by Victoria Winslow
1.
THE ROYAL ACCOUNTANT
The fog of London hung thick as custard, turning the morning into a theatrical farce where buildings appeared and disappeared with the arbitrary logic of bureaucratic decisions. Karl Marx trudged through it, clutching his papers to his chest, the damp air already conspiring to wilt his meticulously prepared application.
“Municipal Accounting Assistant,” he muttered to himself, rehearsing the title like an incantation. “A position of modest dignity, sufficient remuneration, and—most importantly—complete ideological neutrality.”
His boots clicked against cobblestones as he navigated toward the Records Office, a building so aggressively nondescript it seemed to be hiding from its own architectural identity. The Germans had cathedrals, the French had palaces, but the English had perfected the art of constructing buildings that apologized for existing.
Inside, the Records Office revealed itself as a labyrinth of oak cabinets, each drawer containing the paper manifestation of someone’s fate. Clerks scurried like well-dressed rodents, carrying stacks of documents whose importance was directly proportional to how vigorously they had been stamped.
“I am here about the position,” Marx announced to a clerk whose spectacles appeared to be slowly consuming his face.
“Name?” the clerk asked without looking up.
“Marx. Karl Marx.”
“Purpose of visit?”
“I just said—the accounting position.”
“We have seventeen accounting positions currently unfilled. Please be specific.”
Marx suppressed a sigh. “Municipal Accounting Assistant. The advertisement specified experience with municipal ledgers and a tolerance for mathematical tedium.”
The clerk adjusted his spectacles, which had the unfortunate effect of making his eyes appear to float several inches from his face. “Ah yes. Take a seat. Sir Percival will see you shortly.”
Shortly, in bureaucratic time, translated to an hour and forty-three minutes. Marx occupied himself by mentally drafting a treatise on the relationship between waiting times and class consciousness. By the time Sir Percival’s office door opened, he had concluded that the bourgeoisie had invented waiting as a form of social control.
“Herr Marx!” Sir Percival boomed, a man whose enormous mustache seemed to be compensating for the complete absence of personality in his eyes. “Do come in.”
The office was a shrine to paperwork, with documents arranged in piles that suggested either a complex filing system or the early stages of a paper-based religion.
“Your application was most impressive,” Sir Percival said, rifling through a stack that clearly contained nothing related to Marx. “Most impressive indeed.”
“Thank you,” Marx replied cautiously. “Though I confess I emphasized practical experience rather than theoretical innovations.”
“Precisely what caught our attention! Such modesty! Such pragmatism! Qualities we desperately need in these troubled financial times.”
Marx blinked. His application had been deliberately understated—a tactical decision to secure stable employment while he completed his more revolutionary writings. “I’m pleased you found it suitable.”
“Suitable? My dear fellow, it was exceptional. The Queen will be absolutely delighted.”
Marx’s brain, normally adept at processing dialectical contradictions, briefly seized. “The Queen?”
“Indeed! Her Majesty has been most insistent on finding someone with fresh perspective. The royal accounts have become rather—” Sir Percival lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “—labyrinthine.”
“There must be some mistake,” Marx said carefully. “I applied for Municipal Accounting Assistant.”
Sir Percival’s laugh was the sound of bureaucracy celebrating its own cleverness. “A common clerical error in the posting. The position is Royal Accountant. Same duties, of course, just with a more… elevated clientele.”
Marx felt the fog outside had somehow infiltrated his mind. “I don’t think—”
“The salary is, naturally, commensurate with the responsibility,” Sir Percival continued, sliding a paper across the desk.
Marx glanced down. The figure written there would fund his research for years. It would pay for proper medical care for his chronically ill wife. It would mean no more pawning their silver.
“This is most unexpected,” he managed.
“Excellence often is! Now, we’ll need you to sign here, here, and initial here.” Sir Percival indicated various spots on a document so dense with text it resembled a legally binding forest. “You begin tomorrow. Eight o’clock sharp. The palace steward will show you to your office.”
