The First Slabovian Crown Jewel?

Long time readers of this blog might recall that 2024 was a double jubilee year for Slabovia, marking both its 40th year of existence and my 25th year as its ruler. To mark the occasion, during that year I acquired this ring which symbolizes both my own 25th jubilee (via the silver making up the ring itself, since silver is a traditional 25th anniversary gift) and Slabovia's 40th jubilee (by way of the ruby, which is traditionally the material that marks a 40th anniversary).

Excuse the cat hair - the royal mouser sheds EVERYWHERE

We are still planning other official crown jewels, including a crown, a scepter, and an orb, but this piece marks the start of the collection!

Well, it certainly makes a statement!

 I'd previously blogged about my search for a throne... Last week I spotted this one on the Merchoid website. Given the state of the royal coffers right now, I might need to crowd-fund it...

Does it look comfortable? Not sure...

Sometimes, you get lucky... or maybe the universe aligns

In the run-up to Operation Pole Dance, I'd reached out to Emperor Eric of the Aerican Empire to ask him to bring me an item from Quebec. He indicated that he would do so, and give it to me as a gift.

Generosity cannot go unanswered, so we obtained a reciprocal gift for the imperial residence. And, as we were going to be travelling to the rendez-vous with a member of the press, we got them those "Press" patches (large and small) with hook-and-loop fastener, so they could look the part.

Note the "Press" individual appropriately labeled on the right

That then left Grand Duke Travis of Westarctica... I certainly didn't want to snub him, so I needed to find a suitable gift for him as well. Then, inspiration struck me! Earlier this year, I'd found a nice "swagger stick" or baton (effectively a short staff of office, formerly carried by certain members of the military), but for some reason it was sold in sets of two, so I had a spare. So, I wrapped it up with the other items, took everything with me to Niagara Falls, and presented everyone with their gifts.

Well, it turned out that this was EXACTLY the right gift for Travis, as he'd been looking for one for his uniform for a number of years! 

Presenting Grand Duke Travis with his new stick

Same presentation, slightly different view

Sometimes things align just so, and we really can't say why. Maybe it's fate or random chance or some higher design, I can't say. But, in this case, everything worked out well.

Finally, a throne!

I've previously documented my search for a suitable throne. Today, I'm happy to reveal that I've found one! While rummaging through the local charity store, I found a wonderful medieval-looking chair:

The new throne of Slabovia

That won't be its final resting place - in that picture, it's blocking access to the basement stairs (on the left) AND the downstairs bathroom (on the right). I'm also still contemplating potential modifications to make it more "royal". And, of course, if I find an even better throne at some point in the future, then so be it.

But, for now, We have Our throne. 👑

Making your life more royal (part four of a series) - Dressing the part

Part of the reason I set up this blog is to help people "put a little royalty into their life". To that end, I've kicked off this semi-regular series of postings about bringing the castles of Europe to you, sort of. Similar to the "Gothic Homemaking" series of videos that were put out by Aurelio Voltaire (over on YouTube), this will be a recurring series on how to make your own life, well, a bit more royal.

Part one of this series can be found here. Part two of this series can be found here. Part three is here.

If "the clothes make the man" (or woman), that's doubly true when it comes to the nobility. Since a first impression is a powerful influence, it's important to ensure that strangers recognize your regnal authority at first glance.

However, it's important to recognize that there are different levels of dress. Much like members of the military might have "ceremonial" (formal parade) uniforms, "mess dress", "Class A" (dress) uniforms, and "duty dress", you will want to invest in several different outfits.

First is the coronation attire. It will be worn rarely, possibly only once, but it is the ultimate statement of "dress to impress". Think ermine robes, full crown, orb and scepter, etc.

Next is the formal wear: white tie or black tie, for state dinners and other formal functions. Ladies, this is typically the only time you'll wear a tiara.

