West Kingdom College of Heralds | Awards Lists - Royalty -- How the Awards Process Works

This page is aimed at royalty (King and Queen, Prince and Princess, Landed Baron and Baroness) who are new to the current Awards Process -- either brand new, never-reigned-before or Royalty who have may need a reminder for how things work. However, please be assured that there is nothing "secret" here, if you're not royalty and are just curious, it's okay to read this. The term "royalty" in this document is for whomever is the head of state for a branch that has ceremonial heads of state, which is why Baronies are included. Among other things, Baronies have official awards (because they have ceremonial heads of state), which are tracked by the Awards List, where Provinces, Shires, Colleges, and other branches that aren't Kingdom/Principality level don't. (This doesn't mean that a smaller branch can't give awards, but they aren't official and are not tracked in the Kingdom awards list.)

The Regnum Form and Email Addresses

There is a lot of detail involved -- the information about the regnum form and email addresses is is hidden, click the button to see more.

It should be noted that when you fill out the regnum form (links below), due to SCA corporate policy, you are expected to have a "westkingdom.org" email address (one that starts with a name or unique identifier and ends with "@westkingdom.org"). If you do not have one, you should use this website address and fill out the form there:

Populace Westkingdom.org Email Request

If you prefer to not have to log in to a special email address, you can request from the Web Team (once your new address is created) that it be set to forward to a different email (your preferred email address).

For victors of Crown and Principality Lists:
You should fill out the Regnum change web form once shortly after the tournament. This is because there is a forwarding email address that sends information to the heirs. These are:
     heirs@westkingdom.org -- The Crown Prince and Princess
     heirshoc@westkingdom.org -- Head of Court for the Crown Prince and Princess
     mists-heirs@westkingdom.org -- The Lord and Lady of the Mists
     cynagua-heirs@westkingdom.org -- The Lord and Lady of the Swan
     oertha-heirs@westkingdom.org -- The Lord and Lady of Borealis
     (For use when the Lord/Lady Borealis are in place for longer periods of time than a single day)

After Your Coronation or Investiture (Crown, Coronet, and Baronial):
Please fill out the Regnum change web form (again). There is another set of email addresses used for the Sovereigns and Consorts of the various regions. These are:
     crown@westkingdom.org -- The Crown of the West
     west-hoc@westkingdom.org -- Head of Court for the Crown of the West
     mists-regent@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of the Mists
     cynagua-regent@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Cynagua
     oertha-regent@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Oertha
     allyshia-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Allyshia
     darkwood-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Darkwood
     eskalya-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Eskalya
     farwest-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of the Far West
     fettburg-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Fettburg
     rivenoak-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Rivenoak
     selviergard-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Selviergard
     westermark-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Westermark
     wintersgate-baron@westkingdom.org -- The Coronets of Winter's Gate

Use of the regnum change form gets the attention of a variety of people (including the Kingdom Chronicler), and ensures that as much information as possible is automatically changed. There are scripts run appropximately every 4 hours scanning for "approvals" on these regnum forms. Once approved the updates should occur. If there are issues with any of the above addresses, please contact the web team and/or the Golem Herald (webminister@westkingdom.org, golem@westkingdom.org) and we will do our best to fix the issue in as short a time as possible.

NOTE: At this time, the "automated script" may not be working, but the IT team has a process that says that change of emails should be done 7 days after a Coronation/Investiture event for Kingdom and Principalities. For Baronies, please be sure to get the regnum form done and then follow up with IT.

The Most Important Thing: Please check Your email regularly, particularly in the week or two after an event where You held court and there were awards that need to be recorded! This includes checking your spam and/or junk folders if nothing appears in your in-box, as sometimes things end up in odd places for no apparent reason (recently a couple court reports got put in an "updates" folder for some reason, which made it difficult for the royalty in question to find, as you might imagine).

Awards at Unofficial Events
It is important to note, as this has come up a few times in the recent past, that Awards cannot be given at events that have not had event copy published in The Page. This is according to SCA Corpora (bold text for emphasis here, it's not in Corpora that way):

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.

Note that this says "appropriate corporate publication", which is The Page here in the West. Being on the calendar, even in The Page, does not give the details noted above (time, place, ...). A Facebook page is not an official corporate publication, either.

If the Royalty have given awards at an "unofficial" event, They will need to give them again at an official event, the awards cannot be backdated to the unofficial event.

The Court Report Process

This is a multi-step process described below, and while parts of it may seem redundant, the purpose is to help ensure that awards are not lost, or mis-attributed to another person, and so on. Part of the process is automated, but it all requires some human intervention. Further, the court report process itself may seem overly complicated, requiring a confirmation (see below) from the Royalty who gave the awards, but this is to ensure a certain integrity in the process, only after a confirmation has been received will the awards list be updated.

