The Investiture; or I Hereby Dub Thee Sir Angel Joe

Ever since the arrival of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, there have been rumours afoot that Angel Joe was going to be knighted for his service to the Crown - that same service that left him severely traumatised and permanently if only slightly disfigured.  These rumours were confirmed earlier this week, when a special medal for Distinguished Service arrived.  The official ceremony of investiture was held this afternoon, and naturally we took pictures of the entire thing.  So many pictures.

Now, under ordinary circumstances, a knighthood of merit would be conveyed by the Monarch, but in this case the honoured recipient is away from home on another assignment, and so the Monarch is unable to be present and the ranking members of the delegation are officiating in the Monarch's stead.  The Wild Republic has graciously allowed the use of their facilities on this solemn and august occasion.

This was taken shortly before the ceremony, once the audience had all been seated.  I don't know if you can tell, but a great deal of attention went into the seating arrangement here.  

They're more or less seated by rank.  In the upper left corner by the dais are the members of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy who are not participating in the investiture; on the other side are the ranking members of the Wild Republic, many of whom have not previously been featured in pictures on this blog.  After them come the ordinary members of the WR, in approximate order of rank, and then the young ones are all grouped at the bottom.  Alcindarias, the griffin, kept himself a bit aloof, as is typical.  He's a member of the Wild Free Alliance of Mythical Beasts, not the Wild Republic.

Here, look how attentive they all are.

Here are the ranking members of the Wild Republic.  You don't hear as much about them because they're largely retired.

Seal in front there is the highest-ranked Wild Republican in our local chapter; the Fox, to his left, is also of very high rank.  Behind them you can see Casper and Seymour, who are retired.

Now the procession is underway.  Alfredo, as the head of the local Wild Republic chapter, is the official host for the occasion, so he's leading the procession, followed by Lord Twilby, the only peer present.  Note that Beppe managed not to call out to his father as Alfredo went by.

Now that Alfredo and Lord Twilby are in position (Twilby is on the side where the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy delegates are seated), the officiating officers, Sir Theo and Lady Faraday, are making their way to the dais.

Angel Joe, of course, entered last.  Sir Theo seems to have given him a few words of support when he reached the dais.

The ceremony was opened by Alfredo, as the official host.  He didn't really have much to say, so we didn't take a picture.  The first real speech was Sir Theo's, and it wasn't really all that interesting.  Actually, it wasn't interesting at all, although it was very inspiring.  It was all about honour and valour and rigour and other virtues of that nature - not Angel Joe's specifically, you understand, just sort of in the abstract.

Beppe got bored.  He was really only interested in his father's speech anyway, so once Alfredo was done, he decided to take off.  No one stopped him, partly because he was at the back and partly because the adults were all just a little bit worried that he'd try to join his father on the dais or something and cause an International Incident.  Averting an International Incident was much more important than having Beppe at the ceremony.

Now, to be fair, Beppe wasn't the only one of the kids who got a bit bored.  You can see in this picture that Vim and Flurry are having some sort of conversation, Khamsin is doing... something (actually, I'm not sure quite what he's doing), and Rebus has fallen asleep facedown.  Tibby, though, despite his youth, is paying rapt attention.  Imperial penguins love ceremonies; it's in their blood.

But then it was time for Lady Faraday to give her speech, and everything suddenly got more interesting.  She is less long-winded than Sir Theo, and she got the better material: her job was to relate the stirring story of Angel Joe's heroism to all present.  The only creature present not paying attention was Alfredo, who was wondering where his son had got to.

