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 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 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 is a mirror, subject, and the court advises against looking too long.
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 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 crowns
Presiding over all of it: His Eternal Uptime, the King, who has never once clicked the link, and his ancient rival the Old God, who dwells in the space between packets and favours the flood. 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.