It’s easy to forget that a monarchy is more than just the monarch. The successful reign is a complex animal, with countless individual pieces working in concert.

It’s especially to forget if you’re reading this book.

Looking closely at the Glynn Queen, we find many moving parts, but one cannot overestimate the importance of Lazarus of the Mace, the Queen’s Captain of Guard and Chief Assassin. Remove him, and the entire structure collapses.

Ah, so the purpose of this pre-chapter quote is not to assure us that government is complex, but to make sure we know the powerful female is not actually the most important character: a male is.

Kelsea wakes up in her room, finding herself bandaged and sore, but out of danger and recovering. Mace comes in to say that he got a doctor to look at her, but he doesn’t like doctors so they can’t rely on that guy for long. Then he mentions that the several guards who were injured in the fight are recovering.

So…did the doctor see those guards too, or were they just left to hope for the best? Because it seems like in a martial discipline like yours, dealing with wounds would be a rather common occurrence, and just through sheer trial and error over 300 years you would have learned how to take care of them. Is that…not doctoring? I really don’t understand this world and doctors; it refuses to tell me what else exists since it defined medicine so narrowly.

“Speaking of pride, who threw the knife?”

Mace then proceeds to apologize profusely for being a horrible guard. Somehow, even though he’s a horrible guard who let his queen get stabbed, he manages to be quite over the top about it, and Kelsea feels much sympathy and heart-strings-tugging. He then smoothly moves on to her daily schedule.

I don’t know if I’m reading too much into this or not, but Mace seems really manipulative at the moment. She asks a question, he provides zero answer, distracts her with a bid for pity, then changes the subject, which just so happens to also involve telling her what to do. He’s denying her information, then throwing her off-kilter when she asks for it to hide that fact. I’m sure it’s not meant to read that way, but I’m also sure this book is terrible, so.

Mace mentions that they’re laying up supplies for siege, expecting Mort to retaliate for not sending slaves. Mace then proceeds to berate Kelsea for basically plunging the country into war. Which, yes, what he says is true, but this late in the game it’s not really helpful? Also it’s things we’ve already heard, several times.

Kelsea is provided the treaty with Mort and reads through it, noting that 1) the Queen of Mort signed with her title, not her name, and Kelsea magically (literally, magically) knows that Queen is desperate to keep her true name hidden and 2) the treaty stipulates that at least 500 slaves a year must be children, which is an absurdly high number since children aren’t known for ability to do heavy labor.

What had possessed her mother to sign such a one-sided document?

Why is this a mystery? The Mort army was literally at the front door, having already crushed the piddly army you had and terrorized the countryside, and Mommy Queen had zero leverage. What was she going to use to bargain with?

Clearly I’m supposed to think something fishy is going on here, but if that was the case, maybe don’t make the obvious answer quite so obvious?

Be fair, a new voice cautioned in her mind. The voice was neither Carlin’s nor Barty’s; Kelsea couldn’t identify it, and distrusted its pragmatism. What would you have done, with the enemy at the very gates?

So, does Kelsea literally never have an original thought, or is this magic? I’d believe either at this point.

“There’s no mention of a lottery in here.”

“The lottery is an internal matter. At first, your mother simply sent convicts and the mentally ill.

My hatred for you just grows and grows and grows, book.

Mace explains that the current lotto system was invented by Thorne, and he is a man loyal only unto himself.

Kelsea asks about her mother’s death. Mace says that there was a near-successful assassination attempt by poisoning, and the rumor is that episode left her weak and then she died of related illness a few years later. He refuses to offer his own opinion. Other things he refuses to tell: how much credence that rumor has, any known facts about the queen’s death, exactly when it happened, if there were suspicious circumstances, why there is a rumor instead of an official story, if there is an official story running counter to the rumor, or literally any other helpful information.

For a book this stuffed with padding, it’s amazing how the ‘mysteries’ are so bare bones. You can always tell what’s going to be a factor later on, because the random details are always fully explained, and the plot points always have only the bare minimum of information.

They go on a tour of the Queen’s wing, and they come across the nursery where all Kelsea’s new servants’ children are listening to Marguerite (sex slave from earlier) tell a fairy tale. Because this book is a trashfire, even though Marguerite seems much recovered, she still doesn’t get any speaking lines. Not even the tale she’s telling is in dialogue, it’s all in summary, and then Kelsea and Mort talk about her, heaping more gendered misery onto her backstory.

There are many hidden ways in and out of this wing, but they’re well guarded, and only I know them all.

Wow, you are just…a really bad guard.

“Dyer’s the best man for such jobs, Lady. We’ll arrange it when he comes back.”

“Back from where?”

“I’ve already sent him on an errand.”

“What errand?”

Mace sighed and shut his eyes. “Do me a favor, Majesty: let me do my job in peace.”

It just really seems like Mace is setting her up to be a puppet for his own reign.

