The Awakening of the Fay

Blessed Queen Clotilde, wife of the Merovingian King Clovis, is often credited with having awakened the Fay. One of Queen Clothilde's trusted servants, a saint of no small repute named Genevieve, had once rescued the city of Paris from the invasion of the Huns by calling upon the name of her Godmother, Lutetia. When Paris again found itself under attack by one of Clovis's nephews following her husband's death, the Queen prayed at the tomb of her friend Genevieve and was given a vision of Genevieve's Godmother Lutetia, a true Fay. Lutetia told the Queen that in honor of her love for her goddaughter Genevieve, Lutetia would forever protect the city of Paris from enemies as long as a certain flower grew within the city's walls. This flower, the Lys, or lily, became the royal symbol of l'ile de France, and later of the entire Kingdom of West Franks. Other cities and towns followed suit, searching out and discovering the tutelary spirits who had guided their ancestors, and honored them with friendship, protection of sacred animals, plants, and places, and often, sainthood. Thus, by a process of evocation and Christianization did Morgan appear to the monks of Glastonbury, Verulamus to Alban, and Martre-Toutat to Pope Stephen II. Their guidance from these otherworldly tutelary beings, and the strange demands these beings made upon their charges, gained popularity, and soon almost every household honored their local tutelary fay alongside their patron saint, even going so far as to set places for them at Christmas Dinner.