New visitors occasionally ask who sits on the throne. Nobody does, and nobody ever will: the throne is a marker, the way a survey stone is a marker. It marks the place where the studio’s one record rests. It confers no rank, claims no lineage and borrows no authority from anywhere — a studio that needed borrowed grandeur would be confessing something about its work.
Keeping the seat empty is also a working rule. The character on the card is not royalty and is never briefed as royalty; she is a fictional adult woman with five plain lines to her name, judged like any regular at any honest desk. Costume may visit the day’s line — velvet, gold trim, an evening mood — but the card itself stays in plain language.
The discipline generalises. Nothing at this desk borrows authority: not from thrones, not from titles, not from claims about speed or riches. Prices are printed, failures refund themselves, and the work is the only claim the studio makes.
A marker that pretends to be nothing else is an honest piece of furniture. The throne stays empty so that the card on it can stay exact.