"Are we talking personal character, policy inclinations, puppetability..."

"I'm going to have better things to do than run Eianvar by proxy. If I end up having to personally conquer and administer the place because nothing else will do, I will be annoyed. I want someone in charge who will lead to good results for the people of this planet, by whatever means. If that's because he's a good person, even better. If he's personally abhorrent but in a way that doesn't involve harming anyone and does involve running the country competently and responsibly, I'll take it."

Cam looks for snippets of the prince's writing and what documents they might be notes on.

The prince has commented extensively on a wide variety of legal documents! The majority of his notes are ciphered and have never appeared in cleartext, but there's this copy of the tax code annotated with just the word 'recent', over and over again...

"Ooh, he has a personal cipher, I feel much better about reading over his shoulder with that to keep me from reading his diary."

"Same!"

"Here are his annotations on the tax code. Bit repetitive."

He scans them.

...he starts laughing.

"Mm-hm."

"I like this guy. I want to be his friend."

"They're pretty low tech, I could do a bird drone in through his window - or sitting on the sill - and I bet nobody double checks it."

"...I think I want to know more about the magic system before I try that - imagine if they had a ward on the palace that kept birds off so they didn't crap on the walls, or some such thing -"

"It was suspiciously bird-poop-free."

He laughs. "All right, so how do we investigate for possible bird wards?"

"Good question. Magic from here definitely falls under the no conjuring magic stuff rule. Maybe I can find a list or something." Search.

There is totally a well-organized list of all the magic and magical artifacts on and in the palace. The anti-bird-poop ward only denies the palace's hospitality to the poop, not the birds who produce it.

Cam displays this list to Sindri.

"All right, so your bird won't be suspicious for that reason at least..." He scans through the rest. "Wonder what a message box is and why they've got half a dozen of them..."

"Physical mail? That used to be a thing."

"Maybe. Wow, who's Lady Reihar and why does she have a better-equipped bathroom than the Emperor..."

"...maybe she just really likes taking baths? Who knows."

"I'm automatically suspicious of anyone who lives in the palace and gets expensive luxury goodies in the current regime, but presumably if she's important her name will keep coming up."

Cam searches for it.

Lady Reihar is less important than the Emperor and therefore the rumours about her torture hobby are more numerous, more detailed, and better-substantiated! Also she doesn't even live in the palace, she just has an entire suite complete with ostentatiously enchanted bathroom there because she has the Emperor's favour so why not. People are fairly circumspect about suggesting that she might be the Emperor's mistress but at the same time it's pretty clear that most of them think she's definitely the Emperor's mistress. She is also a Wood mage, and contributed substantially to the Emperor's success in usurping his father.

"Wow," says Sindri. "I was not nearly suspicious enough."

"Bleah," says Cam. "I can - with your permission I can - make a model of her house and check that out."