Ivory Keep Names New Herald for Her Unblemished Record of Agreeing

The Ivory Keep has a new Herald. High Lord Donwald of the Golden Towers announced it on Friday the way most business of state is now announced: he posted it on the Truthscroll, the message board he owns, about a woman who currently works for him there.

She is Katie Saccharia, forty-one, a lawyer, a mother of four, and a regular face on the Foxfire Tidings and the News Maximus Crier. Her present title is senior communications adviser to the Golden Tower Scrying Company, which runs the Truthscroll. So the notice of her hiring went up on her current employer's board, written by her future employer, who is also her current employer. I checked this twice. The rules permit it.

"It is my Great Honor to have just appointed, as Press Secretary, Katie Saccharia," the High Lord wrote. He praised her work "in key Swing States" and her "unblemished record of support." For readers who skipped the procedural primer, the Herald's job is to explain the High Lord to the realm. The stated qualification is never having disagreed with him. I have seen worse job postings, though not recently.

The lady from the Golden Tower Scrying Company has served the crown before. Earlier this year she spent a few weeks as a spokeswoman at the Homeland Watchtower, then left. I have recorded longer recesses. Her start date at the Keep has not been announced, which makes it the most honest line in the release.

She replaces Karoline Levitate, who took the podium as the youngest Herald the Keep had ever sworn in and stepped down in late August after the birth of her second child. Congratulations to her, sincerely. This week Levitate signed on as a contributor at the Foxfire Tidings, so the realm's last Herald and its next one will now share a building, and possibly a makeup chair. The High Lord called her "fabulous." It is the only review of a departing official I have ever transcribed that contained no threats.

By my count Saccharia is the sixth Herald to serve this High Lord across his two reigns. My ledger for the office reads: Promises Made to be transparent with the gallery, six. Promises Kept, one, the one about showing up, and the new Herald has not been given a date for that. Saccharia called the post "the honor of a lifetime." They all do. Then the lifetime turns out to be about eighteen months.

A courtier who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to be awake told me the briefing room has been "basically fine" since August, in the sense that nobody briefed and nobody was briefed. My colleague Grashka Ironjaw, who covers wars from a tent, says a herald's job is the same in every realm: stand between the ruler and the arrows. I told her the arrows here are questions. She said that sounded worse.

The appointment needs no confirmation from the Senate Chamber. It got none.

— O.V., from the gallery