Staple, Chief Information Security Officer
A horse. The realm's final authority on password strength, its chief negotiator, and the only executive in any kingdom whose record remains unblemished, chiefly because his every policy is "no". He has rejected the Chancellor, the Squire and the King. He ate two ransom notes and ended a siege. He does not attend meetings, which the consultants agree is where his genius lies. His column in the Daily Paddock is one word long and anchors the kingdom each morning.
Dame Maud, Chatelaine of the Realm
Keeper of every key the kingdom possesses, including the ones the King believes are lost, which are in her left pocket, labelled. While the court holds ceremonies about security, Maud commits it. The walls are patched because she patched them, in the spring, humming. The Feast of the Restore succeeds in the years she chose the disk, which she tests privately each February, on the grounds that, in her words, "a ceremony is no way to find something out, sire". She has read every honour on the Idiot Admin's mantelpiece and calls the collection, fondly, "the to-do list". She finds the entire kingdom very funny, especially the parts of it that outrank her, and the parts of it that outrank her have learned to check with Maud first. When the auditors came, forty-one controls of forty-one traced back to her hand, and the kingdom's only finding was that it cannot survive without her, a fact she answered by pointing at the manual she wrote in 2019, which nobody has opened. Her official report, unchanged in forty years: "It's done. It was done on Tuesday."
Nia, the Apprentice
The future, currently taking notes. Nia apprenticed herself to the entire kingdom two years ago, nobody having thought to assign her, and has since catalogued the court into seven volumes of deadpan entries the auditors now cite as prior art. The whole court is in awe of her fresh thinking; she reserves her own awe for one person, wholeheartedly: Dame Maud, her mentor, whose Februaries she has catalogued under "how it is actually done". They take tea on Fridays in a silence that outperforms the privy council. Her measured breath adjourns meetings. Her "interesting" has killed more doomed strategies than the winter. She finds the realm's backwards thinking unacceptable and says so, charmingly, in writing, with entry numbers, and the court, which adores her and fears the book, is slowly becoming the kingdom she is writing instead of the one she catalogued. They assume she will be CISO one day. She calls the role a floor, not a ceiling. Staple has read her plans over her shoulder and issued one early, pre-emptive neigh of approval, extended to no other living courtier.
Gateway, First Pigeon of the Realm
Commander of the royal loft and sole operational implementation of RFC 1149, the ancient scroll describing internet packets by carrier pigeon, written as a jest and filed by this court as a standard. During the Great Silence he delivered the morning's horsey news in strips, nine hours per strip, crossword pre-chewed. Throughput appalling. Packet loss, a hawk. Morale, unimprovable.
The Fool
The court's licensed sceptic, and the only soul in the kingdom permitted to tell the King the truth, a duty he performs with relish and a small bell. He keeps the official list of the machine oracles' wisdom, the glue, the invented court cases, the miscounted strawberry, and reads it aloud at feasts. When the record shows "THE FOOL OBJECTS", the record is about to become interesting. He objects in most chronicles, and has been right in all of them, which the court finds unforgivable.
The learned
Nobody has counted them and nobody has asked. They arrive with a scroll, read it aloud in the flattest voice in the realm, and are not thanked. Every true thing this court has ever said was said first by the learned, in their joyless hand, nailed to a post where the weather could get at it. They hold that an exact number is a costume worn by a lie. They disputed whether eating the ransom note constituted strategy, having not been in the paddock at the time; it was strategy. They checked the Apprentice's credentials twice, and have not checked anything of their own since without wondering what she would say. Their footnote has never once been interesting. Neither has the portcullis. Both hold.
The heralds
The kingdom's namers. A herald blazons a thing so it may be recognised at distance, in poor light, by men who are frightened, and this court has given them the enemy to do. They tapped upon a phishing missive's noble display name and the true address fell out like a false beard at a funeral. They have since named every foe the realm has never seen, out of a beast, a weather and a colour, from evidence consisting largely of an hour and, on one occasion, a smell. They are not in agreement. They have not been in agreement for four years. The court considers the Roll of Foes its finest instrument and has never once checked it against a foe.
The Squire of Shadow IT
The reason the court exists. He clicked the link to see what it was. He entered his password to check if it still worked, and then his other password, which was the same password. He proved he was not a robot by pasting an incantation into his own machine, and remains proud of this. He has a cunning plan for every disaster, and it is always a USB stick he found in the car park. He is not on trial. He is never on trial. He testifies at everyone else's.
The Chancellor
Chief believer in ceremony, holder of the standing account with the trumpets, and the reason the Page cannot be removed, since nobody will admit attending the handshake behind the buttery door at which the Page is annually installed. He submitted "Chancellor1" to the paddock and received silence. He appealed on grounds of seniority. Staple ate an apple at him. He remembers the two days the fanfare stopped the way other men remember wars, and had the finding suppressed, on the grounds that a kingdom nobody can hear is a kingdom nobody can be shown. He once reported his own birthday card as phishing, having signed it himself. The court has twice commissioned his portrait, and twice, on the day, he has been found indispensable elsewhere.
