Aegis is over here, dancing with Alice-of-Aurum for no reason.

"Incoming," says Alice. "Hi, Steel!"

"Hello," says Steel.

"What's up?" asks Aegis.

"I heard you are surprised that my wife has not violently overthrown my mother," says Steel. "Do you care to explain yourself?"

"I didn't put it like that," Aegis says. "I'm badly socialized but I'm not that badly socialized. Violent overthrow is totally in the Bell repertoire, though, and letting other people run things mostly isn't. Sometimes we just pack up and move, Angela's being patient, I think Rose is completely ignoring monarchs-qua-monarchs, but Glass is the only one who lives in a castle and wears a crown and has someone else in the big chair. So either there's something special going on with Glass, or your mom is a really good or at least a really noninterfering sorta queen, or she was being patient and now you're all Downsided you're looking at some personal upheavals."

"I predict," says Sherlock, "that my mother will continue to be queen for a very long time."

"And," says Aegis, "that's weird. I'm not saying it can't happen, it's just weird."

Alice departs this area of party in response to some manner of vision.

Aegis shrugs. She does a casual backflip.

Steel observes Aegis.

"I bet at least half of us were thinking it, I'm just the one who was tactless enough to say anything."

"I am trying to decide whether or not this is a problem."

"That I think it or that I might be right?"

"No."

"What, then?"

"That it is such a prevalent opinion."

Aegis shrugs. "We figure out how Bells are by seeing what Bells do. We imitate each other some 'cause we're all so cool, but not slavishly or anything. If Glass thinks your mom is the best queen and she pulls a Rose instead of a Shell Bell, or works on something like Amariah trying to unite all the kingdoms of the world before she sits on them collectively, or does something totally novel, we'll all go 'huh' and incorporate it and then wonder whether the next Bell is going to do that. Besides, you're her obvious mint-helper. We'll spot her some coins if you can't keep up, but even if you ignore that she must really love you to have married you, she's not likely to do anything you strenuously object to."

"There are plenty of excellent reasons why she should not violently overthrow my mother," Sherlock agrees. "Among them is the fact that it would not work. Nevertheless, I find the attitude disquieting."

"Okay, and?"

"Perhaps it is worth considering some of your underlying assumptions."

"I will when I see what Glass does and I know which assumptions are suspect," says Aegis. "Before today all I knew about your mom's template was that none of your or Iron's alts wanted theirs back from the dead. Maybe yours is special, but I don't know how. Maybe Glass is relevantly unusual, but I don't know how."

Aegis shrugs again. "I'm not personally planning to violently overthrow anyone," she offers. "I live in a democracy and I'm a war hero with another war hero's endorsement. I just have to turn sixteen and hire a campaign manager and I'm a shoo-in for Hegemon. Circumstances matter. Maybe this world - did she name it yet? - maybe where we are turns out particularly non-megalomaniacal Bell results. You've been married to her for years, I found out that there were more than one of me for real and not just in a weird dream Sue had months ago by my time, maybe you know more than me."

"I do, in fact, know more about both my wife and my kingdom than you do."

"So what's it matter what I think? I'm not gonna step on Glass's toes whatever she winds up doing."

"It matters because this is only one of many kingdoms in one of many worlds, and I am sure it is not the only one that is being adequately governed."

"The outright usurpers among us are Golden and Shell Bell. Both the governments they deposed killed innocent people routinely. Rest of us are orthogonal to politics, space colonists, taking power more naturally," she raises a hand, "or doing diplomacy. Or whatever. I don't think Sarion's settled on a strategy, she's been repairing her brain, she'll probably do something soon, she seems mostly better to me."

"In which case," Sherlock says dryly, "it seems odd to predict that Glass will usurp anything."

"Is there some secret number of times I have to say that she totally might not do that which will placate you?"

"I already know she is not going to do that."

"Then I don't get what the problem is."

"Clearly you do not."

"...Are you gonna explain?"

"I'm not sure I can."

"Would Glass get it? Because I bet she could explain it to me if she did."

"She might."