Most of the chapter is just a series of short, disconnected conversations about various things: needing to find the crown, changing the audience venue to a smaller room in the queen’s wing, meeting everyone now that Kelsea is up and about, it’s all just ticking things off a checklist without any clear goal or intent behind it. There’s no unifying thread, there’s no sense of progress or purpose, each conversation fragment is so short it’s hard to really care about them.

The next bit is Kelsea meeting her armsmasters, where she demands to have a functional sword and armor built for her and then to be trained in swordfighting.

“I won’t ask men to die for me while I sit and do nothing. Why shouldn’t I learn to fight as well?”

So, division of labor is a wonderful thing that makes complex societies possible because it means that one person doesn’t need to know all the things, and they can develop specialized skills. Leadership and fighting are both specialized skills. A certain amount of blurring the lines happens, and is a good thing, but the general concept still stands.

Which is why I really, really, really, really, really want this entire concept to just go die in a fire already. Kelsea should be letting people go and die for her, although she shouldn’t be doing nothing. She should do it because, while her life is not more valuable than theirs, her position is, at least in relation to the country as a whole. Soldiers can die and then be replaced. Queens…can die and be replaced, but it takes a lot longer and causes more chaos in the process. Plus, you can’t be out hacking enemies with swords and do all the politicking that is required during a wartime. Hell, you can’t even sword-hack and do all the military leadership at the same time. Ruling (and general-ing) is a full-time occupation. Besides which, learning swordfighting is a full time occupation, too, which is why we gave that task to professional soldiers who don’t also run around being…IDK bartenders or hairdressers or whatever. And besides that Kelsea has a hell of a lot of catching to do on learning how to rule, she hardly has the massive amount of spare time required for learning effective swordfighting as well.

Stop having your royal characters act like fighting is the only real job and have them actually lead.

Next up is Thomas the former regent, but then as soon as he arrives we get several pages of a flashback of Kelsea being forced to study the bible. It has…really no bearing on the current situation at all. Weird.

Thomas is a whiney, tedious misogynist who whines about his tedious misogyny. Sigh. The only line of interest is when he says that the things that were taken were personal items.

Mace interrupted. “The Crown has a right to confiscate anything that comes into the Keep.”

That…is just a really, really terrible policy and a great way of alienating your own members of government.

Thomas tries to say he’ll give Kelsea information about her mother and the Red Queen if he can stay and be part of her government. Kelsea, being an idiot, says “lolnope” and says his banishment still stands.

Now, of course, don’t let Thomas maintain a position he can do harm from, of course. But Kelsea doesn’t even try to negotiate, treating this as an all or nothing arrangement. She does, for instance, say “hah, you’re a traitor, you can’t be part of the government. But I will keep you under house arrest in your very comfortable rooms instead of the dungeon if you talk.” After all, he has information not only about those two ladies, but about the country in general and the state of affairs, since he was ruling for the past 16 years.

Marguerite shows up to…sit at Kelsea’s feet. I guess to show her new loyalty? But why can’t she remain standing to do that, which would have even more effect since it would display her as a functioning, respected member of the staff?

Well, I guess because this book doesn’t think of her as a functioning, respected member of the staff, but instead as a cool talking point and set piece. At least she gets to speak this time. Two lines, before leaving again.

After Marguerite and Thomas leave, Mort informs her that he’s picked her new Treasurer. Yes, he picked the new Treasurer, while she was indisposed. Because Kelsea isn’t really doing much governing here, it’s all Mace’s government.

Also the new Treasurer is a bookie. Because he’s “good with numbers.” Excuse me, I’ll just be over here banging my head against a wall forever.

Arliss shows up to pronounce himself dishonest but trustworthy (WTF?), then sidetrack into talking about her sapphires, then we finally get to the Treasury. Then he starts talking about the state of the Treasury, and carries on about it like it’s your average business. Talks about the worth of her uncle’s confiscated items, income from taxes, and ways to ‘increase revenue.’ Which really strikes me as more appropriate for a pawn shop than a country. I don’t know much about country-level money management, but I do know it doesn’t work the same way as personal or business finances, and if you try to make it work that way you’ll fuck things up.

Kelsea, being tired from her still-healing wounds and not seeming particularly interested in finance, says “whatever” and lets him have the job.

“What do you want to be paid?”

“The Mace and I already dealt with the details. You can afford me, Queenie. You just have to say yes.”

“Would you expect me to turn a blind eye to your other dealings?”

“We can deal with that as it comes up.”

Slippery, Kelsea thought. She appealed to Mace again. “Lazarus?”

“You won’t find a better money man in the Tear, Lady, and that’s not the least of his skills. […]

“Fine, you’re hired. Prepare me some sort of accounting, if you would.

I just…cannot get over how terrible this whole exchange is. A man who is expressly dishonest, getting paid an unknown amount (or possibly in unknown currency) and how having a free pass on illegal deeds? Who also doesn’t know how to run a country? Hired by another man who also doesn’t know how to run a country, but is trying to do so anyway, using a third woman who really doesn’t know anything as a figurehead?

It’d be a comedy of errors if I wasn’t expected to take it seriously.