-public address to his Court. In the course of his remarks delivered via video presentation, the King announced his decision to inform his Government of his intention to abdicate the Glennish throne. 

Prince Edward had already known of the King's decision for some time, and was in receipt, by then, of the King's signed instrument of abdication. The Prince Regent, witnessing the instrument with his own signature, signed off on his own fate as well as that of King James. 

At the stroke of noon on 1 October 2018, Edward succeeded King James upon the Sconnish throne as the Kingdom of Scone's second monarch.

Across the Empire, Sconnishmen celebrated the dawn of the Sconnish Edwardian era, happy to have as their sovereign a man they had come to admire as their Regent. From the start, King Edward signified his commitment to the Empire and to the grand traditions of Sconnish chivalry. Among the first acts of Edward's reign was to establish a new honour styled the Order of the Glennish Empire.

After reigning for a year and a half, King Edward abdicated the throne and took on the title of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Montbarry.



OUR FIRST KING: His Majesty King James

The Kingdom of Scone was conceived of and designed by our first monarch, King James, as early as the year 2008. His project, originally called "Sconeland," was a concept for an Anglophile kingdom with Celtic influences modeled after Great Britain. Events conspired to prevent the launch of the Sconeland project as an independent kingdom. Instead, it would find itself married to the miniature Kingdom of Hanover, a venture which James had launched earlier on, in 2002. 

Together, Hanover and the Sconnish project formed a polity styled "The Glennish Kingdoms of Hanover and Sconeland." Sconeland would eventually come into being as an independent miniature kingdom, however, on 1 March 2014 when the unified Glennish Kingdoms were dissolved. Sconeland was re-christened "The Kingdom of Scone," and James the concept designer became James the king. The Kingdom of Hanover would go her separate way.


A FORMAL PHOTOGRAPH OF KING JAMES TAKEN IN 2017

King James' reign was necessarily a reign of firsts. He was ceremonially installed as first King of the Sconnish on 17 March 2014. His inaugural rites consisted of an auto-coronation followed by a Throne Speech opening the very first Sconnish Parliament. James authored the Charter of Scone, enacted by that first Parliament, and much of the early legislation to follow. King James directed the creation of the Kingdom of Scone's public infrastructure, establishing her social media. James also presided over the installation of the first Sconnish Government led by the first Sconnish Prime Minister (and first democratically-elected Sconnish public official), the Earl of Rockcliffe. 

Scone's first king would go on to establish the Sconnish Peerage and the Sconnish Honours System, which included the Order of Scone, the Order of the Sconnish Poppy, the Order of the Imperial Star of Glennain, the King's Army, the Royal Navy, the rank of Sconnish Banneret, and the Hereditary Knight of Murchaidh. James would also lay the foundations of the Sconnish gentry by creating the ranks of Baronet and Laird. During the course of his inaugural reign, James published Honours Lists several times a year signifying his intention to decorate subjects and foreigners alike with the various honours which he had established. 

In 2016, an unexpected twist of fate brought the miniature Kingdom of Hanover back into the possession of King James, her founder and first king. This peculiar circumstance proved one of the more colourful episodes of James' reign, and would curiously alter the definitions and titles of the Sconnish community going forward. 

The Kingdom of Hanover would ultimately find herself divided in half by the terms of a treaty between James and a rival claimant to the Hanoverian throne. James's half of the old kingdom was ultimately re-christened "Glennish Hanover," since his was the half that was declared by the treaty to be the inheritor of all the traditional attributes of the now dissolved Glennish Kingdoms of Hanover and Sconeland.

For a short time, King James was the sovereign of two completely separate and independent kingdoms.  Although over Scone, James reigned as a constitutional figurehead, his authority over the Kingdom of Glennish Hanover was absolute. Glennish Hanover was eventually donated to the Kingdom of Scone by King James, then formally secured to the Sconnish Crown as a colonial dependency by an Act of Parliament. The Kingdom of Scone and the Colonial Province of Glennish Hanover, together, became known as "The Glennains" or the "Glennish Empire," thus accounting for the King of Scone's secondary title "Emperor of All the Glennains." 


