“Honor and Faith” — the order that protects Averoigne, whose Knight Commander claimed the throne, accused the man who took it of regicide, and died fighting him.
Charge & Motto
Protects the kingdom of Averoigne. Motto: “Honor and Faith.” One of the six Orders Militant; its head holds a seat on the Divine Council that elects the Most Holy (Western Church).
Traditionally the western Order most closely tied to a crown: the Crown Prince of Averoigne customarily serves as Knight-Commander of the Swan, leaving the office before coronation. That closeness is exactly what made the succession war so damaging. (GM)
A post-schism history of the orders — narrator of uncertain reliability — claims the Swan had secular origins and only later became religious. (S7) Which would fit the crown-adjacency above suspiciously well. See The Orders of the Five Courts.
In the Campaign (all GM)
- Guillaume de Fausseflammes, Knight Commander, was nephew to King Etienne de la Courcel. On the assassination of the designated heir in Summer 1731 he claimed the throne and publicly accused Michel d’Envers of the killings. See The Night in the Royal Castle.
- He fought d’Envers through 1732 and was slain in battle that fall. His widow, the Comtesse de Touraine, held Touraine under siege until Summer 1736.
- The order’s seat on the Divine Council was therefore vacant or in other hands at the Spring 1734 convocation that elected Baldessare Malipiero Most Holy — who held it, and how they voted, is unknown.
Its Commander Now (S6)
Charles de Tarrand commands the Order of the Swan — and therefore holds its Divine Council seat. Per his daughter Visenne de Tarrand:
- The Tarrand family supported Guillaume de Fausseflammes during the war — the losing claimant, the man who called Michel d’Envers a regicide.
- The house gift of Tarrand is Skill at Arms.
- His daughter served in the Order of the Owl and has been a hostage at the Citadel of Gazra in Hazad since Fall 1734.
Speculation
A house that backed the losing side now commands the order that protects the winner’s kingdom. Either the post-Touraine settlement was genuinely generous, or the Swan is institutionally bigger than any king’s grudge — and either way Rincon d’Envers sits on a throne his father took, guarded by an order led by a man whose family fought to deny it to him.
Speculation
Nobody has ransomed Visenne in five years. Noble hostages get ransomed; that is the institution’s entire purpose. A Knight Commander leaving his own daughter across the Circle Sea suggests either that nobody told him, or that a daughter who wore the Owl’s tabard became someone it was safer not to ask about after Spring 1736.
Open Questions
Did the Swan follow its Knight Commander into the civil war, or did it split?It split. The Orders primer: when rival claimants divided the kingdom, Swan knights had to decide what loyalty to crown, Church, Order, and legitimate succession required, and “the Order itself divided.” It survives, as the standing lesson of over-identification with a dynasty. (GM) Open now: along what lines, and who purged whom afterward.Who commands it now?Charles de Tarrand (S6). Open: when he took it, and how a Fausseflammes house got it.- Does de Tarrand know where his daughter is?
- The Order of the Owl found a sanctum in northern Averoigne in Spring 1731 — Swan territory. Did the Swan know?