The Colors of the Coronation
"I'm so glad the palace has so many flowers..."
Laniakea murmured it as she looked, yet again, upon the enormous bouquet that had arrived that day. Beside her, Hilde had been listening; she smiled and regarded her as though the remark were hardly worth surprise.
"Of course. At a time like this, a shortage of flowers would be a disaster."
It was late spring, when all the world revived and put its vitality on proud display. The greenhouses bloomed without rest even in the depths of winter, but in this season it was not the glasshouses alone. Every garden in the palace was washed in brilliant color.
"True. A Spring Festival without flowers would never do..."
Still murmuring, Laniakea drew from the bouquet the most lavish, most luxuriantly opened bloom. Chelsia, as if she had been waiting for precisely that, passed the bouquet back to the maids behind her.
"Come, come. Today His Majesty happened to send them already sorted by kind, so take them apart and gather like with like, each variety in its own vase."
Even as she spoke, the great conference table behind her was already heaped with flowers of every sort. The Spring Festival would begin before long: the celebration that announced winter's passing, the return of all living things, and the safe beginning of a new year. This year's first banquet would fall within the festival itself.
The palace's great occasions had always been timed to the season's principal rites, and this banquet above all was a vast affair, serving at once as the new emperor's enthronement and his coronation. That it should coincide with the seasonal ceremony was only proper, and spring had arrived just in time.
Thanks to which the whole Empire will be keeping festival for an entire week.
Three days was the usual span, but with a joy of the realm added to the calendar, the period had doubled. Meanwhile the maids, their hands long practiced at the work, took apart every bouquet Hyperion had sent and sorted the blooms by kind. For them it had become routine, though the bouquets seemed to grow larger by the day, until one might almost believe he was uprooting an entire flower garden and having it delivered.
When Chelsia saw that the maids had finished, she turned to Laniakea.
"Then please choose the flowers for the main hall, Your Majesty."
Laniakea rose and went to the table buried in blossoms. Mountains of paperwork, and beside them flowers stacked higher still. She hardly knew whether the sight called for admiration or a sigh. Chelsia drew a vase brimming with flowers a little closer and began to explain.
"The palace avenues are being dressed chiefly in freesias, which are at their peak just now, but I believe the main hall ought to take a quieter palette. A color about like this should suit. What do you think?"
As she spoke, she beckoned another lady-in-waiting nearer. Among the ladies, this one had an unusually fine eye. She distributed what she carried among Laniakea, Hilde, and Chelsia: sketches of the main hall's interior, drawn just well enough to serve. Plucking several petals, she laid them upon the drawings and explained.
"Your Majesty, in our view, over here..."
As the lady shifted the petals this way and that and talked them through the arrangement, Laniakea's eyes brightened. Seeing her so wholly absorbed, the ladies felt a quiet pride.
Since Laniakea's return, they had been reminded of it all over again. However burdened the Empress might be, she never let a single word they offered pass her by unheard. In the beginning, truth be told, they had looked down on her just a little. She had been a princess of a minor kingdom, and even after coming to the Imperial Palace she had drifted at its edges. Was it not only natural, then, that she should listen to them, the finest specialists in the Empire?
But after the new emperor's accession, word reached them of acquaintances posted to other departments of the palace, and they realized just how fortunate they had been. Knowing a great deal about one's field did not, by itself, mean one did the work well. Talent bloomed only beneath a superior who could recognize that ability and had the grace to receive it. In that respect, Laniakea was a perfect mistress. The very first order she had given Hilde was to set down each lady's specialty with care, and to learn, at the same time, where their interests lay. She had found where they might work with real appetite and let their gifts unfold, and she remembered besides whom to assign to which task.
That did not mean she simply followed their opinions in everything.
"That would be difficult to carry out under palace regulations."
"But..."
"On other points I can be persuaded. Anything that might compromise safety, I will not allow."