“The palace,” Marx repeated faintly.
“Where else would the Royal Accountant work? A coal cellar?” Sir Percival roared with laughter at his own wit. “Her Majesty is most eager to discuss her ideas about collective ownership.”
“Collective ownership?” Marx’s eyebrows achieved a height previously thought anatomically impossible.
“Something about the royal lands. Terribly progressive, our young Queen. Now, do sign quickly—I have sixteen more appointments before luncheon.”
As if in a dream, Marx found himself signing. The pen felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, each signature another nail in the coffin of his ideological purity.
“Welcome to the service of the Crown, Herr Marx,” Sir Percival said, stamping the document with a flourish that suggested he was christening a battleship. “I’m sure you’ll find it most… illuminating.”
Marx stepped back into the London fog, clutching his appointment letter. Somewhere in the bureaucratic mist, a colossal error had occurred—one that had just made the author of an unfinished manuscript on the evils of capital the financial advisor to the British monarchy.
The irony was so perfect it could only have been engineered by history itself.
Marx stumbled out of the Records Office clutching his letter of appointment, the magnitude of the bureaucratic error still assembling itself in his mind like a particularly perverse jigsaw puzzle. The fog had thickened to the consistency of imperial ambition, rendering the world beyond arm’s reach into vague, haunting suggestions of existence.
“This cannot stand,” he muttered, examining the royal seal affixed to his appointment letter—a wax emblem depicting a lion and unicorn locked in what appeared to be either mortal combat or a particularly avant-garde waltz. “I must return at once and explain the error.”
He pivoted on his heel, only to collide with a messenger boy who had materialized from the fog like a particularly determined apparition.
“Begging your pardon, sir!” The boy doffed his cap. “Are you the gentleman just appointed by Sir Percival? Herr Marx, sir?”
“I am, but there’s been a mistake of—”
“No time, sir! I’m to escort you directly to your carriage. Her Majesty’s schedule is quite inflexible on matters of fiscal consultation.”
Marx blinked. “Her Majesty’s… schedule.”
“Indeed, sir. The morning budget review cannot proceed without the Royal Accountant. It’s tradition, sir. Or it will be, now that you’ve been appointed.”
The messenger boy seized Marx’s elbow with the gentle yet inexorable pressure of bureaucracy in motion and steered him toward the street, where a carriage waited. Its black lacquer gleamed through the fog like a well-polished philosophical contradiction.
“But this is absurd,” Marx protested as he was efficiently loaded into the vehicle. “I applied to be a Municipal Accounting Assistant, not—”
“Oh, we’re all quite thrilled about your appointment, sir,” the messenger interrupted, climbing in after him. “The letter’s been read to half the clerks in Westminster already. Caused quite a stir!”
“It was read aloud?” Marx felt a fresh wave of dread. “To whom, exactly?”
“Well, first to the Under-Secretary of Appointments, who couldn’t believe his ears and called in the Deputy Assistant to the Treasury, who summoned the Chief Clerk of Royal Disbursements, who fainted dead away and had to be revived with smelling salts and a rather robust cup of tea.”
The carriage lurched forward, swallowed immediately by the fog. Marx clutched his satchel to his chest as if it might shield him from the accelerating farce.
“And then?” he asked, unable to resist the gravitational pull of his own disaster.
“Then it was read to the Committee for Bureaucratic Celebration, who declared an immediate half-holiday, and to Sir Percival himself, who was so overcome with pride at securing your services that he accidentally knighted himself while practicing his bow before the mirror.”
“He… knighted himself?”
“With a letter opener, sir. Most irregular, but the paperwork’s been filed, so technically he’s now Sir Sir Percival. The second ‘Sir’ is under review by the College of Heralds.”
Marx pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is precisely the sort of administrative chaos that results from unchecked hierarchical structures operating without proper oversight from the working classes.”
“Is it, sir?” The messenger looked genuinely fascinated. “Will that be going in your first report to the Queen?”
