The King's Clerk

A dry, gentle comedy about rules, loopholes and the people who find them

The King's laws are a mess!

The King's laws were written in a hurry, after dinner, with no thought for how they would be applied. They are short. They are vague. Nobody has ever worked out what they actually mean.

That is now your job.

As the King's Clerk, you spend a year hearing the kingdom's disputes and deciding what the law really says. Then the consequences of your rulings unfold.

Your year at court

• Read the petition, read the law, sign your ruling. Each dispute turns on a word nobody ever bothered to define.
  
• Your words become the law. Next season, people quote them back at you, and find the gaps you left.
  
• See what the kingdom made of it. Between cases, news arrives of what people have done with your rulings.
  
• Please some, annoy others. There is no right answer, only a choice of who to disappoint.
  
• Two endings every year: one for the kingdom and one for you, and they rarely agree.
  
• Never the same year twice. New disputes every time, and hundreds of endings to collect.