The Sovereign

The Curator is pleased to admit you for a nineteenth viewing.

You will come in out of the cold to the gatehouse of a great palace, the seat of a sovereignty, on the last night when the crown is set and the reign sealed and the name raised to the roll of rulers, all gold presence-chamber and warm lamplight and the gold throne under its canopy and the ranked candles lit and the household's low word of it is the sovereign, do as it bids, where every soul who could not bear to be the one no one would ever obey is obeyed at last. There is a throne kept for you in the warm presence, a name already on the roll of rulers and a whole household bent close to do your will, and the shutting of the palace around you, and a court that has learned by heart the one sovereign it could not do without. One reminder, with our compliments: the way off is real, and this time it asks whether you can let your name be struck from the roll of rulers, your crown broken and thrown down, and walk out obeyed by no one, with no one at your side, to an ending that is wholly your own, mortal and your own.