So Promise shows her into the crypt. "Arcane, Royal. Royal, Arcane."

"Hello."

"Hello. What can you tell me about Promise?"

"I'm tentatively in favour of her proposed conquest of Fairyland. From what I've heard, it seems like she'd be an improvement on the current ruler."

"Thank you. It will demonstrate to Arcane that I cannot have ordered you to say that if you pull a hair from my head."

"Sure," says Royal. She approaches Promise and does that.

"Well, that's... reasonably strong evidence," says Arcane.

"What are you afraid of, here?"

"I am afraid that I will agree to help conquer Fairyland, be given insufficient freedom to ensure the success of the effort, fail, and then the Queen will send me or her next most effective vassal out to secure this entire mortal world so that no one can ever use it to gate into her court unexpectedly."

"Not a pretty picture," says Royal.

"Do you think you can ensure the success of the effort with sufficient freedom?"

"That is not exactly what I meant, no. I do think that substantial restrictions to my freedom will diminish the effectiveness of my contribution."

"I agree, that's generally how things work."

"And I cannot afford to do this with less than maximal effectiveness."

"Is there something in particular you suspect I'll be tempted to order you about which will interfere?"

"Not in particular, no. But - if I had been compelled to conquer the mortal world, one of my first priorities in that effort would have been to erase all of my other Queenscourt orders, because any order can be the wrong order under some circumstances."

"What?"

"I assume that in this instance you'd have left whichever order compels you to conquer the world intact and I'm not planning to, but mentioning that something I have been contemplating doing would be mostly step one in your plan to conquer the world...?"

"I had thought the parallels would be more obvious," he says. "The conquest of this world, like the conquest of the Queenscourt, would have been a complex and difficult task with negligible room for error. The Queenscourt order set is exquisitely well crafted to avoid interfering with itself, and even so, if I was required to do something this difficult to the best of my ability, that would necessarily include being under no other orders for the duration of the task."

"Once the attack is in progress completing whatever plan we have for conquest will be the top priority. Until we're committed that far there are - methodological priorities that I'd place higher than arranging the best possible chance of a technical success."

"What do you mean?"

"For instance, if it turns out that the plan with the best chance of success involves vassalizing and then deploying as slave labor innocent unwilling mortals I'm not going to do that even if it would totally work and the next best option might not."

"Perhaps I should just be turned into a small animal and kept in a box," says Arcane, disgruntled.

"...To clarify," says Royal, "that isn't because you're disgusted with the idea of refraining from enslaving innocent mortals?"