How should you address royalty?

Today, I want to briefly address something that comes up fairly frequently in the micronational world - how to address royalty. This is a quick and dirty guide, there's a Wikipedia article with a lot more information that you might want to look at.

Some people seem to default to addressing everyone as "Your Highness", but this is incorrect. In fact, there are a dizzying array of titles and methods of address.

Briefly, the main ones are "Your Majesty", "Your Highness", and "Your Grace". 

The most "majestic" of these is reserved for rulers - kings and queens. (Emperors are addressed as "Your Imperial Majesty".) However, you normally only use the formal address at the start of a conversation - after that, you can use "Sire" or "Ma'am" as appropriate.

"Your Royal Highness" is used for non-regnal members of the royal family, particularly princes and princesses, although some monarchs also use this form of address.

"Your Grace" is typically used for non-royal dukes (royal ones get an upgrade to "Your Royal Highness") and other high-ranking individuals.

Make your life more royal (part one of a series) - Inspiration

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. At least superficially 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.

To start with, well, you need to know where to start. In my case, I'm interested in modern European royalty, so that's what I'll be focusing on.

Visual imagery can be very inspiring. While you could just use a search engine, you could also try Pinterest boards - here's one I made for "Palace Inspiration", for example. I have similar boards for "Royal attire" and "Royal throne".

Television shows are often a good source for visual inspiration, including series such as "Downton Abbey", "Bridgerton", and "The Crown". There are also a number of movies such as The Queen, The King's Speech, and (for lighter fare) King Ralph.

One thing you can do to inject a bit of royalty into your life is to set your phone ringtone to a trumpet "fanfare" to insert a bit of royalty into your daily life - you can find a number of short fanfare videos like this one on YouTube; transferring the audio to your phone is left as an exercise for the reader.

Château de Gruyères, Switzerland

Any press is good press!

Robert Motum, who recently finished his PhD on micronations at the University of Toronto, came to MicroCon to gather information for an article in the Globe & Mail. That article has now been published, and includes a photo of me! And yes, that's the same uniform seen here.

An article in the Globe & Mail about
micronations has a photo of me

Micronational Stamps

To close out our week of "micronational collectibles", we'll consider the postage stamp. While it isn't something that Slabovia has actively pursued, many micronations have their own stamps made.

Stamp from the Aerican Empire, given out at MicroCon 2025

A set of stamps commemorating the first four MicroCon events, created by West Who

An assortment of stamps from Obscurium

What's more, many micronations actually use their stamps in mail - as long as your envelope has the appropriate postage for the "macronation" it'll be passing through, it generally moves just fine through the postal services. The photo below includes envelopes I've received from (top to bottom) Angyalistan, West Who, Ruritania, Duckionary, and Obscurium

An assortment of micronational stamps that have moved through the macronational postal systems

This concludes this week's exploration of various micronational souvenirs I've collected over the years. Hopefully it's given you some idea of the creativity involved in creating and running a micronation!

Micronational Currency

Continuing with our theme of "micronational collectibles", another area that many micronations choose to explore is making their own currency. The picture below has representative examples from three different micronations, including Aigues-Mortes (top left), the Aerican Empire (bottom left and lower right), and Molossia (the poker chip, er, coin in the top right).

Examples of micronational currency

The Flamant from Aigues-Mortes is particularly interesting because it's a "legal" currency - due to a quirk of French banking laws, they were able to create a currency that's legal tender within the town of Aigues-Mortes, and is accepted by at least some merchants there.

The Molossian coin is a "5 valora" piece, the valora being somehow pegged to the price of Pilsbury cookie dough (yes, the stuff that comes in a tube).

You can't see the detail very well, but the blue coin from the Aerican Empire on the right is a 1.99 Bacon piece, Bacon being the name of the Emperor's cat. They print the coins in different sizes using a 3D printer, and the value of each coin is pegged to the amount of plastic filament used in making that particular coin.

Another example of bank notes comes from Karnia-Ruthenia - I picked these up at MicroCon 2025. They are relatively small (measuring 5x10 cm or 2x4 inches) but they feature very nice engraving!

Bank notes from Karnia-Ruthenia

Micronational Challenge Coins

This week, I'm focusing on several different micronational "trappings" (including challenge coins, currency, and stamps) that I've managed to build small collections of over the years - they might give you some idea about the depth and breadth of creativity that micronations can pursue.

Challenge coins aren't too common in the micronational world yet, but that's slowly starting to change. One of the elements in the "swag bag" at MicroCon 2025 was a challenge coin, in fact. Here's the ones I have collected in the last few years. This includes the aforementioned MicroCon 2025 coin from the Aerican Empire, one presented to me by Jordan Farmer, the former prime minister of Westarctica, and one from the Chief of Staff of Karnia-Ruthenia, as well as a commemorative coin I had made and distributed to signatories of the CHICAGO Agreement (see note below) and my personal challenge coin.

Top Row: MicroCon 2025, Prime Minister of Westarctica, Karnia-Ruthenia Chief of Staff
Bottom Row: CHICAGO Agreement commemorative coin, my personal challenge coin

Same coins as above, just flipped over!

NOTE: The CHICAGO Accord (or Agreement) is short for the Cyber Hostility Intervention Comprehensive Agreement Covering Offense. It's a treaty I drew up in conjunction with my talk at MicroCon 2023 (which was held near Chicago!) about cyber warfare and micronations. Effectively, signatories of the CHICAGO Accord promise not to engage in offensive cyber warfare against other micronations. A list of signatories of the CHICAGO Accord can be found here.

Edited to add: if you're wondering what the deal is with challenge coins, Howard Tayler wrote a pretty good guide on his Schlock Mercenary web comic some years ago.

What is a fons honorum and why is it important?

 Did you ever wonder how royal titles like "baron" or "lord" get granted, or how a chivalric order gets established? In this case, both questions have the same answer - the fons honorum, or (literally) "fount of honour".

The term fons honorum comes from Latin, and refers to an individual whose position grants them the right to confer titles on others and/or to establish chivalric orders. Typically, this is the sovereign ruler of a nation, such as a king or queen. Elected officials such as presidents and prime ministers are typically NOT considered to be a fons honorum.

A related but different concept is the military commission - in many military organizations, an officer carries a "commission" which is a formal document communicating the individual's authority to effectively act on behalf of the head of state in the command of others. In this case the head of state could be a president or prime minister, rather than just a sovereign. As an aside, this is also why enlisted military personnel such as sergeants and corporals are sometimes called NCM (non-commissioned members) or NCO (non-commissioned officers). Not to muddy the waters further, but in the US military a "warrant officer" has their position and authority granted by a warrant that's usually signed by the secretary of the respective service, rather than a commission signed by the president.

Going back to the topic at hand, i.e. the fons honorum, it is possible to delegate the authority - in Slabovia's case, I granted the Baron of Mars (AKA my chancellor) and his household the authority to create and grant a household honour, and I understand that they are now designing it. I also granted my queen-consort, Queen Lynne, the authority to name individuals to her "Queen-Consort's Fellowship", an honour she has granted numerous times over the last eight years.

The Queen-Consort's Fellowship medal

To sum up, a ruling sovereign is the fons honorum, or fount of honour, for the nation they rule. As such, yes, I have the power to elevate someone to the nobility - I could, for example, proclaim someone to be the Baron of Barrie or the Count of Cabbagetown, and such a title would be valid within the confines and the context of Slabovia. Whether that could get you any perks, such as a discount at your local drycleaners, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Oh, and before anyone asks.. No, I will not elevate you to the peerage (or knight you) just because you asked. Such honours are bestowed for a reason, and giving them out like candy would cheapen them.