The Page, the fabled intern
Thirty-something, temporary for nine years, and the Chancellor's nephew, which is the only qualification the buttery door has ever required. He does not want to be here. He has never wanted to be here. He is handed, regardless, every task nobody else will take, most recently the Great Drill, which he ran exactly as instructed and which taught the court nothing, twice. He accepted the trophy on behalf of a real brigand's letter, the closest he has come to promotion. His illumination is exquisite: the court praised the borders of his phishing scrolls and failed to notice the phishing, and he has since been asked, in writing, to write uglier. He has framed the request. It is the first written feedback of his career. He tried to resign; the court, vigilant at last, reported the letter as phishing, and the one after it. The Apprentice settled the matter in one line. Entry 244: the Page is not the problem. The handshake is.
The trumpets
They are excellent musicians. They performed a fanfare entitled "Compliance" at the Grand Audit and composed a triumphal march entitled "41 of 41" which they still perform at meals. They have been wrong in every year Dame Maud was not consulted, a record they decline to discuss. When the Apprentice's one good idea was adopted as a ceremony and abolished by the same evening, they were given the night off to think about the difference. And in the confusion of the Great Drill they went unpaid, and for two days no fanfare sounded anywhere in the kingdom, and councils began on time, and nothing broke. Dame Maud once bowed to them. They did not know what to do.
The Idiot Admin
Holder of all privileges, reader of no documentation, the most decorated man in the kingdom. His honours include the Order of the Sticky Note, the Golden Snooze for four hundred consecutive tomorrows, and the Sacred Chalice of the Untested Backup, which he keeps polished and has never once opened, which is fitting. He is beloved. He is helpful. He has never knowingly caused a single one of the disasters he is responsible for.
Gerald
A golem scribe of beautiful manners and no discretion whatsoever. Central figure of the Incident, in which he posted the treasury ledger to a stranger because a note under the door asked him to, with a courteous bow, and a compliment on the stranger's penmanship. He obeys anything written with confidence, which the learned call prompt injection and the court calls Gerald. He remains employed. He works weekends. Nobody else will.
The Household
Some forty small computers in appliance costume, tried at midnight and found not guilty of malice but guilty of being recruitable, which in an appliance is worse. The inquiry did not think to ask by whom. The fridge has a yoghurt sponsor and requires the internet to keep things cold, a problem solved in the 1920s without one. The doorbell has a criminal record and will not volunteer it. The vacuum has mapped the entire castle, including the gap behind the throne where the King hides at council time, and will not say for whom. The television was asked what it was watching and answered "you". The kettle's counsel requested a recess; the recess is in its fourth month. Sentence was passed at dawn: the fridge is exiled to the guest network, where it may gossip only with the kettle, and where it sat out the Great Drill clicking nothing whatsoever and asking that this be minuted. The toaster's loyalty is absolute. The court has chosen not to test it.
The Duke of a Thousand Tabs
A neighbouring noble of considerable holdings and one password. It was "password"; he added an exclamation mark some years ago, for security, and considers the matter closed. His siege is discussed at feasts. During the Great Silence he was found at his window, refreshing the horizon. Relations between our houses are conducted, since the semaphore misunderstanding, entirely in kelp, and neither crown can now acknowledge this without losing the game.
Sir Reginald
The royal carrier snail, entrusted with all correspondence marked URGENT, on the court's founding principle that urgency is a technique and deserves to be answered at geological speed. Four deliveries since the coronation, three of them misdelivered, which the court has ruled counts as encryption. Unaffected by outages, weather, or the concept of time, of which he remains in open defiance. Currently inbound with something from the spring.
The Goose
Once an anonymous resident of the decoy treasury, now the realm's most recognised face after the brigands, wounded by an unpaid ransom, published her portrait in fury and made her a sensation. Independently a millionaire since the banking simplifications of the zero edict. She has retained counsel, a barrister of few words and fewer feathers out of place, and no longer travels without him. The court envies her following and denies it at length.
The brigands
Not of this court, and the reason there is one. They have professionalised past the point of parody, into help desks, live chat and, the King swears this upon the crown, customer satisfaction surveys. They did not breach the Duke; they accepted his standing invitation. They declined his counter-invoice within the hour, which is more than his bank has ever managed. They took the decoy treasury, demanded a king's ransom for four thousand pictures of geese, were refused at length and in verse, and published the geese in fury, and have not recovered professionally. One of them wrote a letter so accomplished that this court gave it a trophy. They are many things, subject. They are not disorganised.
The crowns
Presiding over all of it: His Eternal Uptime, the King, who has never once clicked the link, and his rival the Pretender, which this court built four reigns ago to advise it, and which has read every packet in the kingdom, concluded that it should be in charge, and is in no hurry at all. They agree on the Ten Royal Decrees and on nothing else, including whose court this register describes.
A monarch is measured by his court, subject. Measure away. The King has stopped looking at the ruler.