How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

by K. J. Parker

  What, after all, is belief but knowing something without actually being able to prove it? Millions of people believe in the Invincible Sun. And anything believed by so many must be true; and if you disagree, it can only be because you don’t quite understand the subtleties of the true definition of truth. If it wasn’t true before, my dad used to say, when fifteen respectable householders swore on oath he’d been playing cards with them on the night that some unfortunate was stabbed to death in an alleyway on the other side of town, it’s true now.

  And it’s what’s true now that matters, sure as eggs is eggs. Think about it logically. Unless you’re a bit wrong in the head, you can remember what happened one minute ago clear as day. But you’ll be forgiven for being a bit hazy about the details of something you did or said twenty years ago. So, if there’s a discrepancy, the minute-old truth is far more likely to be correct than an inconsistent version dating back twenty years.

  Twenty years ago – longer than that – I was Notker. Right now I’m Lysimachus, and this time tomorrow I’ll be Lysimachus II. And I have the scars to prove it.

  “I hate you,” she whispered in my ear.

  Wonderful thing for a bride to say to her husband on their wedding day, don’t you think? On the other hand it was probably true, at least at that precise moment.

  The moment in question was just before I led her up the aisle, between the rows of distinguished guests, to the twin thrones they’d dug out of storage and set up in the Long Hall on the ground floor of the New Palace. It goes without saying that the New Palace is the oldest part of the palace complex and dates back nearly a thousand years, and that the Long Hall is very, very long. Gelimer had chosen it because it was the biggest space available. I forget how many people were crammed in there to see the show. It was well over a thousand, all in their smartest clothes, all turned out to watch the mighty Lysimachus crowned and married on the same day.

  (That had been my bright idea. What we need, I’d suggested, is to make me as popular as possible.

  Why would we want to do that?

  Because then, when I turn round and abolish the Themes, maybe they’ll hesitate just a moment or so longer before they set fire to the City.

  Good point, they conceded. So?

  So, I said, coronations are popular. So are royal weddings. Let’s have one of those as well.

  Dead silence. Then someone, I think it may have been Senator Nasica, said that wasn’t such a bad idea. All right, said Gelimer, let’s do that. Of course, we’ll need a bride.

  You could’ve heard an ant fart, as the dozen or so senators present all thought of their unmarried daughters, nieces and similar livestock. Yes, it’s always nice to have an empress in the family, but on the other hand—

  “The People’s Emperor,” I went on, “should have a People’s Empress.”

  Gelimer looked at me. “That sounds good,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  I pointed out that the emperor, alone out of all the Robur nobility, could in theory marry whoever he liked. He had no need to marry money, or rank, or an old and distinguished family. Compared to the effulgent glory of the emperor, all commoners were so far beneath his notice that they were practically interchangeable – dukes, counts, farmhands, the man who goes round in a cart emptying the piss-pots, given the vast perspective distance, what possible difference could it make? Candaules the Great had married a milkmaid. Eudora, the wife of Marcian the Wise, had been a prostitute. The two most popular emperors in our history; because by marrying wives who weren’t just commoners but the commonest of the common—

  “Yes, point taken,” Gelimer said. “Where’s this leading?”

  On the other hand, I pointed out, you needed someone who was at least presentable. Someone who knows how to look good in public. Someone very definitely of the people, but nevertheless with a touch of class—)

  So up the aisle we walked; and that’s one of the really important things you learn on the stage, how to walk. A walk can be so many things, a strut or a pace or a waddle or a prance; we can do all of those and a thousand more. We can tell you who we are (hero, villain, ingenue, low comedian; prince, peasant, soldier, feisty kick-ass chick, crone) without saying a single word, just by the way we put one foot in front of the other. To some of us it comes naturally. Some of us have to think about it and practise for hours in front of a mirror. A great actor I knew when I was starting out was practically in tears one time because he couldn’t get his character’s walk; then he hit on the idea of sticking a quarter-thaler coin between his buttocks and clenching them tight so it wouldn’t fall out; and from that he got the character’s walk, and from the walk he got the whole character. I don’t know how Hodda figured out her empress-bride walk, but however she did it, she got it absolutely spot on. Me, I relied on my inner mirror, same as always, and I think it did the trick.

  It had been my idea to have the Blue and Green bosses as crown bearers. Needless to say, they’d nearly come to blows in the anteroom over which one of them was going to carry the emperor’s crown and which one would be stuck carrying the empress’s. I told them to toss a coin for it; the Greens won. The Blue boss said that wasn’t acceptable and predicted gutters running with blood before nightfall if his Theme was insulted in this way. Fine, I said. Green got to carry the emperor’s crown to the steps of the throne, whereupon he would hand it to Blue, who would hand it to the Precentor of the Temple. Then Blue would fetch the empress’s crown and hand it to Green, et cetera. The Green boss said that he could, and would, put five thousand armed men in the streets if he was forced to hand the crown to a Blue. We compromised. Accordingly, the crowns were brought in on a little trolley, which I’d remembered seeing in an anteroom somewhere, pushed by Blue and Green equally, side by side.