If you are Kingdom or Principality Royalty, You should also be familiar with information contained over here (in the "Regional Notes" link), the Heralds are here to help with this, but if both You and the Heralds are aware it is a good thing:
Regional Notes about Recognitions and Awards.

So, here goes ...

Before Court

The royalty can help the heralds in several ways, before court, and preferably before the event.

One of the most important things You can do: You (or a trusted court member) should keep a copy of the list of awards that You give or plan to give. This will assist in the rest of the information given below, and also in case there are any issues or concerns with names, recipients, etc. This list should be held onto at least until after the awards list has been published online, and preferably longer in case of issues and accidents ...

In addition, in your email, You may wish to set up a folder to keep a copy of all court reports and correspondence dealing with them. That way You have a way to reference them again in case of issues or problems.

The awards list itself is online (Awards List), and it helps if You can do a little checking of what awards an intended award recipient may have. Things to check for:

Please (PLEASE) check to see if the person you wish to give an award or recognition to has already got one. By going to the awards list and looking for the individual, you can see if the award recipient has been granted that award previously. Giving duplicate awards can be a little embarassing ... there are several people who have received an Award of Arms or a Leaf of Achievement multiple times, for example, and they really shouldn't have been. These awards are meant to be given only once. Yes, there are awards that are given multiple times (such as Queen's Cyphers), but those are actually special cases.
If the award You wish to give is one that grants an Award of Arms, please check to see if the recipient already has an Award of Arms (AA or AoA). The awards this is germane to are:
- Court Baron or Baroness (Baron of the Court of the West, etc.)
- Ash Leaf
- Leaf of Merit
- Rose Leaf
- Western Lily
- The Golden Branch (in The Mists)
- The Mists -- Archery and Rapier Champions may be offered an award of arms if they don't have one
- The Ruxton (in Cynagua)
- And there are some others -- please check the Regional notes which is more detailed and up-to-date.
If the recipient does not already have an Award of Arms, it is perfectly fine to grant the award You plan to the recipient, but You should tell the herald that they do not have an AA. The reason for this is that the ceremony for the Award of Arms needs to be read, which is included in each of the ceremonies for the awards (listed above). The herald also needs to report the recognition with the addition of the AA.
If the award You wish to give is one that grants a Grant of Arms, please check to see if the recipient already has a Grant of Arms (GA). The awards this is germane to are:
- Royal Missile Company
- The Western Gold Scarf
- Scarf of Merit
- Scarf of the Rose Leaf
- Scarf of the Ash Leaf
If the recipient does not already have a Grant of Arms, it is perfectly fine to grant the award You plan to the recipient, but You should tell the herald that they do not have a Grant. The reason for this is that the ceremony for the Grant of Arms needs to be read, which is included in each of the ceremonies for the awards (listed above). The herald also needs to report the recognition with the addition of the Grant.
For Peerages: the more lead time you can give the heralds (and the new peer) the better. When done properly, a peerage includes the reading of the recipient's blazon of their armory, for example, and unless the peerage is a surprise (this is not very common anymore, for many good reasons), various people are typically involved in the ceremony, and need some time to plan.
For multiple recipients of awards, recognitions and honors, such as Queen's Cyphers or members of the Queen's (or Princess') Guard, and such -- if You can provide the names of everyone, preferably in a "sorted" order, it would help the heralds immensely, as they are asked to sort the list when reporting it. Some of these lists can be quite lengthy.
In all cases, it helps if You can provide the full name(s) of the award recipients. We (the heralds) understand that if all You are working from is a letter of recommendation for an award, and the letter gives just a single name, there isn't a lot You can do, but perhaps trying to find the person who wrote the letter to get more information? You could ask the herald to help, a court member, etc. This is important, because single names cannot be used in the awards list -- it may cause problems in the report generation -- sometimes two peoples' awards will get merged together, which is confusing for everyone. Even if it doesn't, it could conceivably confusing to have more than one person with a single name listed when searching or looking at the Awards List. By default the Golem Herald will, if no second name is given, add a regional designator, such as Paul of the Mists to avoid confusion. Please check the awards list online if at all possible for the correct spelling of the names of the award recipients.
Giving Awards to Residents of Other Kingdoms/Principalities/Baronies

If You, as the royalty, wish to reward someone, or honor them (make them a member of a guard, for example), it is good form to request permission of the royalty of where they live. It is most important for higher level awards, ones that have precedence -- anything from an Award of Arms or higher. When doing so, You are granting precedence to an individual, and therefore changing their status within that Kingdom or Principality. (The same might be said for Baronial awards, although Baronial awards in the West don't have precedence, it is still good form to ask.)

