Rhiassa Presents: Queen of Hearts XXVII

I’ve been involved with throwing Queen of Hearts for the great majority of my adult life. The first time I was on staff for one was in the year 2000 and the first time I was an event holder for the series was in 2005. My point being, I’ve seen a very substantial number of Queen of Hearts unfold from the staff side of things and over the years, as you can imagine, I’ve been able to keenly discern the difference between when one goes well and when one is rocky.

The last time we were able to throw Queen of Hearts was 2019. I suppose on one hand that wasn’t that long ago, but in a more practical sense, as we ramped up towards this past weekend, it felt like forever. There was certainly a lot of rust to shake off. There were new expenses and the expenses we were familiar with had largely increased. We hadn’t seen the inside of our storage shed since the last time we closed it in 2019… there were a lot of concerns. Truly, while I had faith in our passion and our work ethic, I expected this year to feel like a rocky one.

And, of course, there were a lot of wide pivots as well. The prescripted two teams, the on-site crafting competitions, reinventing the format of many of the tournaments, there were a lot of irons in the fire. Add to all of this to the community still fighting it’s way to completely recover from the pandemic. I’ll admit it freely now, I had concerns.

And then Saturday came and almost instantaneously all of my worries felt ridiculous. Because the community turned out in impressive numbers to do exactly what you’ve done time and time again for almost three decades, you came to do a Queen of Hearts. The war maneuver fields were instantly full of eager combatants, the crafting tables burst to life with people’s creative energy, teammates were cheering one another on, and everyone was celebrating one another’s achievements. Queen of Hearts was back, and in a very real way it felt like it had never really been gone.

Not only did we throw a Queen of Hearts this year, I truly feel like we threw one of the best ones I can remember. And this did not happen magically or coincidentally, it happened because of the significant and substantial effort by a great many people that were on our staff. From marshaling to setup, to cub care to all sorts of miscellaneous tasks. We, the event holders, would like to thank those people now.

Ben Hamilton, Katie Skeggs, Cory Roy, Siona Gouthro, Jen Gallagher, Laura Bushaw, Christine Poulin, Tucker Noyes, Pi Fisher, Nick Quadrini, Alyssa Lee, Ben Pepper, Nataliya Kostenko, James Murphy, Cal Marsden, Darell Gray, Sara Jessop, Joe Sims, Hannah Blood, Janna Oakfellow-Pushee, and Sabrina Wierzchowski. To each and every one of you Lani, Jen, and I offer our deepest and most heartfelt thanks for everything you did to make the event a success. Further, a specific thank you to Greg Falconer, Neil Kusleika, and Noah Capucilli-Shatan for helping to set up even though you were players. And even though I cannot possibly name everyone who pitched in at the end, we deeply appreciate everyone who helped us clean up the site afterwards as well.

And of course, the other reason Queen of Hearts was a success is because of all of you. As I mentioned before, you came to the fields of Swift River ready to put the best of yourselves on display. You came to compete with spirit and honor and in celebration of who all of us are as a community. You rose to every challenge we presented to you and embraced all of the changes in stride.

I’ll never tire of saying it. Rhiassa doesn’t throw Queen of Hearts, we only host it. All of you throw Queen of Hearts together when we show off the best of who we are and the best of what the Realms can be.

Thank you all for coming to Queen of Hearts XXVII. It was a great pleasure to see you, to watch you compete, to laugh with you, and to cheer you on. We are already looking forward to doing it all over again next August.

In service,
Jason, Jen, and Lani