“There will be no report because I shall explain the error immediately upon arrival. I am a philosopher and economic theorist, not a—” Marx paused, suddenly registering a detail from earlier. “Did you say ‘Her Majesty’s budget review’?”
“Yes, sir. The Queen has taken a most active interest in the national accounts since her coronation. The previous Royal Accountant resigned after she questioned why the military budget could purchase fourteen battleships but not a single adequate orphanage.”
Marx felt something shift in his chest—a treacherous flicker of interest. “She questioned military expenditure in favor of social welfare?”
“Caused quite the scandal, sir. The Duke of Wellington turned so red they feared he might spontaneously combust and set fire to his decorative medals.”
The carriage rattled onward through London’s streets, the fog occasionally parting to reveal glimpses of poverty that made Marx’s jaw tighten. Children in ragged clothes. Workers trudging to factories. The machinery of capital grinding human potential into profit.
“And what is the composition of this council I am to advise?” Marx asked, a dangerous idea taking shape. “How frequently do they meet?”
“Council, sir?” The messenger looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean the Privy Council? They advise the Queen on matters of state, but the budget is solely Her Majesty’s purview, with your guidance of course.”
“I see.” Marx stroked his beard thoughtfully. “And how receptive is this council to… reform?”
“Reform, sir?” The messenger’s eyes widened. “Well, I couldn’t say. Though Her Majesty has expressed interest in more equitable distribution of resources. Just last week she asked why the palace has seventeen drawing rooms when some families in London have none at all.”
Marx’s eyebrows rose. Perhaps this catastrophic error contained within it the seeds of opportunity. If he could influence the economic policies of the British Empire itself—redirect resources, restructure exploitative systems, perhaps even begin dismantling the very apparatus of class oppression…
“Here, sir.” The messenger handed him a small metal object. “Your royal seal. For official documents.”
Marx examined it—an ornate device with his initials now somehow incorporated into the royal crest. “This looks like a library card.”
“Does it? How democratic! Her Majesty will be pleased. She’s been most insistent that governance should be accessible to all.”
The carriage slowed, and through the window, Marx caught a glimpse of Buckingham Palace looming through the fog like an architectural manifestation of class inequality. Gilt and grandeur, built upon centuries of exploitation.
“I shall need to review the complete royal accounts,” Marx said, making a sudden decision. “All expenditures, revenues, and holdings of the crown.”
“Of course, sir. They await you in your office. Her Majesty has already ordered all ledgers opened to your inspection.”
Marx felt history holding its breath as the carriage rolled through the palace gates. Here he was, the author of emerging theories that would dismantle the very concept of monarchy, about to step into the heart of the empire as its financial custodian.
The irony was exquisite. The opportunity, perhaps, unprecedented.
“Very well,” Marx said, squaring his shoulders as the carriage door opened. “I shall meet with the council and begin implementing the necessary reforms immediately.”
“Splendid, sir!” The messenger beamed. “The Privy Council will be most interested in your ideas. However, I should mention that when Her Majesty says ‘council,’ she primarily refers to herself and her corgis. They have a vote on all matters of state.”
Marx stared. “The… dogs have a vote?”
“Only on Tuesdays, sir. And bank holidays.”
As Marx stepped from the carriage into the fog-shrouded courtyard of Buckingham Palace, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just crossed a threshold into a realm where the absurdity of power would reveal itself more nakedly than any theoretical treatise could ever capture.
The revolution, it seemed, would begin with an accounting error and the voting rights of small dogs.
Marx stood at the threshold of Buckingham Palace’s grand reception hall, momentarily paralyzed by the sheer spectacle of aristocratic excess that assaulted his senses. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling like crystallized wealth, each prism refracting light into a thousand bourgeois rainbows. Floral arrangements towered with imperial arrogance—roses imported from colonies the sun never set upon, arranged by servants paid less than the cost of a single bloom.
