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RIP: Aiden ni Leir
Sep. 8th, 2015 11:04 amWord just went out on Facebook that Countess Aiden has passed away. It's a bit of a shock -- I hadn't heard that anything was up but then, I haven't had much contact with her in recent years.
You know how people will sometimes talk about the first King (or Baron) who really made a powerful positive impression on them being "their King"? Aiden was Caitlin's and my Kingdom Officer, the person who defined for us how you do the job. Caitlin was well-known as the Institutional Memory of the East, but we were always conscious that she had picked that job up from Aiden -- when we were getting involved at the Kingdom level, Aiden was the Kingdom's Lawspeaker, in much the same way that Kali was Carolingia's: she was the person who not only knew *what* the laws were, but *why* they had been written that way in the first place, and by whom. Long after she stepped down as Kingdom Seneschal, she was the calm voice in Curia saying, "Your Majesty, I think there's a better way to do that".
We were never terribly close to her, but we learned a lot simply by watching her and learning by her example. She was an important force for coherence and sanity in the Kingdom, and one of my exemplars of the Order of the Rose: courteous but forceful. She will be missed...
You know how people will sometimes talk about the first King (or Baron) who really made a powerful positive impression on them being "their King"? Aiden was Caitlin's and my Kingdom Officer, the person who defined for us how you do the job. Caitlin was well-known as the Institutional Memory of the East, but we were always conscious that she had picked that job up from Aiden -- when we were getting involved at the Kingdom level, Aiden was the Kingdom's Lawspeaker, in much the same way that Kali was Carolingia's: she was the person who not only knew *what* the laws were, but *why* they had been written that way in the first place, and by whom. Long after she stepped down as Kingdom Seneschal, she was the calm voice in Curia saying, "Your Majesty, I think there's a better way to do that".
We were never terribly close to her, but we learned a lot simply by watching her and learning by her example. She was an important force for coherence and sanity in the Kingdom, and one of my exemplars of the Order of the Rose: courteous but forceful. She will be missed...