At about the same level we have ceremonial parade uniforms, for those nobles who are also service members or honorary unit commanders. Wearing these is largely context-dependent - if you're acting in the military capacity in any way, then this would be appropriate. (However, beware of "stolen valour" accusations - do not use modern military insignia or medals that you haven't earned yourself, not even replicas!)

Business attire (blazer or sport coat with collared shirt and dressy pants such as chinos for men, either a nice dress or trousers and jacket for women) would be worn for official but less-formal occasions. In cooler weather, I prefer Harris tweed sport coats, ideally with a vest underneath (with a pocket watch on a fob chain), and either a club tie or a regimental tie (or an ascot if I'm feeling playful), with a London Fog trench coat if the weather requires it. 

Finally, casual attire is day-to-day wear - jeans and polo shirts or t-shirts, for example. Clothing and footgear should be in good repair. I like to wear a t-shirt that I picked up at Universal Studios several years ago that says "King" - just to make it clear.

What the well-dressed king wears in his off-hours?

Finally, a word about hats: understand the rules about wearing them! For gentlemen, hats should be worn outdoors, and in outdoors-equivalent areas such as the lobby of a building or an elevator, but should be removed immediately on entering the indoors. In particular, a hat must not be worn when eating! For women, if they are wearing a "fascinator" style of hat then it should stay on the head at all times in public, but otherwise (if, for example, she is wearing a baseball hat) the same rules that men follow would apply.

Making your life more royal (part three of a series) - Furnishing your castle

Part of the reason I set up this blog is to help people "put a little royalty into their life". To that end, I've kicked off this semi-regular series of postings about bringing the castles of Europe to you, sort of. Similar to the "Gothic Homemaking" series of videos that were put out by Aurelio Voltaire (over on YouTube), this will be a recurring series on how to make your own life, well, a bit more royal.

Part one of this series can be found here. Part two of this series can be found here.

We've already talked about thrones, but you probably need more furniture than just a throne, unless you expect all of your guests to remain standing for their entire visit. And, unless you're the king of Sweden, your furniture probably shouldn't all come from Ikea!

If you've got some money, then buying appropriate furnishings might be an option. I've seen some truly nice things on the Wayfair website, but their prices would destroy my treasury...

Search "executive desk" on Wayfair

Search "throne" on Wayfair

There are a few nice thrones over on Amazon, and the prices are a BIT lower than Wayfair.

You may get lucky and find suitable furnishings at your local charity store (Value Village, Goodwill, etc.) - I've heard that others have found thrones, etc. there, although I never have. If you're handy, you can often get beat-up furniture fairly cheaply and then refinish it at home.

If you're even handier, you might be able to build your own furniture. House Graydragon of the Society for Creative Anachronism has a webpage devoted to furniture, which includes plans for a Glastonbury chair, a simple Gothic bench, and a simple storage chest (which they use for storing bocce balls), among other things.

As further inspiration, there's a book called Constructing Medieval Furniture by Daniel Diehl (Stackpole Books, 1996) which, if you can find it, may prove inspirational for the DIY decorator. The author also co-wrote a book called Medieval & Renaissance Furniture: Plans & Instructions for Historical Reproductions with Mark P. Donnelly (Stackpole Books, 2012), but I don't know if it might overlap with the other one, or by how much. There are several other books on constructing medieval furniture available via retailers such as Amazon as well.

So what am I working on these days?