In addition, when giving recognitions to someone who does not live in the West, Your Principality, or Barony, it is helpful to let the heralds know before court, so that they can write that down (this is most important for out of Kingdom recognitions). This becomes especially helpful when the Crown gives recognitions such as the Defender of the West, or even Queen's Cyphers. If the herald knows they are from another Kingdom, when the processing (listed above) is done with the Court Report, that information can be passed on to that Kingdom's Awards herald/clerk. It is difficult to ferret out this information after the fact, please, be courteous and help out Your servants, the heralds, in this matter.

These guidelines are meant to help out everyone, especially the court herald (and in the long run the Golem Herald and the Kingdom Chronicler).

What If An Award Recipient Is Not At The Event? -- sometimes the Royalty determine to give a recognition, but the recipient can't be there. This isn't discovered (quite often) until court is in session, and so on. The difficulty then becomes, what to do? The ceremony has been read (or started), the name has been called, but they aren't there. How to handle it? There are a couple options that should be considered, but the Royalty really need to discuss this with the herald after court:

Give the award anyway, have it published, and move on. When you can, get any tokens to the recipient, etc. The biggest reason to do this is that it is the end of the reign, and the Royalty are about to step down ... but it can happen at any time. This saves a lot of hassle remembering to do this at a future event, and reporting the information as well.
Hold onto the recognition, and not give it until You are at an event the recipient is also at. This requires asking the populace in court to not say anything, and asking the herald to not report it. This can be handled by the herald in a couple of ways, including just plain not reporting it, putting information in the Court Report notes so that the Royalty and everyone realize what happened (never a bad idea anyway), or reporting as usual, but putting something into the notes (which can be confusing) that says "please don't publish" or whatever, with at least some explanation ("recipient was not at the event, Their Majesties wish to present this in person, and will do so at a future date"). This last option is not ideal, and not suggested, as it can be confusing.

After Court Is Over

Report Procedure:

The Court Herald, or a Senior Herald at the event, compiles a list of awards given by the Royalty.
The Court Herald (or some other herald, sometimes a Senior Herald, or a "Herald-in-Charge" at the event) goes to the Heralds' website, and enters awards into a web form. (Court Report -- please do not use this unless you are filling in the list yourself -- if so, please PLEASE read the instructions carefully!)
The Court Report web page, when filled out properly, is then "submitted". This report sends an email message to a variety of people, including You, the herald who ran court, the herald who reported it (if not the same person), the Golem Herald, the Chronicler for the West Kingdom (to ensure the information makes it into The Page). The person filling this out can add other email addresses to the list if it is felt to be a good idea.
Here's where YOUR PART comes in. Just a little more:
- You will receive a copy of the list in email. We (the heralds) request that You confirm the awards. If there are multiple awards lists in your email, please confirm each email as noted below.
  
  PLEASE CHECK YOUR EMAIL REGULARLY AFTER AN EVENT YOU GAVE AWARDS AT!!
- This requires that You review the list, and compare to any notes You may have from that Court (see note above).
- When You are ready, click the "Reply to All" or "Reply All" (or words to that effect) on Your email program.
- If all is looking good with the list, all that You need to do is say "This looks great!" (or other wording such as "We confirm these awards." or whatever works for You) and add Your (SCA) name(s) as a signature. This only requires one of the pair of royalty, as we consider the Coronet or Crown to be working together -- meaning a report does not need both the Sovereign and Consort to confirm it.
- If there are corrections (something missing, an incorrect name, etc.) please make corrections in the reply, and "sign" the email with your SCA name.
- Send it. Please note: Sometimes You may receive multiple emails for the same court (if a big one), or multiple emails for different courts all at the same time -- please confirm each email.
- Please note that sometimes the Golem Herald may have questions once the court report is confirmed, this is not a reflection on anyone, it is only an attempt to assure the most accurate information is in the awards list. Please answer as soon as possible if You have the information, or note that You don't.
Once the Confirmation arrives (and not before), awards are entered into the Awards List Database. This is the official repository for the awards. The West Kingdom Awards List website (West Kingdom Awards List) is updated often, sometimes multiple times in one day. This is the real, honest to gawd official listing per the Laws of the West. At the same time, as a courtesy, the Kingdom Chronicler will also be putting the awards into the next issue of The Page.

Why is it required that the Royalty confirm the report? Integrity of the information -- if the Golem Herald does not enter any reports that have not been confirmed, we avoid issues with a fake report, and so on. In addition, if the Royalty look a report over and check against any records They have, it can help ensure that someone didn't get missed by the submitting herald, or other errors that sometimes creep in -- the spelling of a name, that kind of thing.

How To Check For Accuracy

Often Royalty wish to check to see if all awards have been reported. This can be done in a variety of ways, some of which are a bit time consuming and difficult. (For example, you can look up each person you gave awards to individually.) The simplest means of checking to see all awards that are officially reported as having been given by You, go to this page on the Awards List website: West Kingdom Royalty. Select the "Region" (West, Mists, etc.), and then find Your names and the Reign in question (recent reigns at the bottom of the list). There is a link for each reign that says "Awards Given". Click that. You will see a list of all awards that have been made official for Your Reign.

