King Darius Third Reign
Society for Creative Anachronism
Presentation/Largesse Piece
19.0mm .999 Silver
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There are four different An Tir Royal presentation/largesse
pieces. First, an explanation of what Royal prensenation pieces are:
The Moneyers' Guild of the Principality of Cynagua (Sacramento Valley)
in the Kingdom of the West initiated the custom of the Moneyers'
Guild presenting to each new Prince of Cynagua (two Princes rule each
year) a number of coins struck in his name for his use. Uses ranged
from hoarding them as treasure to flinging them to the crowds like
Mardi Gras "doubloons", but primarily they're used as individual gifts
and tokens of personal recognition by the ruler. Originally each
ruler received 120 pieces; later the number was increased to "one
pound nominal" (i.e. 240 pence), plus it is customary to present two
fine silver strikes to the consort or Queen.
The custom began (in the mid-'80's, I think) because there
was an overlap in membership of the Moneyers' Guild and various
fighter groups, whose members occasionally won the Coronet Tournament.
When one of these friends of the moneyers won the Crown Tournament,
the custom spread to presenting such pieces to each new King of the
West, and the Crown recognized the Kingdom level Moneyers' Guild of
the West. There are three Kings per year in West. On a few occasions,
such pieces have also been struck for Princes of the Principality of
the Mists (San Francisco Bay area branches of the Kingdom of the West,
but not regularly, as few members of the MGW happen to live in the Mists.
Sometimes the Consort's name is included in the inscription,
sometimes not - probably primarily determined by the length of the names
and space availability on the die. All of these presentation/largesse
pieces have mon dies for the reverse. Probably an average of three to
five different mon dies can be found among the coins of a given Prince
or King. A "mon die" is a penny size trussel (i.e. "hammer die") that
can be used whenever one side of a coin that size can have a "generic"
design. Having one's own mon die is a privilege of being a Journeyman
or Fellow of the Moneyers' Guilds (in the An Tir Guild, it is the first
die an apprentice makes as part of qualifying to become a Journeyman).
"Mon" is short for "monetarius" = Latin for moneyer. (Among the coins
I'm sending you minted by the Moneyers' Guild of the West, there's only
one Royal presentation/largesse type, but among other types of pieces
from the MGW there are several different mon dies. Among the An Tir
coins I'm sending, the only mon die represented is my own.)
In the West, the mon die consists of the individual's privy mark
symbol as the main design, with "mon" across the top and the individual's
given name across the bottom, with a beaded border circle and usually
some filler ornamentation. In An Tir the mon dies are all based on the
long cross of the pennies of Henry III of England (type minted 1247-'79),
the last medieval coin type to name the moneyer on the coin. The first
steel die I sank was this long cross type (which I used on my long cross
silver trade penny), so it is essentially my mon die. However, it doesn't
have my privy mark on it. The mon dies of the other members of the An
Tir Guild have their privy mark replacing one of the groups of three
pellets in one angle of the cross. As on my long cross die, the
inscription is the moneyer's given name, "on" (English for Norman French
"en" meaning "in") and the name of his SCA branch of residence (usually
extremely abbreviated).
Unlike the Kingdom of the West, An Tir has only two Kings per
year, the first being crowned at the Twelfth Night Feast (usually the
first or second weekend of January), and the second being Crowned on
the second or third weekend of July. I introduced the custom of the
Royal presentation pieces into AnTir at the first coronation (out of
three) of King Darius in July of '92.
This Royal presentation/largesse piece was for the third
reign of King Darius. For Darius' first Coronation, I copied a very
simple generic enthroned king image from a silver tram of Cilician
Armenia (substituting a Latin inscription), with my long cross "mon"
for the reverse. [excerpt from old letter:] For Darius' second
Reign (beginning January '94), I wanted to do something appropriate
to his historical persona; the problem is that his persona is
"Arthurian Roman-British", a place and time (late 5th - early 6th
century) when no coins were either minted or used as money. The
solution was to make something appropriate to another persona of
Cliff Frick (Darius' "mundane" name); he was an Imperator (i.e.
commander - "IMP" in the coin's inscription) and Legionary Tribune
("TRP" on the coin) in the Legio XXIII, a second century Roman
military re-enactment group. (In fact, at his first Coronation as
King of An Tir, his personal guard was made up of legionaries with
ancient Roman clothing, armor and weapons. However, at his second
Coronation, where these coins were actually presented, he dressed
consistently with Queen Jacyntha's Tudor persona, with the result
that he very much resembled one of the Holbein portraits of Henry VIII.)
Primarily I was just interested in trying ancient Roman
style die work, including an attempt at an actual portrait, just to
see if I could do it. I spent five weeks engraving the dies. While
the portrait does look handsome (if I do say so myself), and it does
look Roman, it is not, in fact, an exact likeness. The nose is
slightly too long; the distance from the nose to the tip of the chin
isn't quite long enough; the eye is a little to far back from the
bridge of the nose; the head isn't quite blocky enough (I was working
from a photo that didn't show the back of his head). These defects
simply reflect the present limits of my ability to analyze and control
the proportions. Still, the result is recognizably Darius, and I
rationalize the difference with the comment about the Greek cælators
of the Eastern Imperial mints idealizing their subjects more than the
cælators at Rome.
For the other side of the coin, honouring Queen Jacyntha, my
primary model was a Roma seated type denarius of Elagabalus (struck in
219) in my collection.
King Darius and Queen Morgaine were crowned in January of 1997.
While it was very convenient to use the portrait die I'd made for Darius'
second Reign for the third Reign, I couldn't use the Jacyntha reverse.
By the time Darius won the Crown Tournament the third time, he had a new Consort, Morgaine.
On the new die, I Latinized her name as "Morgana".
To make it different at a glance, I used a standing female figure. My
inspiration was the ancient Roman "Fortuna Redux" ("to the fortunate
return" [of the Emperor]) type issued when the Emperor was travelling
away from Rome (besides the cornucopeia, Fortuna holds a rudder as her
identifying attribute). For years I'd admired the composition of a
Fortuna Redux antoninianus of Postumus (259-'68) in my collection; it
solves the problem of the vertical column of the standing figure filling
the circular space by using lots of diagonal design elements (e.g., the
parallel outstretched arm, cornucopeia, and dress drapery/ the rudder
and bent leg showing through the dress pulled tight over it).
I pretty much exactly copied my antoninianus and photos of other
similar Roman types - except for the head. I showed the hair down the
way Morgaine actually wears it (Roman female figures always had it up
in a bun), and tried to make the face look a little like Morgaine.
Except for the unevenness of the letter sizes, I think this one is
closer to the actual style of Roman coins of the period than the
Jacyntha type. The Fortuna Redux inscription is not, in this context,
a reference to Darius travelling, but rather a play on His use of the
title Dux (Latin for Duke) - suggestive of something like "the Duke
is back, and aren't we fortunate". One other note: I don't remember
whether it was before or after His third Coronation, but the portrait
die got rusty in storage, and I had to re-engrave a lot of the
portrait, resulting in it being a little higher relief than earlier
mintings. This silver strike has been sitting around for a long time,
so it's picked up some peripheral golden toning.
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The Moneyer of Silberbyrg ...
EMail:Ian Cnulle (Greg Franck-Weiby)
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