 As is typical when I return from a MicroCon, I came away with a whole bunch of ideas, and I've been slowly progressing on multiple fronts over the last couple of months:

• I continue to expand my social media presence, with active accounts on Bluesky, Instagram, and Tumblr, as well as an "alt" account on Facebook. And this blog, obviously. 😀
• I've started working on a book about microphaleristics. If it comes together the way I hope, I will probably publish it through Amazon (physical books only, not ebook).
• I had an initial conversation on Wednesday this week with Dr. Robert Motum, who wrote the Globe & Mail article about micronations and MicroCon recently. We're hoping to find something to collaborate together on - either a chapter in a book he's pitched to a publisher, or an article.
• I've started thinking at least semi-seriously about micronational currencies. I've obtained some "high rag content" paper to run some experiments in printing paper currency, and I'm also thinking about minting coins. And maybe stamps will follow?
• The queen expressed interest in having a military unit of her own, so I've been helping her lay the groundwork for what will become the Queen's Able Company of Knights, or QuACK for short. Their unit symbol will be a duck, naturally.
• As I previously hinted, I'm looking to maybe organize a regional "summit of micronations" for May or June of next year. Once I have the date and location fixed, I'll start publicizing it.
• I'm currently planning an expedition that will tie in to the "Intermicronational Year of Exploration" planned and announced by President Zar Antonov of the United Republic of Obscurium. I'm hoping to actually do the expedition one morning next week, if it's not too warm out.

I think that's it for active projects right now, but there are other projects that are on the back-burner  for various reasons. Some are pending more state funds, including crown jewels (a globus glama (see concept design below) and a silver crown with amethyst stones, maybe a scepter and a mace). I'd also like to figure out how to get over to Europe, both for the 2027 MicroCon in Aiges-Mortes and for at least one of the Micro European Summits.

Concept art for the globus glama

Make your life more royal (part two of a series) - Decorating your castle

Part of the reason I set up this blog is to help people "put a little royalty into their life". To that end, I'm kicking off a semi-regular series of postings about bringing the castles of Europe to you, sort of. Similar to the "Gothic Homemaking" series of videos that were put out by Aurelio Voltaire (over on YouTube), this will be a recurring series on how to make your own life, well, a bit more royal.

Part one of this series can be found here. 

One way of doing that is by taking the old adage, "A man's home is his castle," a bit more literally - and this is true whether you're a man, a woman, or anything else. While you can buy literal castles over in Europe (sometimes for less than what a house in Toronto, Canada will cost these days - see footnote), many of us aren't on that sort of budget, or can't relocate to Europe easily. So, absent a rich relative suddenly leaving you their fortune, let's see how we can "work with what we have" in terms of decorating your living space. We're not focusing on furniture today - that will be another post later. I'm talking about other adornments and accessories that will make it clear this is a palace, not a studio apartment.

Also, I'm not talking about spray-painting everything with gold paint or covering it all with gilt leaf and calling it a day. Frankly, that looks ugly and gauche.

Fortunately, as I write this (summer 2025), the retail stores near me (particularly the discount retailers like Marshall's) are just starting to enter "Code Orange", meaning they are starting to get their Halloween stock in. Who knows what sort of candelabras, wall sconces, and other quasi-gothic housewares - err, castlewares - you'll be able to pick up?

I picked these bat wall appliques up in the post-Halloween sales last year!
(Yes, I haven't used them yet - I sometimes buy things
without knowing exactly how/when they will be used.)

If your royal treasury is flush with gold, there are some very nice things to be found in the online shop of the Royal Collection, a registered charity in the UK that administers "almost the entire contents of all the royal palaces" (which are not owned by the current monarch, but held in trust by them for the future). By purchasing from them, you'll be supporting their efforts to preserve British history.

However, even if you're on a budget, there are things you can do/make/buy to "royal up" your castle. First, never underestimate your local second-hand stores - you can often find amazing things that other people have discarded. I found these pewter plates at our local "Value Village" a couple of years ago, complete with the hardware to hang them on the wall:

Pewter plates from a second-hand store

Some of your thrift store finds might need a bit of work, but it's amazing how a fresh coat of paint (again, NOT gold!) or refinishing can make something look new again. (On the other hand, having things that were already "well-loved" can also lend them a bit of authenticity.)

Similarly, check out local garage sales, etc. I don't have them any more, but I once found two wall plaques at a garage sale, each of which had two miniature (steel!) swords tucked behind a coat of arms.

