The ceremony is a vestigial remnant of the days the knights were primarily the kingdom's military force, and for the benefit of generations of nobility of uncertain physical capability, generally a ritualised affair.
The Lord Vizier stands at the uphill end of the course — with its thick upthrust thickets of randomly-angled wooden beams, its hand-width bridges to challenge one's balance, its ivy-cloaked climbing surfaces, its freezing ornamental ponds and sheets of treacherous mud — and a succession of knights-aspirant ascends the more recent, long but dignified stairway that climbs alongside it, its tribulations now relegated to metaphor, and undergo what is left of the acceptance trial.
He stands at the peak of the course, and each stands before him in their turn. He takes in hand the ritual Orb, and makes as if to cast it away, twice; and the aspirant pantomimes as if to retrieve it, demonstrating their unswerving commitment to their monarch's command, without question. The third time, he casts it for retrieval — or these days, limply lets it falls from his own hands into the aspirant's waiting grasp — so that, Orb in hand, they may approach the throne, present it to its owner, and swear fealty, to be formally accepted as knight.
The Corgi aproaches to stand before him, alert, shoulders relaxed. He makes the obligatory feints, and then — the Princess belatedly realises what he's about from the tension in his back, moments before he does it — he winds back his arm, the Orb's antique gilding gleaming dully in his hand, and lobs it high and far, arcing down and down with the long hill falling away beneath it, to fall somewhere below.
"FETCH!" he barks venomously.
Her fingers spasm uselessly on the throne's arms, but then, impossibly, the Corgi aspirant's smile breaks through, and the Princess realises that this was so obvious, such a plain obstacle to throw in her path, she expected it — she's spinning away, sprinting for the first of the obstacles, a joyful whoop tearing from her throat.
There follows the longest forty minutes of the Princess's life. The throne is placed conveniently for the modern form of the trial; she's too far back to follow what happens, can't see downhill. But the crowd of spectators, normally there to no more than politely clap each acceptance, spend the entire time flooded to the best vantage spot they can manage, gasping at presumable setbacks and perils, yelling and cheering. She can't see any of it, but she knows, she knows immediately when the knight-aspirant finds the Orb, from the tenor of the delighted screaming.
The Corgi makes her way back up to the field by way of the stairs, clothes torn, thorns and leaves still clinging to her. She is soaked from head to toe, encased in slick mud up to mid-thigh.
Her smile is brilliant.
The Princess looks down at her, sunk to one knee, proffering the Orb in time-honoured fashion, and her heart stutters over the newly unfamiliar words of the ceremony she has presided over every year of her adult life:
"Again, your majesty?" the Corgi says, head bent humbly, her smile heating every syllable.
The Princess leans forward, takes the Orb from outstretched fingers. "The Crown accepts your services," she pronounces, and the rote words mean something, that's what they're for; but these feel like they mean mysterious worlds more; "you are my Good Girl."
(Time, later, to agonise. A; a Good Girl. For the Crown.)
The Corgi — knight, now — beams and bows and exits proudly in the direction, no doubt, of a well-earned bath and rest. The cheering crowd take somewhat more time to settle.
The next aspirant — some odious schemer from the Stepnaya — is visibly unnerved to follow her, stumbling through the forms. The crowd is restless. The Princess lets it go on through the first feint, the second, then, at the very last second possible, raises her hand a little in a delicate, ladylike way; all eyes on her at this call to pause proceedings.
She locks gazes with the Lord Vizier, and uses her raised hand to mime a small, languid, but unmistakeable gesture:
Throw.
His face, and the noble knight-aspirant's, whiten.
The crowd roars delightedly.