Even a good idea, if she judged it to carry the slightest risk, she refused without hesitation. At first they had wondered whether the Empress was simply too given to caution. After an accident in another department, that complaint vanished without a trace.
The lady's hands moved busily, and Laniakea, with Hilde and Chelsia beside her, spread the papers and studied the flowers from every angle, weighing how best to arrange them. However long they deliberated, a conclusion refused to come. Then another maid approached with care, bearing a fresh set of documents and announcing that the order of ceremony had been settled.
"Let me see."
However busy she was, what needed confirming still had to be confirmed. Laniakea took the papers, turned through several pages, and called for Hilde.
"Hilde, the crowns and the orb for the coronation. They are all prepared, are they not?"
"Yes. Yesterday the custodial office sent word that everything has been made ready in accordance with court ceremony."
"Then have them bring all that will be used at the coronation. And tell the Wardrobe to bring the ceremonial robes His Majesty and I are to wear that day."
Hilde did not ask why. She moved at once.
Before long, two parties of attendants poured into the office, heavy, solid jewel cases in their left hands and crisply pressed garments in their right.
"We greet Your Majesty the Empress."
"Come in, all of you."
The staff of the Jewel Custody were the first to set what they had brought upon the broad table. When the cases opened, gasps broke from the ladies standing nearby. Even the maids who ordinarily slipped away the moment their work was done lingered now, awkward and unwilling to leave, unable to close their mouths as they stared at the jewels.
What the Jewel Custody had brought were the pieces Laniakea and Hyperion would wear or bear at the coronation. Of them all, what drew every eye was the coronation crown: a pair wrought to a single design, one large and one small. The second emperor had once said as much himself.
"Ought we not make a crown for a woman as well? This one is far too large."
And so a smaller piece of the same design had been fashioned. From then on a tradition arose. At each coronation, the imperial couple shared the crowns between them. While the one who had become emperor received the people, his consort first set a crown upon her own head, received the priests' consecration, and came down bearing the emperor's crown. Then, from behind, she set that crown upon him, and with that the coronation came to an end.
From the moment of consecration, one becomes the god's own proxy, and so it is enough to place the crown upon the emperor with one's own hands.
Once, they said, the high priest had performed the office, but after the fourth emperor quarreled bitterly with him, the form of the rite had changed. Palace etiquette shifted more often than she had expected, Laniakea thought, as she compared the colors of the jewels and the ceremonial robes.
"As I thought. It would be best to match this color."
When she had first had to decide, she had been at a loss for which hue to take as the heart of it. With the jewels and the robes laid out before her, the threads of a choice began, little by little, to gather. The ladies took up the flowers outright and held them beside the robes to compare, and the maids hurried to help, spreading blossoms behind the garments. Once the sense of it was caught, the work moved quickly.
Watching the office fill once more with lively purpose, Laniakea drew nearer to the crown. She had seen it once, at the first inspection, but looking at it again she found it truly vast, and truly splendid.
Made for a coronation, if ever a thing was.
Those who attended were high priests and the great nobles. By etiquette they wore ceremonial dress of a single prescribed form; their ornaments, however, they might wear as they pleased. Perhaps for that reason, at every coronation in memory each guest was said to arrive draped in the most beautiful and ostentatious treasures their house possessed. The crown was so large, so lavish, that she could be certain it would outshine even a gathering such as that.
It will look magnificent on His Majesty.
Hyperion was not, as a rule, a man who adorned himself. The princes she had seen in her days as a prince's consort had been so gaudy they hurt the eyes, yet even after becoming emperor he wore nothing beyond the standard ceremonial dress, no ornament to speak of. There were those who slighted that plainness in roundabout ways, murmuring that he was altogether too austere. And yet, with not a single adornment upon him, Hyperion drew the eye more than anyone.
If a man like that put on robes such as these, and the emperor's crown besides, how much more would he stand out? The moment she pictured it, she was certain nothing could suit his head better than this. She was gazing at it with quiet satisfaction when the eyes of one of the staff from the Jewel Custody narrowed.