“The Royal Accountant approaches!” announced a man with a voice that suggested he had spent decades perfecting the art of making syllables sound expensive.
A fanfare erupted from a corner where musicians stood in ridiculous livery, their trumpets seemingly designed to broadcast inequality at maximum volume. Marx winced. The notes hung in the air like unpaid debts.
“Chamberlain Reginald Swillings, at your service,” said the voice-owner, a man whose posture suggested his spine had been replaced with a particularly rigid economic theory. “I shall present you to Her Majesty momentarily. First, a brief review of protocol.”
Marx nodded distractedly, his attention caught by a portrait of a previous monarch wearing enough jewels to feed London’s East End for a decade.
“One approaches the throne with three steps forward, followed by a deep bow—the depth indicating one’s reverence for the crown. Men of your station bow at precisely forty-five degrees. Not forty-four, mind you, as that suggests republican sympathies. And certainly not forty-six, which implies excessive familiarity.”
“You measure the angles?” Marx asked, his brow furrowing.
“The Master of Geometrical Obeisance does, yes. With a protractor of solid gold.”
Marx made a mental note to include this conversation verbatim in his next manuscript.
“When Her Majesty extends her hand, you may kiss her glove—not the skin, heavens no—and only the knuckle of the middle finger. The index finger is reserved for dukes, the ring finger for blood relatives, and the pinky for favored corgis.”
“And the thumb?” Marx asked, unable to resist.
Swillings looked genuinely horrified. “We do not speak of the royal thumb, sir.”
The Chamberlain continued his liturgy of etiquette while Marx catalogued the room’s opulence with the methodical precision of a man mentally redistributing wealth. The marble floor alone could have been melted down and recast as public housing. The gold leaf on the ceiling moldings would fund several revolutions with change left for commemorative pamphlets.
“Her Majesty, Queen Victoria!” announced a voice, and the room rippled into choreographed genuflection.
Marx remained standing as the young queen entered. She was smaller than he had imagined, almost delicate, wearing a crown that appeared to be compensating for something—perhaps the fragility of inherited power. She moved with the careful steps of someone who had been told precisely how queens should walk.
“You will bow now,” hissed Swillings, who had somehow materialized at Marx’s elbow.
“I will not,” Marx replied calmly. “I do not recognize the divine authority of monarchs, nor the feudal symbolism of physical prostration before another human being whose only qualification for power was the accident of birth.”
A collective gasp swept through the room like a sudden economic downturn.
“Did he just—?”
“—refused to bow—”
“—probably French—”
The queen had reached her throne and turned, her gaze falling directly on Marx—the only vertical figure in a landscape of bent backs.
“You are the new Royal Accountant?” she asked, her voice surprisingly steady for someone whose authority had just been so publicly challenged.
“I am Karl Marx, yes. Though I must inform Your Majesty that there has been a significant error in my appointment. I am an economic theorist and philosopher, not an accountant.”
“Interesting,” said the queen, studying him with unexpected intensity. “And what is your economic theory, Mr. Marx?”
“That the means of production should be owned collectively by the workers rather than exploited by the capitalist class, that the aristocracy represents a parasitic remnant of feudal oppression, and that the monarchy itself is an anachronistic symbol of class inequality that should be dismantled in favor of a workers’ state.”
The silence that followed was so complete that Marx could hear the soft thud of a courtier fainting onto plush carpet.
“I see,” said Victoria after a moment. “And you express these views while standing in my palace, wearing what appears to be my family’s royal seal?”
Marx glanced down at the seal he had been given. “The irony is not lost on me, Your Majesty.”
To everyone’s astonishment, Victoria’s lips curved into a small smile. “Nor on me, Mr. Marx. Tell me, if you were to examine the royal accounts, what would you look for first?”
“Inequities, inefficiencies, and opportunities for more equitable distribution.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Victoria announced to the room, “I believe we have found exactly the Royal Accountant we need.”
A courtier near the back whispered loudly, “Is Her Majesty making a joke?”