All-in-all, the Hanoverian episode and the effects of it constituted a quirky and sometimes inscrutable twist which causes confusion and head-scratching to the present day. In the Summer of 2016, King James invited Viscount Marly of Blaismont (today the Duke of Marly) to be installed as the first Royal Governor over the Colonial Province of Glennish Hanover. Today, Glennish Hanover provides a quaint colonial element within the Sconnish commonwealth for persons looking for a more relaxed and scaled-back version of the Kingdom of Scone.

KING JAMES PRESIDED OVER THE FORMATION OF THE GLENNISH EMPIRE.

During James' reign, five Parliaments were seated, three of which were addressed by foreign crowned heads at the King's invitation. The most notable diplomatic milestone of King James' reign was his meeting with the celebrity Grand Duke of Westarctica and his retinue at Fort Niagara near Niagara Falls in the Summer of 2017. King James is a recipient of two Westarctican honours and various other foreign decorations, including the prestigious Order of the Pink Flamingo bestowed upon him by Prince Jean-Pierre IV of Aigues-Mortes.

His friendships with the heads of state of various micronations notwithstanding, James was the chief exponent of an orthodoxy which insisted that the Kingdom of Scone was not, itself, a micronation, nor was it to be patterned after one. In James' view, the kingdom he established was to avoid any claim of nationhood, micro or otherwise. Scone was a "kingdom," period; nothing more and nothing less.


KING JAMES WITH THE GRAND DUKE OF WESTARCTICA IN 2017


In 2018, King James, together with then Prince Edward and then Prince Patrick, formed the first and current Royal House of the Kingdom of Scone, the House of Mountwelland. Prior to then, the Kingdom of Scone had suffered from the lack of a royal house, leaving the King to attempt to project the institution of the monarchy entirely on his own. 

In his Speech from the Throne opening the 2017-2018 Parliament, James addressed the need for the establishment of a royal house, frankly confessing his struggles in attempting to be for the community the sole expression of Sconnish royalty. Edward and Patrick had been recruited to assist the King in carrying the royal burden, and Parliament was asked to be understanding of James' need for support and assistance from others in the execution of his royal duties. 

In 2018, James would ensure a smooth transition from his reign to the next by installing Prince Edward as his heir-apparent with the title of Prince Royal. James was relieved to know that the Mountwelland succession to the throne had been secured, and was happy to observe that the new Prince Royal enjoyed the respect and support of the overwhelming majority of his people. 

On 13 April 2018, King James informed Parliament that he would be indisposed to attend to his duties as Sovereign for a time, beginning 21 May 2018. From that date forward, therefore, the Kingdom of Scone experienced a Regency, with Prince Edward acting in James' place as head of state. As it happened, the initiation of a Regency would be James' last official act as Sovereign.
JAMES PHOTOGRAPHED AT AULDKIRK ON THE LAST FULL DAY OF HIS REIGN

On 15 September 2018, King James delivered an address to the Court at St Ives' declaring his intention to depart the throne in favour of the Prince Regent. James intimated to his successor that he believed he had "exhausted the topic" of his hopes and aspirations for the Kingdom of Scone, determining that the time had come for him to step aside. 

James, King of the Sconnish and Emperor of All the Glennains formally abdicated on 1 October 2018, ending his brief reign of only four years and seven months. 

Today, King James remains a member of the House of Mountwelland and a Sconnishman, but has resolved to abide in virtual seclusion for the remainder of his post-regnal years. The founding member of the Ancient and Venerable Order of Huntsmen, James continues to preside over the Grand Lodge of Tartannac, holding the title of Grand Huntsman.


COAT OF ARMS OF HIS MAJESTY KING JAMES


THE COURT AT ST IVES' 

The Court of the Sconnish Monarch and His Majesty's Royal Household are known institutionally under the name of "The Court at St Ives'."  The name serves as a metonym for the monarchy, itself, but reflects no particular place or structure.



THE SCONNISH ROYAL STANDARD

IMAGE COURTESY W. MORAY 2018


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