Lyra, Queen of grace and courtesy, has considered the women whose company she has kept—princesses, great ladies, women of all station blessed to be in the court of the Falcon. And among those she has found one of such great and deep understanding, a clear-sighted wisdom and service in all things: Alianora Jeanette des Amandiers, of late by royal grace the Baroness of Forgotten Sea.

Orren, learned King, has beheld the same service that she has rendered for the last six years; through plague and paradise, and all states between them. So he has said “They who reside in virtue are the highest among our court; for neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person resides in anything but the perfection of conduct and virtue. Thus, do we behold our good Mistress Alianora, and hold her highest of all those professing service to the Crown.”

And so together they desired to elevate her in the eyes of the people whom she had so ably served; and so together they determined to elevate her appropriate to her former station, naming her a Baroness of the Court of Calontir for all time. And so together they decreed that to her lands should be added a tithe of the kingdom’s herb gardens, and a sinecure of one hundred livre per year for her larders.

All this was declared on the ___ day of _______________________, on the day in which heroes were unslung, and sealed by the royal sign manual.

_____________________________                                     _____________________________

King                                                                                            Queen

(Text based on Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies. The sinecure of 100 livre per year is based on exchange rates from Michael Prestwich, Early Fourteenth-Century Exchange Rates, 32 Economic History Review 4 (Nov. 1979), and the Medieval Price List by Kenneth Hodges of UC Berkeley)