“Her Majesty does not joke about fiscal matters,” Victoria replied, overhearing. “Now, Mr. Marx, everyone is waiting for you to perform the customary obeisance.”
Marx stood his ground. “With respect, Your Majesty, I cannot—”
“It is a simple curtsy, Mr. Marx. Like this.” Victoria demonstrated a small, graceful dip that looked nothing like the deep genuflection Swillings had described.
“I believe Your Majesty is confusing the male bow with the female curtsy,” Swillings interjected, looking mortified.
“Am I? How curious. Well, Mr. Marx, please proceed with whichever form of acknowledgment your principles will allow.”
Marx, recognizing the political acumen behind her compromise, inclined his head slightly. “I acknowledge you as the current head of state, though I reserve the right to advocate for systemic change.”
“Naturally,” said Victoria, with what might have been a wink. “Chamberlain Swillings will show you to the Royal Accounts Room. I look forward to your first report—especially the section on inefficiencies.”
As Marx followed the horrified Chamberlain from the reception hall, he heard Victoria address her court: “I find it refreshing to have someone who speaks their mind rather than my hem. Perhaps we shall all try a little more honesty and a little less geometry in our interactions.”
Marx realized, with a mixture of professional dismay and personal amusement, that he might have just encountered the one monarch in Europe capable of disarming him—not with power, but with the unexpected weapon of self-awareness.
The Royal Accounts Room, Marx discovered, was less a room and more a cavernous mausoleum dedicated to the worship of numerical order. Ledgers were stacked from floor to ceiling like the vertebrae of some financial leviathan. Clerks moved with the practiced shuffle of men who had accepted that their souls had been traded for inkwells and blotting paper.
“This is where you’ll be… reforming things,” Swillings announced, his tone suggesting that ‘reform’ belonged in the same lexical category as ‘plague’ and ‘French cooking.’
Marx surveyed the room. “I’ll need all records from the last decade. Expenditures, revenues, allocations to the various ministries, detailed breakdowns of the royal household budget, and a complete inventory of crown assets.”
“All of them?” Swillings blanched. “But that’s seventeen thousand, four hundred and twelve separate documents.”
“You’ve counted them?”
“The Master of Numerical Anxiety does, yes.”
Marx removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “Then we shall begin immediately.”
Left alone with the financial history of the British Empire, Marx found himself engrossed despite his ideological objections. The royal ledgers told a story more revealing than any courtier’s gossip—here was power quantified, privilege enumerated, and injustice balanced to the penny.
Three hours later, surrounded by open books and hastily scrawled notes, Marx failed to notice the small delegation that had entered until a polite cough punctured his concentration.
“The quarterly budget meeting, sir,” announced a thin man with spectacles perched so precariously on his nose that they appeared to be contemplating escape. “We weren’t certain you’d be joining us, given your… recent appointment.”
Marx glanced up. Six men in varying shades of black stood before him, each clutching a portfolio as if it contained their personal salvation.
“Of course I’ll join you,” Marx said, gathering his notes. “I’ve already identified several systemic inefficiencies that require immediate address.”
They led him to a wood-paneled room where a table was arranged with tea service and biscuits of such architectural precision that Marx suspected they had been designed by the same fellow who built Westminster Abbey.
“Gentlemen,” Marx began, mistaking this for the civic budget meeting mentioned in his original appointment letter, “we stand at a critical juncture in economic history. The royal finances, like all capitalist structures, have become a self-perpetuating mechanism of exploitation.”
The six men stared at him with expressions ranging from confusion to incipient cardiac arrest.
“The monarchy extracts surplus value from the labor of the common people, transforming their sweat into gold leaf for palace ceilings and diamond-encrusted chamber pots!”
“We don’t actually have diamond-encrusted—” began one man.
“It was metaphorical!” Marx thundered, warming to his subject. “But the principle remains. Every shilling spent on maintaining aristocratic excess is a shilling stolen from those who created that wealth through their labor.”
