Roses lined the garden walls, but none more precious than the queen that wandered the garden, trimming rise bushes, nurturing plants. Everyone had long since stopped trying to get her to stop taking care of her plants, to just let her servants do it.
Over time they stopped trying to convince her to stop, only as her authority grew and her stubbornness did too. She spent most of her days other than in the garden talking to her prized knight, Cat Noir, who ran the rest of the knights almost as smoothly as if he were king. He told the worst jokes and yet she laughed without fail at every single one of them.
Surely, no other royalty spoke to their knights even half as long as she spoke to her leading knight. Adrien Agreste, the boy behind the famous Cat Noir, practically preened at the attention though he was never rude or arrogant to the other guards. He just tended to gush more often than they wanted to hear about the queen.
Each knight was loyal to the queen, but surely, Adrien was the most loyal, adored her the most, and often people called into question whether he was innocent with his loyalty or whether his heart burned or yearned for her. May be that why he was always so sure to tell her his jokes.
Looking back on it, no one was quite sure when this all began to swing into this direction, where his loyalties were starting to be considered romantic ones. Surely, when she recruited him, long before he rose up to his new found authority, there was no thought of his loyalty not being generic.
Out of all the knights, it was a surprise that Cat Noir was so good, that he rose up to authority so fast, but he wasn't the one to abuse the power. His humbled beginnings could have easily convinced them of that and his friendship with the queen if it could be called that would be summed up as greed and a desire to grow into wealth and good fortune if he was a lesser man.
Very kind was he; he never overstepped his boundaries or convinced his knight of some inner greed. Adrien Agreste wore his heart on his sleeve unless he was a superb actor, they trusted his kindness, his attentiveness to his duty, and his willingness to always grow into a better knight.
Even without all of that, Adrien's love of his queen just fostered and grew; all the knights trusted him to not be swayed by the sugary words of the enemy, because his love for the queen was as pure and visible as daylight. Nothing could cross it or disengage it. Whether it was romantic or not, they wouldn't question it way too much.
Surely, that made Adrien incorruptible, and in that way, in that regard, they all aspired to be like him. An incorruptible knight with a heart like gold for the queen, eager to impress and please her. No knight was his rival in this way.
After all, his love blossomed and bloomed for the kingdom as if it was his to raise and nurture even though everyone knew he was just a humble knight, humble without any menas of rising above his knighthood. Knights never mingled and married queens after all; there were rules cleverly kept in place for that one.
Didn't love foster in the weirdest places sometimes though? Clearly, Adrien cared deeply for his queen, but it surely couldn't be a romantic love, could it?
Rare was it to see, a knight and a queen getting along as if they'd grown up together. No one could say that that was the case for the two of them though they sure got along like they'd been raised together. Their attentive chatter could probably run long into the night if they didn't have places to be and authority to be expressed in the best possible way that they could think of for their stations.
In all of this though, it could be said that the queen loved her knights in the way that they guarded and protected her, in the way that she encouraged them. It was strictly platonic as she knew better than to charm a knight as they all figured she knew. She understood her authority and followed it with a gentle press against it, kind to what is probably a fault of hers somehow.
Even though, it could be argued for platonic, sometimes people wondered when she and Adrien would take for hours, wandering the guarden, sharing jokes and good humor yet noone ever saw them exchange a kiss or even offer for more. It had to be platonic; no courting of the queen ever happened in these walls or even on the grounds of them.
Now though, the queen was where she always was, laughing with Adrien, half distracted from important documents, not minding at all when he leaned closer and cool metal met her skin. His plate armor did make her shiver after a short while, but she didn't even move away as her blue eyes lit up with twinkles of mirth.