“Men coveted this talon once.  Henry was eighteen when we met and I was Queen of France.  He came down from the North to Paris with a mind like Aristotle’s and a form like mortal sin.  We shattered the Commandments on the spot.  I spent three months annulling Louis and in spring, in May not far from here, we married.  Young Count Henry and his Countess.  But in three years’ time, I was his Queen and he was King of England.  Done at twenty-one. .. There was no Thomas Becket then, or Rosamund.  No rivals, only me.  And then young Henry came and you and all the other blossoms in my garden.  Yes, if I’d been sterile, darling, I’d be happier today.”

Eleanor, The Lion in Winter

“It is the common fate of sons to be misunderstood by their fathers, and of fathers to be unloved of their sons, but it has been the particular bane of the English throne.”

Harvey, Richard I

For the last six months, civil war has divided England.  Young King Henry, only 18, has withdrawn to the court of his father-in-law, King Louis of France, and taken with him his younger brothers Richard and Geoffrey.  Henry has rallied to his side not only his allies in France, but also many of the barons in England who are dissatisfied with King Henry II and angry over the death of Thomas Beckett.  Even the great Queen Eleanor has been locked in a tower for conspiring with her sons.  And in the meantime, to the north, rebellious Scots raid south into England.  As the long winter has set on the Court in London, the Angevin Empire built over the last twenty years seems to hang by a very precarious thread. 

Many of the Kindred who hold Court in London remember the last time civil war threatened it, during the great Anarchy. They recall the attempted assassination of their Prince and the battles that broke out between those of Norman and Saxon decent.   However, when most whisper about the slow twilight of the London Court, they go back even further.  They remember eight decades previous, when the Prince's Lord Chancellor was announced to have died on the First Crusade and all of the Mekhet were purged violently from the city.  Since then, the many progeny of the Prince have been pitted against each other and their fellow Ventrue as they struggle to define their legacy.  The Barons are left plotting over lands, hunting rights, and perhaps even the eventual control of the city itself.  The Lancea et Sanctum has turned against itself as it tries to root out heretical cults of its own creation.  And the city has seen a clan, having fallen so far from grace, try to find its way back to power.  As the Kindred come together for one night, the Danse Macabre circles as the troubadours play.

Welcome to the Winter Court of London.

A Vampire Requiem LARP One-Shot

Saturday, November 7th, 2009 *3pm - 9pm

Zhou B. Art Center * 1029 W. 35th St. * Chicago * $5

ca-storytellers "at" googlegroups "dot" com