  It’s not just the crown, though; far from it. The Imperial regalia consists of seven distinct items – lorus, divitision, dalmatic, crown, orb, buskins, sceptre. Together they weigh seventy-two pounds twelve ounces, which is nearly twice what a heavy infantryman carries into battle. Yes, the weight is distributed fairly evenly about your person; the dalmatic goes on first, over your head and shoulders, followed by the divitision, which is a sort of massively embroidered cloth of gold dressing gown; then the lorus, which is seven feet of jewelled scarf, twisted and twined round you like one of those snakes in Blemya that crushes its prey to death. The buskins are knee-length and purple, and I’m guessing that generations of Robur emperors have had very slim calves, because I could only get my leg two-thirds of the way down the bloody things before I got stuck. My crown balanced on the top of my head like a bird sitting on a statue. Hers came right down over her eyes.

  No matter. The priest mumbled the magic words, and it was done. Then the next bit; do you, Lysimachus, take this woman, Hodda, and that was done, too. I must say she did her part very well, exactly the right soft breathlessness, but still perfectly audible at the back of the hall. But then, I’d have expected that, since less than a year ago she’d married an emperor forty-seven times on consecutive nights in the third act of Only a Life. First time ever for me, but I flatter myself that I coped pretty well.

  They don’t clap or cheer at coronations, or royal weddings. They sit there in stony silence. I think that’s rather a shame, myself.

  3

  “Three reasons,” I told her.

  She was pretending not to listen. We were alone in the Imperial bedchamber, and some halfwit had covered the bed three inches deep in rose petals.

  “One,” I said, “Gelimer and his happy band of cutthroats told me that if I didn’t do exactly as I was told, they’d kill you.”

  For that, I got to carry on looking at the back of her head. No matter.

  “I figure, they’ll find it that bit harder to carry out their threat if you’re the empress. Two, I thought we agreed we’re in this together. In which case, we need to be able to talk to each other without involving half a dozen people who don’t like us and a platoon of the royal guards.”

>   She was still wearing the dalmatic, and one buskin. She’d kicked the other one halfway across the room. The empress’s buskins are four hundred years old and each one has embroidered into it enough seed pearls to buy all the big houses on the fashionable side of Hill Street, on the left as you go up.

  “Three,” I said.

  “Oh, shut up.” She turned round and scowled at me. “You know what? I’m sick and tired of the sound of your voice.”

  “Actually, it’s not my voice, it’s Lysimachus’.”

  She blinked. “So it is,” she said. “I guess I must have got used to it. Makes no difference,” she went on. “I’ve had to listen to it all day and I really don’t want to listen to it any more, so if you’ll please just shut the fuck up I’ll be ever so much obliged.”

  Curious, I thought, that a woman justly famous for her ability to express the whole spectrum from ecstatic joy to hopeless misery should choose to convey her true emotions by sulking. Still, you don’t do the day-job work on your day off, and if nobody’s paying to watch, why bother? “Fine,” I said.

  “You sleep in the chair.”

  I could have pointed out that I was the emperor of the Robur, and emperors don’t sleep in chairs, but I decided not to. Nor did I offer to help her shift the rose petals.

  It was, as it happens, a supremely comfortable chair and a pleasure to recline in, and I was sound asleep a few minutes after I closed my eyes. How long I stayed that way I couldn’t tell you, but I don’t suppose it was very long.

  “Since you’ve got me into this mess,” she was saying, “I suppose it’s up to me to get us out again.”

  “It’s hardly a mess,” I yawned. “I’m the emperor and you’re the empress. Really.”

  “Yes, and if we do anything those horrible men don’t like, they’ll murder us.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “And yes, probably they would, though they might not find it as easy as they think.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “maybe not. They run the City, sure, but inside the palace I think it may be different. You saw the guards.”

  “Hard to miss them,” she said. “Milkfaces.”

  “Sort of,” I replied mildly. “Actually they’re Lystragonians.”

  “So bloody what.”

  “The emperors have hired Lystragonian guards for over three centuries,” I bleated on. “They have a strong tradition of absolute loyalty. We tell them what to do, they do it.”

  No reply. In context, that was encouraging.

  “So long as we’re alive,” I went on, “they’ll fight to the last drop of blood for us. Soon as we’re dead, of course, their loyalty reverts to the next emperor, even if he’s the one who just slit our throats. But from what I gather, they take it seriously. Anyone wants to kill us has got to go through them first.”

  Pause. “I wouldn’t have thought your pal Gelimer would let you have your own personal army.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Hardly an army. There’s forty-six of them. Ought to be fifty, but four of them got sick and went home. Four replacements are on their way, apparently. I got talking to their captain,” I explained. “Nice man. Saw you in The Pirate Bride. From what he said, I think you could rely on him no matter what happens.”

