Rowenna de Manning

Rowenna joined the SCA in the Kingdom of the West in AS X.

Offices and Contributions

Chancellor of Madrone Campus - later expanded to South Sound - of the University of Ithra - AS XIV to AS XXI (1980 to 1986)
Regent of the University of Ithra - AS XIV to AS XXXVI (1980 to 2000)
Founding member of the Madrone Culinary Guild - AS XI (1977)
Award of Arms - March of AS XII (1978)
Red Tree Pursuivant (Madrone Herald)somewhere around AS XIII 3 years
Order of the Laurel for culinary arts, study and practice of Middle Eastern dance and costume - AS XIV (September 1979)
Deputy Kingdom Seneschal AS XVI 3 years
Kitchen head/banquet manager for 12 banquets AS XI to AS XXXIX (1980 to 2004)
Keeper of the Culinary Guild banquet equipment 20+ years (1983 - 2008)
Order of the Pelican for service to education, banquet stewarding, and administration - AS XVII (1983)
Retinue of Queen Angharad Banadaspus Drakenhefd (AS XVIII) 1984
Court Baroness of An Tir - AS XVIII (1984)
University of Ithra Master's Degree for the presentation of the four-hour basic survey class "Survey of the Middle Ages" more than three times
Retinue of Queen Angharad Banadaspus Drakenheft (AS XXI) 1986
Honored by elevation to the Lion of An Tir at Twelfth Night Coronation XXXVI/2002
Guild Head of the Madrone Culinary Guild - XL/2005-2006
Webminister for the Madrone Culinary Guild - AS L (2016 - ongoing)
Webminister of the Barony of Madrone - AS LIII / 2019 - ongoing)
Kingdom Webminister Roster Deputy - AS LIV / 2019 - 2023)
In September AS LIV / 2019 quietly celebrating 40 years as a Peer of the SCA
Content provider/Exhibitor Support/Waivers & Releases Control administrator - Event IT team, The Road to Athenaeum Virtual Artisans Fair hosted by the Barony of Madrone - July AS LV (2020)
Website content assistant editor - Ethereal Twelfth Night AS LV (January 2021)
Web content editor/Exhibitor Support - Event IT team, Athenaeum Virtual Artisans Fair (https://athenaeum.baronyofmadrone.net/) hosted by the Barony of Madrone - June AS LVI (2021)
Kingdom Calendar Event content editor - An Tir Twelfth Night - January AS LVI (2022)
Honor of the Lion's Strength - I guess I have just been doing things in An Tir going for a long, long time. - March AS LVI (2022)
Kingdom webteam editor
An Tir Culture Wiki Editor and member of the An Tir Culture One on One Help group on Facebook

Persona

Rowenna de Manning, born in the polyglot society of Normano-Arab Sicily of the 12th century, is the daughter of a Norman scholar and a Sicilian Arab merchant's daughter. Upon the death of her parents, her Norman father's relatives claimed her and took her to Christian lands. With a growing dislike for the curious customs of the Norman French, such as seldom taking a bath, Rowenna fled back to her relatives in Sicily,and subsequently travelled the merchant routes to the heart of the Ummah (Arab lands). Her Norman French relatives continue to try to retrieve her to live in the West, and Rowenna keeps well out of reach. She has been travelling on the Silk Road and lives in Bukhara when not visiting An Tir.

History in the SCA & An Tir

M'allima Rowenna found the SCA while attending the Black Point Renaissance Fair in Novato, California in 1975 but it took a year to actually find the local group. (Remember, this was before the existence of the internet. The SCA was not in the phone book.) She attended a medieval picnic and playday in a Sacramento park in April of 1976 in what was then the Barony of Golden Rivers. Made welcome by the people of Golden Rivers, Rowenna and her sister Aehlswyth of Coventry dove into the SCA. They attended May Crown the 10th Anniversary of the SCA at Big Trees in the hills east of Oakland, June Coronation, Vikingsholm Tourney and Demo at Lake Tahoe, Ducal Prize Tourney, and Purgatorio Coronation. They managed to squeeze in a drive to Eugene, Oregon to attend Egilsskallagrimson Tourney #2 and Rowenna met some wonderful Antirians.

By December of 1976, Rowenna and her partner Edward the stuffy decided to move to An Tir, and their first event in the principality was the Twelfth Night Coronation in January of 1977 in Adiantum. They have been stalwart participants in the SCA and the fortunes of the Principality, later Kingdom of An Tir ever since.

Rowenna is married to Master Edward the Stuffy, who is a member of the Order of the Pelican and #3 in the list of Lions of An Tir. Rowenna and Edward were the autocrats of the May Coronet Tourney in the Barony of Madrone that took place on May 17-18, 1980, and on the second day Mt. St. Helens erupted, which impacted travel back home for more than 100 attendees at the event. She served on the committee that worked in 1980 and 1981 to make An Tir a Kingdom, which Edward served as the Chair. In that work to create Antirian structure, Mistress Rowenna and Viscountess Maelen of Catcott created the names of the grant level Kingdom Awards, the Goutte de Sang and the Jambe de Leon. Rowenna was co-head cook with Mistress Arias the Innkeeper's Daughter of the banquet for 250 served at the first An Tir Kingdom Twelfth Night in January 1982, held in the Barony of Madrone.

She participated in the meeting in the Barony of Madrone in May AS XI (1977) that founded the Madrone Culinary Guild and she has been an active member ever since, in the first 20 years serving as kitchen head for many banquets, and in the recent 20+ years as cook, general kitchen helper and equipment packer. She maintains the Guild website (http://mcg.antir.sca.org/wp/). She assists Master Edward in making available the Guild publication "The Feudal Gourmet" pamphlet series. Contributions from purchase of pamphlets has funded cooking equipment and beautiful servingware for banquets prepared by the Guild (and is available for loan to other SCA groups).