If You wish to correct this information in any way (missing data, wrong date(s), etc.) please send an email to the Golem Herald.

"Standing In"

This is a topic that sometimes comes up -- sometimes the Crown (or Coronet of a Principality) really wish to recognize individuals at an event that They cannot attend. In cases like that, They may ask that You stand in for Them at a court, do the ceremonies and recognize the individuals. This can be anything from an Award of Arms up through peerage, or other recognitions.

In such cases You may wish to, during the ceremony, add some wording that explains to the populace that You are standing in for (insert appropriate royalty), and performing this ceremony on Their behalf.

For the court report, while You may have given the recognition, it was done in the name of the Royalty you stood in for (the King and Queen, the Prince and Princess, etc.). There should be a separate court report with the names of those royals as the ones who gave the recognitions, and a note by the herald in the "Notes" section that You stood in for (insert appropriate royalty) to present this recognition.

Considering Creating a New Award (or Modifying an Existing One)?

Before creating a new recognition (award), there are several things to consider.

First, and most importantly: You should ask Yourselves if the award is really necessary. This may sound like a specious question, but it is an important one. There are many awards at the various levels (Kingdom, Principality, Barony). What is unique about the award you are considering creating? Is it really going to benefit the Kingdom, Principality, or Barony in some way? Or is it going to end up being an award that is given once or twice and then never again, because no one knows what to do with it or why it should be given?

You may wish to go back over the recognitions currently available to You, and see if one of those will suit Your needs instead of creating a new recognition. The Kingdom and Principality ceremony books (and a few Baronial ceremony books) can be found here: West Kingdom Ceremony Book -- this includes lists of all awards that we have ceremonies for. Baronial ceremony books are trickier, hopefully your local herald has one. You can also find lists of awards that You can grant on the Awards List - Award Descriptions page, and You can dig into the specific region (Kingdom, Principality, or Barony) for a breakdown there.

Please note that Kingdom Law requires that new awards be published online within 90 days, and in The Page within 60 days. Otherwise they are not "real" awards -- they will need reaffirmation to become official.

If You decide to go ahead, You need to work with the heralds and with Your Seneschal for the award to be truly official -- so the award ends up in the Laws (or appropriate official document). If there is a token You will need to work with Your Regalia officer.

This gets trickier for Baronies, as Baronies cannot, according to Corpora, have "laws" as such. However, each Barony should have a document that is maintained by the Seneschal of "Customs and Traditions", a "Charter", "By-Laws", or perhaps a "Codex", that includes the awards/recognitions that may be given by the Coronet(s) of the Barony as they are currently described and being given. So in any discussion below about laws, please note that this should be the Customs and Traditions document (whatever it may be called in your Barony). Changes should be noted as to whom (Baron/ess) and signed/dated by the seneschal. If your Barony does not have a document of this nature at this time, it is suggested you look at what some of the other Baronies have. The current West Kingdom website has a link to the laws which includes any Baronial ones that they have: West Kingdom Law GoogleSite.

For Kingdom and Principality law changes, they must be read in court, published in The Page, and ultimately the updated laws posted on the Kingdom (and Principality sites). For Baronial changes to the 'official document' (see above), there is no requirement that they be read into court, but it is suggested that once You (the royalty) and your Seneschal and Herald agree on any new or changed awards, that an update be posted on your website, and sent to the Kingdom Web team to put on the West Kingdom Law GoogleSite (mentioned above).

The heralds have to deal with the award in several ways:

Name of the award and the Award Token (if any) -- how does the award name sound? How is it pronounced? What language is it (if not English)?
Award List -- ranking (where does this recognition rank among the others)? The Awards List needs a description of the award as well -- what it is given for, etc.
Is this recognition an order or award, or a temporary title (champion, guard, etc.)? An order or award is "forever", and a temporary title is for the duration of the reign of the Royalty that gave it or some other specific duration (a year, six months, until the next Coronet List, etc.). Example: membership in the Queen's Guard is a temporary title, because once the sovereign and consort leave the thrones, the Queen's Guard is released, and members are no longer on the guard. The difference between an order and an award is that usually a person is ony admitted to an order once, where an award may be given multiple times.
Ceremony Creation/Modification -- the heralds will need to create a ceremony for a new recognition, or if changing the definition, either a ceremony needs to be created, or an existing one needs to be modified.

As You can see, there is more to creating an award than might be obvious. But once again, before You start, seriously consider whether the award is even necessary.

Questions?

If You have any questions, You can send them to the Golem Herald. The Golem Herald is Your Servant, and willing to assist in whatever way possible.