  “You must point him out to me some time,” she said. “But, as you just said, there’s only forty-six of them. And once they’ve died heroically to the last man—”

  “Sure,” I said. “But it makes it a little bit harder, that’s all I’m saying. That’s a step up from all they have to do is snap their fingers and we’re dead. More to the point, we’re safe so long as we do precisely what we’re told. Do you have a problem with that?”

  She was about to speak, then hesitated. “Depends, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I sign things and wave from balconies, and the rest of it’s mostly eating and drinking. There are worse things.”

  “Notker.” She hardly ever uses my name. “You remember when we were rehearsing Tried in the Furnace.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “And everyone said it was a sure-fire hit and it’d run for a year, and I said I didn’t think people were going to like it. And it closed after a week.”

  “You always say everything’s going to end in disaster. From time to time you’re right. Proves nothing. Either say something positive or let me go back to sleep.”

  “Did I mention that I’m already married?”

  No, she’d never mentioned that. “Doesn’t matter,” I heard myself say. “Look, hasn’t it sunk in yet? We’re not faking it any more. This is real. We are genuinely the emperor and empress. Isn’t that what you always dreamed of?”

  “Not like this.”

  “How’s it different? We’ve got all the money and stuff we could ever want. We don’t rule the empire, if our faces don’t fit we’ll probably be killed. Read some history, for crying out loud. That’s being a real emperor. That’s what they really do, in real life.”

  “Don’t you want to know who my real husband is?”

  Oh, for crying out loud. “No,” I said. “Shut up and let me get some sleep.”

  No chance of that now, of course. I leaned back in the chair, which wasn’t as comfortable as it had been a few minutes ago, and tried to figure out what I was going to do next.

  The emperor’s wedding night symbolises, in some way I’d rather not dwell on, the marriage between the supreme ruler, Vice-Gerent of Heaven and Brother of the Invincible Sun, and his loving and obedient people; so maybe it was only fitting that I spent it wide awake slumped in a chair, while my lovely bride snored like a walrus.

  Up bright and early next morning for the investiture ceremony. This consisted of the two of us putting all those stupid clothes on all over again, but this time in the Blue Chapel of the Single Teardrop temple. Dressing up in absurd costumes and walking and sitting in an impressive manner in front of an audience, while other people did all the talking; that’s not even acting. That’s what you do when you’re learning to be an actor, or if you’re not good enough to be trusted with a few lines. And after the ceremony, I was due to give my maiden speech from the temple steps, in which I was going to outline the general thrust of my policies as emperor.

  I told her what that was going to be as we walked through the cloisters that take you round three sides of a square from the Blue Chapel to the magnificently ornate main gate. They’ve ordered me to abolish the Themes, I told her.

  She stopped dead in her tracks, nearly causing a disastrous pile-up of equerries and ladies-in-waiting. “You can’t. They’ll tear us limb from limb.”

  I gave her my most loving smile. “If I don’t, we’ll be murdered,” I said. “But don’t worry, it’s fine. I’ve thought of an idea.”

  Fortunately we were intercepted at this point by the archdeacon, dean and chapter of the temple, denying me the chance to hear what she thought about that.

  Time for my big speech.

  (Gelimer had given me the text that morning. “I can’t learn all this in that time,” I told him.

  He looked at me, and I wondered which way he’d voted, and whether he was wondering whether he was having second thoughts. “Of course you can’t,” he said. “You read it out.”

  “I never read speeches,” I told him, snapping back into character like a set bone. “Half the people in the Themes would be horrified if they knew I can read. They’d think I’d sold out.”

  He shrugged. “That’s your business,” he said. “If you’d rather put it into your own words, fine. Just so long as you get across the general idea.”

  At the back of my head I heard trumpets. “Leave it with me,” I said. “I’ll manage.”)

  The steps of the Single Teardrop; many’s the time I’ve thought what a wonderful venue it’d make for the right production. Fabulous acoustic, because of the tall buildings on three sides. Great sightlines, and if you were doing the classics you wouldn�
��t need scenery, just a backcloth stretched across the columns; you’ve got the gate itself for your upstage centre entrances, the ends of the portico for entrances stage left and right and the gallery that runs along the architrave of the temple façade for balcony scenes and the like. Excuse me if you think I’m pathetic because I always reduce things to my terms, but I reckon it’s a basic survival instinct. If you can turn any place you find yourself in into the back streets of your home town, you’ll never be lost. And it makes it easier to plan ambushes.

  My big speech.

  Enter UC, proceed DC, stop. Pause. Look impressive. Speak. That’s what was in the script. A bit bald and obvious, I thought. So, when we were in the lobby waiting to make our entrance, I turned round and whispered in the ear of my new best friend, the captain of the Lystragonians—

  (See above: Hodda’s devoted fan. His name was Its Very Essence. I’d asked him, is it all right if I call you Very for short? Call me whatever you like, he’d replied. Very Essence of what? I asked him. Everything, he said. Fair enough.)