"The Fool's Tale": Dramatis Personae

Today we take a short pause from our blogging to present the characters to an semi-autobiographical sequel to the Canterbury Tales, The Fool's Tale. Based on the people with whom I work, this will only be up for a short period before it's taken down.  

To be sure there's some exaggeration here and there -- some dramatic license is necessary, it's a story -- but I have no doubt all of the characters could easily identify themselves and everyone else.  The humor is in "you've got to know these people -- that's so true" type of nonsense, but since you'll never meet most of them, well, you'll just have to make do. Yet The Fool's Tale itself will never be written -- I have no plot -- and if it were written, then the story would need a self-reflective subtitle: How the Fool Lost His Job.

Our characters:

• H.I., His Incompetency, the King; a short slightly stout man, middle aged, prone to making idiotic and sometimes inscrutably cryptic pronouncements; unperceptive of the events around him, but with natty often unintentionally insulting pet names for the members of his court.  He calls the Fool "Grumpy."  He is obsessed with appearances and unburdened by substance; he's a sort of political Realist with a weak grasp of Reality. Not an unkind man, just uninsightful.


• L.O.I.S., Lord of Idiotic Statements, the King's Chief Minister; inherited his position to the King; considers himself wise beyond measure but driven by fallacious assumptions and rushes to judgment bespeaking a confidence that he "knows" despite but the slightest of evidence before him. He is prone to denying he said things he has said, though often having said them but moments before. Looks in contempt on "the people" even has he says it is his life's work to protect them. A tall man who values his position. A man of inherited wealth who thinks he's earned his place.


• The Fool, the court Jester, a man not much different from the King in appearance but in shambles; a butt of belittling plays against his ego by those whose own egos need constant stoking; his japes are usually not seen as funny, even by himself (for he is the secret audience of his own entertainments) as his words are so tinged by sadness, lost hope, sarcasm, and, ultimately, contempt, that only the husk of humor is left.  He is prone to pointing out the "elephants in the room" even when no one else sees them or cares. And this makes him the real fool of the story -- pretense to the "wise fool" aside -- for he holds a naive belief in truth, honesty, fairness -- all notions long ago abandoned at the Court. His clinging to those ideals leaves in contempt of himself more than others; he has become his own goat.  His frustration and contempt are what place him in danger and make him the locus of ridicule.


• Lord Doh, keeper of the Fool, chief adviser to the King's Chief Minister; a man who sees plots abound and fears for his own and other's piety even as he furtively breaches faith in numerous small ways; a fat man obsessed with diet who secretly snacks on chocolates, continually hating and forgiving himself. A whisperer and listener to whispers, Lord Doh is a man once of great aspirations who rose but too slowly from low birth and now has peaked, to his quiet disappointment. Yet he is not entirely without knowledge or skill, but he is as much a believer in the occult and follower of fallacious readings as anything; a man, as so many who have risen from poor beginnings, whose shanty became a castle without foundation; his is an edifice built on an abyss, a pattern he repeats in everything he does.


• Lady Bee, though not formally a member of the Court she deports herself as one; she is Lord Doh's chief whisperer and ally, but her first and foremost thought is always Lady Bee. A social butterfly with daggers hidden in her dress, Lady Bee has reached middle age while, sadly, she says, so many other younger and possibly more capable ladies and knights are among the departed. Lady Bee is always up to plan a party or lend a hand or ear to those in need, though the efficacy of that has from time to time been questioned, often by knights and ladies since gone from Court. Yet Lady Bee's plots against the Fool have so far come to naught, and she may have resigned to suffer his foolishness.


• The Inquisitor General, Keeper of the Faith, the Redactor; a cunning man who usually works behind the scenes to keep things on course in accordance with his unwritten dogma -- the Moral Code -- one he only understands if anyone does, but that is doubtful: it appears arbitrarily based on his druthers. He functions as the King's defacto counselor, often "advising" the King in private, though duly suffused with decorum's trappings, as to the "true course." The King is, indeed, secretly afraid of the Inquisitor General though in awe of his perceived doctrinal purity and intelligence One might say the Inquisitor General is less fanatical and cruel than were Himmler and Torquemada; less a public minister than was Cardinal Richelieu, less Machiavellian than Machiavelli pretended to advocate though more Machiavellian than Machiavelli ever was, yet he effectively runs the Kingdom with the Chief Minister. He ignores the Fool as a necessary evil to entertain the King. Others who wish to address the King must bring their issues to the Inquisitor or the Chief Minister to assure their uprightness.


• Princess Blithe, Envoy to the Diethosi (representatives of the unwashed at whose supposed dirtiness the Princess often shudders), the Princess is the product of the finest upbringing in the safest of houses who has little conception that others have not received the graces blessing her. As Envoy to the Diethosi, she answers directly to the Inquisitor who uses her as a pretty and public face for his machinations. She is in many respects Lord Doh's antithesis: a woman with "great foundation" yet lacking development. Unlike Lord Doh, her future lies before her: she is heir presumptive.


• The King's Counselor, a quiet old balding man, long at court but seldom seen and, when seen, rarely with the King. His duties are obscure; he apparently keeps the Chronicles somewhere.


• Miss Magpie, Supervisor of Heralds, although ostensibly working for the King she is allied with the Inquisitor General, an alliance not necessarily to his benefit as she typically gets his pronouncements wrong. She frets for her job and will readily betray others to keep it.


• Sir Rungle, former Supervisor of Heralds who plied his connections with the the Chief Deputy and the King to become a knight. Often afield claiming to hunt for dragons, though his whereabouts are unknown, and when he is afoot, usually in the company of the Chief Minister. Sir Rungle, although not old, sports an old and weathered sword due to a romantic attachment with the past; his dull sword -- which may even predate the Iron Age -- renders him less than effective in combat, but with a decent weapon and a reason to fight he is a worthwhile foe.


• Various other Lords and Ladies, Knights and Near-do-wells, Servants and Squires, Ladies-in-waiting and Lick-boots, all members of court or hangers on, of various degrees of capability and kindness, pompousness and pulchritude.


• The Diethosi, Parliament, supposed representatives of The People, the great unwashed, but whose real allegiance is to the Powers-that-Be, for that is where the profit is.


• The People angry about their lack of representation, for fair representation they deserve, but gullible and taken by the Diethosi; they complain to the Fool and about the Fool, as if the Fool can really change anything.