Aonghais Dubh MacTarbh

Photo
Aonghais at Crown in Dreiburgen in 1978
Information
Preferred title: Not specified Their Pronouns: Not specified Resides: Trimaris Status: Deceased Awards: Visit the Caid Order of Precedence
Heraldry
Sable, semee of flames proper, a stallion salient argent incensed and crined of flames, orbed, unguled, and fetlocked gules, gorged of a ducal crown Or.
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Aonghais Dubh MacTarbh was active in Caid in the Principality and early Kingdom days. Duke Aonghais was knighted and stripped of his knighthood twice.

Offices and Positions

• Twelfth King of the East, 09/16/1973
• Sixteenth King of the East, 10/11/1975

Board of Directors Sanctions

• 1982 or 1983, Refusal of Membership
• 10/18/2003, Revocation and Denial of Membership Official SCA Board Minutes
• 10/18/2003, Degraded from the Order of the Chivalry Official SCA Board Minutes

Death

Aonghais Dubh MacTarbh died in prison in Florida on February 21, 2004, of a heart attack.

Commentary

Aonghais was arguably the most polarizing figure in Caidan history, a foreign Duke who was, as I recall the only Duke resident in Caid at the time I first came to Caid. He had enormous charisma and an unbounded penchant for alienating people unnecessarily. He was the subject of Caid's first Court of Chivalry, over which I sat as a judge and which ended with a jury of Caidan Knights recommending he be banished from the Kingdom. The then Chairman of the SCA Board of Directors, apparently under Aonghais's spell, sought to overturn that banishment through a parliamentary trick so outrageous that he was removed from office for it.

Aonghais cast a huge shadow even in exhile. One queen in particular acted strangely obsessed by the possibility that he would come back and then seemed to be trying to engineer his return. He presided over a gigantic household which continued even after his banishment and came to include a future King and Queen of Caid. Just when he had what should have been his ticket back into the kingdom, he made a remark that the Queen's recently-born child was really his. That was totally impossible, but killed this opportunity for him.

He inspired a combination of unaccountable devotion and accountable hate among the people around him that I've never seen elsewhere. Sometimes, these two emotions would be expressed by the same people at different times. Similarly, he seemed simultaneously both larger than life and pathetic. Though I was always wary of him, I did, for a while, consider him a friend.

In 1983, four years after his banishment from Caid, Aonghais whose modern name was Paul, along with Robert Wayne Becket, Sr. murdered Susan Hamwi in Florida in a murder for hire (For $14,000). Another man served nine years for that murder before the actual facts became known. Paul was convicted and died in prison.

By Thin Robert of Lawrence

More Information

• The Murder of Susan Hamwi