[Hey Glass, your wife is confusing me!]

Glass appears. "How so?" she inquires of Sherlock.

"I questioned her about her troubling assumption that you are going to overthrow my mother and she does not seem to comprehend the scope of the problem."

"Wait," says Glass, "why is there such an assumption? I'm not going to do that." She thinks for a moment. Then she says, "Aegis, I moved here. On purpose when I was about your age during Marianne's reign."

"I didn't know that," says Aegis indignantly. "You didn't write in the Bellbook yet."

"It is a problem that the first assumption, absent special circumstances, is that a Bell living in someone else's kingdom will conquer it as soon as possible," says Steel. "It is a problem that that is viewed as the default course of action."

"Most of us don't live in kingdoms. There's Glass and Sarion and Rose, that's it, Rose is ignoring monarchs and Sarion's been fixing her brain so we don't know yet what her plan is. Angela's got a theocracy with term limits she can wait out, Shell Bell overthrew a technical democracy and Golden a shadow oligarchy thing. Amariah has some clan queens around but she didn't marry one's kid and live with her and I don't think they work like human queens anyway. The default course of action is to find leverage and haul on it. It's just, what that leverage looks like changes world to world."

"I don't have a detailed plan yet, but I'm going to resemble Rose more than anyone, I think," says Glass firmly.

Steel shakes her head and kisses her wife.

"Well, yeah, I didn't know you moved here," says Aegis.

"I'm not going to overthrow the king of Linderwall either!"

"What, seriously, you lucked into adequate hereditary monarchs, like, everywhere?"

"Is that so bizarre?"

"Yes, what the hell, is your entire world made of cotton fucking candy?"

"No."

"I don't mean literally," says Aegis, rolling her eyes.

"...I suppose it's certainly possible that this is a particularly high-quality world."

"The question as I understood it was, does this world fail to contain terrible people who do terrible things? The answer is no."

"Does your nifty aura thingamabob tell you the cotton candy ratio around here?" Aegis asks Glass.

Steel snorts.

"I'm serious. I don't have a lot of fine detail, but those places - especially Sunshine, eugh - are not nice, and I can't really blame the other Bells for expecting me and my closest circle of friends to be the only remotely acceptable people within a stone's throw. That having been said, Aegis," says Glass, "this place is, yes, made of cotton candy, and so are the overwhelming majority of monarchs, and they can go on being so as far as I'm concerned; I have relatively minor work to do. Poor Juliet, yikes, that world..."

"Gonna name the place Cotton Candy?"

"No, I am not. Honey, are you okay?"

"I - worry - that someday, somebell will overthrow their home government unnecessarily, and none of you will notice."

"Does it sound to you like it's happened so far?" inquires Aegis. "I mean, Glass didn't take one look at us and say 'whoop, better depose Marianne', did she? And Aurum and Atlantis totally needed the upheaval."

Steel shakes her head.

Glass takes her wife's hand.

"If it happens," she says to Aegis, "I expect you will not notice."

"Well," says Aegis, "okay, what do you want us to do about it?"

"Be sure you understand the situation before you apply your expectations to it."

"Next time I'll get Glass to check the world's cotton candy ratio first," snorts Aegis.

"That is adequate."

"So glad to have your approval," snorts Aegis. "So if you're not naming it Cotton Candy what are you going to call it?"

"...Chronicle," says Glass after a moment's thought.

"Honey," murmurs Glass. "Oh, I'm glad you didn't meet me when I was fifteen, I was a flippant little thing too - Aegis, can you be serious, I read the note in the Bellbook about you being badly socialized but surely if you're planning to be elected you're working on turning it off?"

Aegis sighs. "Sue thinks I'm funny," she mutters, and then she composes herself and says, "Steel, we're gonna pay attention, we're not gonna go around dismantling power structures just because they're there, only if there's something wrong with them that isn't patchable."

"Thank you," says Steel.

"You're welcome," grumbles Aegis, and she floats into the air like a soap bubble, looking for somebody else to talk to.

Steel hugs her wife.