West Kingdom College of Heralds | Awards Lists - Reaffirmation Of Awards, and Why It Is Necessary

Sometimes a Court Herald must report a Reaffirmation of an award or recognition granted by the Royalty. Why is that, and what is a Reaffirmation?

What Is a Reaffirmation?

West Kingdom Law requires that an award be listed in The Awards List/Order of Precedence within 9 months of the Court in which the award or honor was given.

What this means is that if an award or honor is not published in that timeframe, it is not official and the recipient effectively does not have a legal claim to that award or honor, even if they were given tokens, scrolls, etc., in court, and even if lots of people witnessed it happen.

What usually happens is that the Herald did not file the Court Report in a timely fashion, or the report got lost somehow, or in some cases due to human error, an individual award was not reported. There is another potential issue that is related to, but not quite the same as a reaffirmation of an award, discussed below ... (Please note, this is not an attempt to assign blame for anything, just to explain that the issue occurs due to human error ... if you've never been a Court Herald or Royalty, don't assume any intent here -- you have no idea how crazy things can get!)

How Do We Resolve This?

For an award that did not get reported in time to become official (note that these ignore the "9 month" ruling, to help give guidelines):

Rules of Thumb:

If an award is given and not confirmed, and we have now started a new reign (Kingdom, Principality, even Barony), the award must be reaffirmed.
If the Royalty who gave the recognition are still on the throne, They can ask the herald to have it read into court business, and that it be backdated to when the award was originally given.
An award being reaffirmed must be supported, whether by memory of the granting royalty, by scroll or promissory, by token, or by witness (preferably unrelated).

The Process:

The Royalty currently on the Thrones for the specific region (if the Reaffirmation is for an award given by the King and Queen, it must be the current King and Queen; if for a Prince and Princess, it must reaffirmed by the current Prince and Princess of that Principality; same for a Baronial award) must reaffirm the award in court, stating what the award is, who it is given to, by what royalty and the date of the original award.

If you click on the link here, and fill out this form, an email request will go to the appropriate Royalty, so that They have all the details necessary to reaffirm your award in court:

Award Reaffirmation Request Form
The Court herald for that court must then put this in their Court Report as a reaffirmation, noting the details (award, to whom, royalty and date). This report must be processed per the proper procedures.
The award will then be published properly. It will be dated to when it was originally given, and by the original royalty, and in an internal note for the Golem Herald there will be an explanation that the award was reaffirmed, at what event and date, and by the royalty who did so. This is mostly just so that we are all on the same page.

The Royalty Gave An Award At An Unofficial Event!

If the Royalty gave an award at an event that was not properly published in The Page, the problem is not West Kingdom Law, but SCA Corpora. This states that official awards and recognitions cannot be given at an event which is not listed in the Kingdom newsletter (Corpora, Part II - cited below). This does not mean that "it is on the calendar", or that there is a Facebook page for the event, but that there must be event copy in The Page. This is a rare thing, but sometimes comes up, most often when the Royalty are out visiting outlying areas of the Kingdom or their Principalities, and the locals decide to have an impromptu event in celebration. The problem is that by law, any awards given at these events are not real/official. (It doesn't matter how many people witnessed them ...)

From Corpora, bold text used for emphasis ...

II. EVENTS
C. Business Requiring Prior Announcement Formal actions and announcements with long-term impact on the Society may occur only at Society events for which a full announcement including date, time, and place has been published in advance in the appropriate corporate publication. These actions include Crown and Coronet Tournaments, Coronations and Investitures, appointment of officers, presentation of awards and titles, proclamation of law, and the establishment or advancement of branches. However, deputy officers and officers below principality level need not be appointed at published events.

How Do We Resolve This?

What must happen for the award to be official is for the award to be given again at an official event, and treated as a new award for the purpose of reporting the award, and for the official records (i.e., the Awards List). Note that the award is treated as new, meaning that the date the award is given, etc., is the date of the official event, rather than back-dating the award to the earlier non-official event.