They are protected by vigilance.

And vigilance, it turns out, is not a thing you can buy, or hire, or install among your polished advisers.

It lives in unexpected places.

It lives in the people who pay attention because they have to, who remember kindness because they receive so little of it, who see everything precisely because no one bothers to look at them.

In the end, it was not the politicians who saved the throne, and not the lawyers, and not the powerful men of my inner circle who had spent thirty years drawing their strength from mine.

It was the woman they had all treated like furniture.