Emperor’s Palace at Paradise

The Emperor’s Palace at Paradise is the monumental center of the Blazing-World’s government and the setting in which the Lady is received, married to the Emperor, and granted absolute authority as Empress. Its gold, colored diamonds, elaborate spatial order, and guarded approach present imperial magnificence as both spectacle and political structure; beyond its walls, the world’s wealth is governed by strict rules of status and display.

Setting and Approach

The palace stands above Paradise, the imperial city, on a gradual ascent. A broad arch supported by pillars encircles it for four English miles. Guards occupy the space within the arch, and a gate appears at every half-mile; each gate has a different design. The first connects the city to the palace and opens between cloisters, whose outer sides stand on arches supported by pillars while their inner sides are enclosed.

The palace’s approach reflects the geography of the capital. Paradise is divided into island-like districts by rivers running between its streets, with numerous bridges linking them. The wider imperial region is likewise divided by rivers into islands, and its winding water route among rocks admits only small boats carrying no more than three passengers at a time. The palace is thus placed at the end of a landscape whose narrow passages also protect the imperial center from foreign invasion.

Architecture and Imperial Rooms

The palace is arranged less like a high, compact building than a broad, vaulted interior. Its central body resembles the nave of a church: a mile and a half long and half a mile wide, with an arched roof resting on pillars. Their placement is so intricate that a visitor can lose the way without a guide. Attendants’ lodgings occupy the sides between the inner and outer cloisters, while the Emperor’s rooms lie in the middle. Their lights are set high, because of the Sun’s heat. The state apartments are not more enclosed than the rest of the palace, and each contains an imperial throne; the pillars’ alignment conceals the full decoration until a visitor enters.

Gold covers the first part of the palace, while the imperial apartments are enriched with diamonds, pearls, rubies, and other gems. The chief state room is paved with green diamonds set so closely that the floor appears to be a single piece. Diamonds cover the pillars, and arches between them contain rows of differently colored stones, producing the appearance of many rainbows. Blue diamonds cover the arched ceiling; a carbuncle at its center represents the Sun, while rubies on the eastern and western sides represent sunrise and sunset.

A passage leads from the state room to the Emperor’s bedchamber, where the materials and imagery shift to a nocturnal register: jet walls, a black-marble floor, and a mother-of-pearl ceiling bearing the Moon and blazing stars in white diamonds. The bed itself is made of diamonds and carbuncles. Across the suite, gemstones do more than advertise abundance: they turn the rooms into a jeweled representation of the celestial order.

Sovereignty, Wealth, and Status

The palace frames the Lady’s first meeting with the Emperor. Mistaking her for a goddess, he offers to worship her; she explains that she is mortal and comes from another world. Rejoicing at this, he makes her his wife and gives her absolute power to govern the Blazing-World as she pleases. Although the Emperor’s rooms and throne embody his imperial station, the palace becomes the place where the Lady’s elevation to Empress is established.

The world’s abundance of precious materials does not mean that they are freely worn. Gold is reserved for the imperial race, whose members alone constitute the nobility; jewels may be worn only by the Emperor, Empress, and their eldest son. Gold is more plentiful than Arabian sands, and precious stones occur as rocks, yet the society regulates their public display through rank. It has no coinage: trade is conducted by exchanging commodities. The contrast between limitless material supply and restricted ornament makes the palace’s splendor a sign of controlled authority, not simply private luxury.

Beyond the Palace

The palace’s image of stable order sits alongside the Empress’s later anxieties about governing. Factional disputes among the different peoples threaten to disturb the state, and she seeks the Duchess’s advice on restoring the government’s earlier unity. The Duchess recommends one sovereign, one religion, one law, and one language, and proposes dissolving the learned societies whose quarrels, in her view, may grow into political division. The palace’s ordered magnificence therefore stands against the danger of internal fragmentation, even as the proposed remedy places unity above institutional disagreement.

The story also complicates the palace’s promise of wealth and security with the Empress’s use of power abroad. She directs the Fish-men to destroy ships when neighboring nations refuse to pay tribute to the King of Esfi, and later orders attacks on towns of nations that continue to resist. In conversation with the Duchess’s soul, the Empress refuses to enrich her own family, explaining that riches make people covetous and that covetousness grows with wealth. The palace’s jewels thus belong to a wider political world in which material abundance is regulated at home, feared as a source of greed, and backed by coercive imperial power beyond the capital.