Rowenna was present at the 10th anniversary of the SCA at Kingdom of the West Big Trees site (her second event), and Rowenna and Edward attended the 20th anniversary of the SCA in Ansteorra, the 30th anniversary of the SCA in An Tir, and the 50th anniversary of the SCA in the Middle Kingdom. For the 30th Year celebration, Rowenna and Edward, working with Sir Brand aux deus-Leons, loaded the the Guild's kitchen equipment into a truck and drove it to the 30th Year event site and made it available for use in the banquet kitchen at the event. The equipment was used to prepare and serve seven banquets over the course of the event. Rowenna also served on the event staff as coordinator of Middle Eastern activities.

From AS XIV to AS XXXV (1980 to 2000) Rowenna was a leader in the early University of Ithra (which was founded in AS X - 1975). Appointed both Chancellor and Regent in AS XIV, Rowenna took over the Madrone Campus founded by Baron Michael the Black, OP, Augmentation. She expanded the campus and it was renamed the South Sound Campus, promoting unity in the area. Rowenna organized more than 25 Ithra sessions in six years, before handing the Chancellorship to a successor. As Regent, Rowenna worked closely with Regents Baroness Amanda Kendal of Westmorland OL, and Elayne Greybeard, OP, to write the first Ithra Handbook, the first Chancellor's Handbook, and with Chancellor Anne-Marie d'Ailleurs, OL, wrote a Syllabus of the classes that students sat through to achieve a Lector Artis or Lector Scientae degree. Rowenna retired from the office of Regent in late 2000 after serving the University for 20 years, when she was promoted to a day job that was too busy for her to give enough SCA time.

In 1986, Rowenna and Edward participated in the SCA demo at the World's Fair in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. While Edward marshalled SCA heavy combat in the outdoor arena, Mistress Rowenna performed Egyptian raks al assaya and baladi dance in the demo pavillion for hundreds of Fair attendees. She ran a demonstration booth built as a small representation of an Arab tent and made camel tassels to give away.

Six months before the SCA 50th Anniversary in 2016, Mistress Rowenna collaborated with her friend Duchess Angharad Banadaspus Drakenhefd, OP, OL, Lion, and Dame Hrefna, OP, of Ansteorra working for the 50th Anniversary History Project to research and edit the 10,000-word essay "History of An Tir" that was prepared and distributed in conjunction with that event. In the effort to preserve and record An Tir history, Rowenna has written a number of wiki entries in the An Tir Wiki. In 2020, she participated in a "Sisters" interview with Sir Raoukinn, Kn, OP, Lion, and Mistress Achaxe, OL, and talked extensively about history she experienced, including the An Tir Rebellion and the founding of the Kingdom. Later in 2020, Rowenna and Master Edward participated in a "Sisters" interview talking about the early days of the Kingdom.

Since AS XII (1979), Rowenna has been researching clothing, culture and dance of women in the Middle East. She performs traditional-style dance of upper Egypt, lower Egypt, the Maghreb, and Central Asian Silk Road. She helped to disseminate the research that was being done across the SCA in the years AS X to the present, in an effort to make available information about period and appropriate garb and knowledge of dances that may be extrapolated to the SCA period for Middle Eastern women personas. She taught classes, shared her research in articles, and participated in online email discussion groups (before the World Wide Web). The internet vastly improved the ability to network on the subjects with other researchers across the SCA, and Facebook groups increased the information dissemination enormously. Rowenna seeks to always provide a good example, appearing at events attired as a properly-dressed woman of the 12th to 13th century Silk Road. She is a member of the Facebook communities SCA Persian Clothiers, SCA Ottoman Clothing and Culture, the Atlantian Madrasa, SCA Middle Eastern and Mediterranean, SCA Middle Eastern Musicians, Camp Habib-Kingdom of An Tir, SCA in al-Maghreb, Maghribi (Unofficial), Bellydancers' Music Discussion Group, Raqs Sharqi/MENAHT Dance Discussions, and The Historical Belly Dance Collective.

As of AS LIV, as a Peer of the SCA for more than 40 years, a dancer and researcher for more than 45 years, she uses the title Mu'allima, "one who teaches or leads" in Arabic.

Real World Activities

Since 1987, Rowenna as her modern person has been a member of the non-SCA folkloric/American belly dance troupe Shahrazad Dance Ensemble of Seattle, which performed regularly at folk festivals and other events in the Pacific Northwest between 1978 and early 2020 when festivals were put on hold during the pandemic. The troupe continues to perform, sometimes appearing via video rather than live. The troupe has a repertoire of more than 40 folkloric and classic belly dance choreographies and a dozen fusion choreographies. Rowenna performs with the troupe, administers the website, shoots and edits video, and maintains the troupe's history of image and video files. (http://www.shahrazadensemble.com/wp/)

Her modern person is an editor, a writer, and a recorder of history.

Rowenna de Manning and Edward the Stuffy process nto royal court with the Lions of An Tir in AS 49
At Emprise of the Black Lion in the Barony of Madrone, AS 48.
Taking part in a dance demonstration as a judge at Kingdom Bardic Championship in the Barony of Lions Gate, AS 43.
Performing Egyptian dance at the huge SCA demo at Expo 86 World Exposition in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1986 (AS 21).
At the Middle Eastern Hafla at 50th Year Celebration of the SCA held in the Barony of Sternfeld in the Middle Kingdom.
Rowenna with her modern world dance troupe Shahrazad Dance Ensemble, performing Tunisian dance. Rowenna is at far left in red.