Don't forget about Amazon wish lists! Amazon has lots of nice "royal" home furnishings such as statues and wall plaques, swords, and even chainmail and helmets, so if you build a wish list and share it to your friends and family, they can buy you things off of it for your birthday or other occasions!

Speaking of online shopping, you can check out the "fast fashion" websites like Temu, although the quality is often uneven, to say the least. And check the sizing on those sites - a 6" banner won't look that impressive on your wall!

You can find surprising things at dollar stores, too! The lion wall plaque at the left of the photo below came from a dollar store (and the portrait on the wall behind it was another find from the local "Value Village").

Royalty is where you find it...

Something you can do that's pretty cheap and easy to do is to find pictures of gargoyles online, print them out, put them in cheap frames from the dollar store, and hang them above your doors, stairs, etc. If you already have 8.5x11" document frames around the house, it'll only cost you the paper and printer ink/toner!

Framed gargoyle picture from the Internet.
Note the "Queen's Chambers" sign in the background

If you have some spare fabric lying around, or you can pick some up cheap, you can always hang it from the walls as a ceiling-to-floor drapery.

Also remember to look for inspiration in "castle-adjacent" things - in that last picture, you can also see a "Queen's Chambers" sign hanging up, near the bottom of the photo. I found that at the Michael's Arts & Crafts chain store as part of the Bridgerton-inspired collection they released last year.

Footnote: Yes, I'm serious about a castle in France costing less than a house in Toronto - I recently saw a listing for a castle in Ax-les-Thermes, France, with five bedrooms selling for $633,800 USD, or about $870,000 CAD. At the time of writing (July 2025), the average price for a detached house in Toronto is about $1.4 million CAD. So, you could buy the castle and still have enough left to furnish it, for what you'd pay for a house in Toronto.

New unit, new uniform (same king)

 I wore a new uniform for the diplomatic reception on the Friday night at MicroCon, as can be seen in the picture below. It represents the public debut of our new military unit, the King's Own Airborne Llama Artillery, or KOALA for short.

Dress uniform for KOALA, the King's Own Airborne Llama Artillery.
(My chancellor, Rankin, is visible on the right side of the photo.
And someone fuzzy is in the background?)

KOALA is actually based on two different historical facts - or, at least, one fact and a rumour. First, the rumour:  according to my father, our family might have been descended from a famous US military officer, who revolutionized the use of artillery in the Mexican-American war by realizing you didn't actually need to unhitch the horses to fire. (As I always say, as a bonus, it made the horses run a lot faster, too!) Second, a few years ago I learned about "zamburak", which were camel-mounted artillery pieces. 

The name of the unit is also based on historical precedents, between "horse artillery" units such as the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and units like the "Queen's Own Rifles". So KOALA is sort of a mashup of the two, with "airborne" thrown in for good measure.

So, since llamas are the national animals of Slabovia, I thought, could we do the same thing but with llamas? And then, to make them our "rapid response" unit, we could make them airborne!

The only thing keeping the unit from "going live" is a lack of airborne-qualified llamas. 

Oh, and yes, that's the head of a stuffed llama poking out of the holster - when anyone asked if it was loaded, I replied, "Yes, he's been drinking all day, he's QUITE loaded at this point." The llama was given to me by Zar Antonov of Obscuria in a parcel he sent me earlier this year. I put it in the holster because I wanted to make it quite clear that there was nothing more, um, pistol-like in said holster, just in case anyone got "twitchy". 

Another shot of the KOALA uniform, with Molossian President Kevin Baugh for scale.

Oh, and KOALA has a "Unit Crest" as well! I came up with idea for the overall design, and Chancellor Rankin was kind enough to help me realize my vision, because curved text can be a royal pain if you don't have the right image editing software! I did use Generative AI to come up with the "Koala bear with a gun" in the center of the piece, because I am spectacularly bad at drawing.

The crest for KOALA.