Marx seized a ledger and flipped it open. “Look here—forty thousand pounds annually for the royal wardrobe. Do you know how many families that could feed? How many children could be educated? How many workers could be lifted from squalor?”
“But Her Majesty requires—”
“Her Majesty requires precisely what every human requires—food, shelter, dignity, and purpose. The rest is bourgeois extravagance disguised as tradition!”
Marx was pacing now, his voice rising with revolutionary fervor. “We must reorganize these accounts to reflect a more equitable distribution. The royal household should operate on principles of collective ownership and democratic management. Each expenditure must be justified not by precedent or privilege, but by its contribution to the common good!”
He seized a piece of chalk and began covering a blackboard with diagrams and calculations, unaware that the door had opened behind him.
“I propose a three-phase transformation,” Marx continued, chalk dust settling on his beard like revolutionary snow. “First, we identify all parasitic expenditures—ceremonies that serve no purpose beyond reinforcing class hierarchy, ornamental positions that could be eliminated, and luxury allocations that exceed reasonable need.”
“Second, we redistribute these funds toward productive investments—education for the common people, public works that benefit all citizens, and healthcare provisions that recognize the inherent value of every human life regardless of birth.”
“Third, we implement a new system of accounting transparency, where every royal expenditure is published for public scrutiny. No more hidden accounts, no more obscured transfers, no more financial mystification to maintain the illusion of divine right!”
Marx turned, breathing heavily, to find that his audience had grown by one crucial member. Queen Victoria stood in the doorway, her expression unreadable.
“Your Majesty,” gasped the men, rising in unison.
Marx, still caught in the momentum of his oration, merely nodded. “Your Majesty.”
“Please, continue, Mr. Marx,” Victoria said, entering the room and taking a seat. “I find your perspective… illuminating.”
The budget officials looked as though they might faint.
“You disagree with my assessment?” Marx asked, prepared for royal outrage.
“On the contrary,” Victoria replied, reaching for a biscuit with surprising casualness. “I’ve been queen for precisely eight months, and in that time, no one has spoken to me with such clarity about what my position actually means. They dress it up in ceremony and protocol, but you’ve stripped it bare.”
She took a delicate bite of her biscuit. “Tell me, if you were to implement these reforms, where would you begin?”
The budget officials exchanged glances of pure horror.
“With education,” Marx replied without hesitation. “An educated populace is essential for any functioning society, regardless of its economic structure. The crown should redirect funds from ceremonial excess to public education.”
“Fascinating,” Victoria said, and Marx was surprised to note genuine interest in her eyes. “And you believe this would strengthen the nation rather than weaken it?”
“I believe it would transform the nation from a feudal relic into a modern society where human potential is not determined by accident of birth.”
Victoria nodded slowly. “Mr. Marx, would you be so kind as to join me for tea tomorrow? A private consultation, to discuss these ideas further.”
The budget officials looked as though they had collectively swallowed their quills.
“I would be honored, Your Majesty,” Marx replied, “though I must warn you that my ideas will not become less radical over tea.”
“I should hope not,” Victoria said with the ghost of a smile. “What use is a Royal Accountant who merely tells me what I wish to hear? Three o’clock, in my private sitting room. Chamberlain Swillings will show you the way.”
As she departed, Marx heard her murmur to her lady-in-waiting: “Arrange for copies of the education budget to be brought to my chambers. And find out what Mr. Marx has published—I should like to read his work before our meeting.”
Left with the budget officials, who now regarded him with the wary respect one might afford a particularly articulate bomb, Marx realized he had somehow—against all revolutionary principle and personal inclination—become an object of royal fascination.
The most perplexing part was that he found himself looking forward to tomorrow’s tea with something approaching intellectual curiosity. Queen Victoria, it seemed, was not the mindless figurehead of aristocratic oppression he had expected.
She was something far more dangerous to his ideological certainty—a monarch capable of asking questions.