“Your Royal Highness!” Esterházy fluttered her hands to her breastbone in dismay. “You must not touch! And, please, no first names.”

Elisabeth was taken aback. No one had told her about that particular rule. She’d had her fill of others: this fork for one thing and not another, this type of bow for one noble and not another. Elisabeth tried to smile through the ridiculousness, nodding at Esterházy to end the lecture.

The next stop on the tour was Elisabeth’s dressing room—the largest, brightest dressing room in the whole world, as far as she could tell. Dozens of gowns in rich colors and intricate patterns hung on petite dress forms. There were cream-colored jackets with intricate pink embroidery, teal gowns that swept out at the waist like a raging sea, a skirt as yellow as a sunbeam. Half a dozen other people were in the room, and she was quickly introduced: two seamstresses, four lady’s maids. Six more names she would struggle to remember. Elisabeth’s chest tightened—excitement at war with the staggering scope of it all, the thought of needing so many people for such a small thing as dressing herself.

“These are the latest fashions from Paris, Saint Petersburg, Milan. I chose everything for you myself.” Sophie ran her hands along the dresses as she spoke.

The other women spread out through the room, admiring lace cuffs and puffed sleeves, yards of fabrics in rich red, snow white, deep-sea blue. Elisabeth’s eyes were drawn to where two rows of shoes stretched along in an endless line of soft orange, soothing purple, and a hundred other shades. There must have been more than a hundred pairs. Enough shoes for every woman here to take ten.

“So many.” It was overwhelming.

“An empress can never wear the same shoes twice,” Esterházy explained. “They will be thrown away at the end of each day.”

The pride in her voice turned Elisabeth’s stomach. “Thrown away? But that’s such a waste.”

Her mind drifted back to the people at the gates. Some had been barefoot, many threadbare. Why should she—who never loved shoes to begin with—throw away perfectly good pairs? Not to mention that new shoes pinched and rubbed and scraped at the skin. If she had to wear shoes, she wanted her well-worn riding boots or the traveling shoes that had bent themselves to the will of her feet already.

“It’s tradition, Your Highness.” Esterházy shrugged.

The casualness of the gesture chafed at Elisabeth like each of these new shoes inevitably would. Elisabeth had only been in the palace for a couple of hours and already it was overwhelming. She’d already memorized so many foolish rules, and now there were more.