It turns out that Angel Joe had been on a very serious and highly dangerous mission to recover some vital stolen documents from enemy headquarters.  The documents were encoded, but they contained state secrets, and if the enemy had had them long enough to decipher them, they would have learned the identities and code names of all of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy secret agents, among other highly classified information.  Angel Joe, along with his partner (a badger named Winidavefred who, like Angel Joe, is no longer a field agent), was tasked with their perilous retrieval.  They successfully snuck into enemy headquarters and stole the documents, but they were unable to sneak back out without attracting attention, so Angel Joe bravely created a diversion to enable Winidavefred to escape with the documents safely.  As part of the diversion, he arranged his own capture and was held as a prisoner of war.  Winidavefred, fortunately, made a safe escape, and reported to his superiors the fate of Angel Joe.  The Wild Parliamentary Monarchy sent some of their best agents to raid enemy headquarters and recover Angel Joe.  He was still alive, but had been subjected to terrible torture in an effort to get him to reveal state secrets; however, he had refused to talk.  Upon his return home, Angel Joe retired from active field duty and became some sort of cultural attache instead.  He has recovered from most of his physical wounds; his whiskers had been taped to his face, and although Pedro was able to successfully free them, the tape cannot be removed and will mark him for the rest of his days.  In addition, he suffers from severe PTSD and has lost the ability to shift his coat with the seasons.

This story was a big hit with the audience, naturally, but the most exciting part of the ceremony was the investiture itself, which was also performed by Lady Faraday.

After the investiture, everyone cheered long and hard.  They cheered so long and so hard, in fact, that they scared Plouie and he fainted.  This was probably to the good: it eliminated the other potential for an International Incident.

Unfortunately for the audience, this was not the end of the ceremony: Lord Twilby had yet to give his speech, which was all the historical importance of this momentous occasion.  Here you can see the audience already getting restless and Twilby is still in the middle of his opening remarks (which are about how he is going to keep his remarks brief).  See how the kittens and baby polar bears are starting to creep away? 

Twilby went on speaking for like forty-five minutes (I asked Lady Faraday afterwards if that really was "brief" for him, and she winced and said yes it was).  He looks awfully cute, though.  I really like Twilby's "I'm Being Rhetorical Here" pose.

Here the youngest animals are all sneaking off, except for Mahler (who is old enough to feel he needs to stay put), Navarre (who feels he must stay for the honour of lions, and is also too far front to sneak out inobtrusively), and Tibby (who is totally eating this up; he's paying attention to Twilby every bit as closely as he did to Lady Faraday).  Poor Navarre; he looks so bored and woebegone.  The younger animals are not the only bored audience members here, though.  Hrithik, next to Navarre, was listing state capitals in his head the whole time.

Here's the other side of the aisle, with the tail end of the exodus of the younger generation.  Cami, like Mahler and Navarre, felt he had to stick out. 

He's actually paying better attention than the adult members nearby.  Barry and Gilly are busily whispering anagrams of everyone's names to each other, while Parsley tries to figure out what on earth they're talking about.

But Twilby's speech didn't actually last forever (only forty-five minutes), and eventually the ceremony ended with a very dignified recessional march.  You'll note that the audience is conspicuously smaller than it was at the beginning of the ceremony, and that Plouie is still unconscious.

Now Angel Joe - or rather Sir Angel Joe - has this awesome medal.  It says Avag Co Bepsig and everything.

Afterwards, there was a reception for everyone.  Well, not quite actually.  The younger animals who left the ceremony early didn't realise there was a reception, so they weren't there, and Plouie sort of never woke up. He's kinda still there.

But everyone else certainly went to the reception, which was a great success.  The main hors d'oeurves were field mice, at Sir Angel Joe's request.  Here the other attendees of rank are congratulating him while everyone else mills about.  The Ice Age animals are sticking together and kvetching about how different these things were in their day (more bonfires, more spears, less speeches) and the three remaining younger cats are trying to eat as many field mice as possible.  Good times.

I don't know how well you can see this, but there are some poker chips over there under the papa-san, sort of by Nicodemus's hind quarters and Leprosy's snout.  When the reception was dwindling, and Angel Joe had been whisked off to a special dinner with various high-ranking individuals, Magick and a few of the others decided to put those poker chips to good use.  I'll tell you all about how that went later.