Power that does not need to make sense to be obeyed
The Queen of Hearts is the patron saint of this idea: she shouts Off with their head! at any provocation, regardless of evidence, and the court bustles obligingly along behind her even as the King quietly pardons everyone she has condemned. The Caucus-Race makes the gentler version of the same joke — a procedure followed solemnly, with prizes, in which no one has actually done anything — and the trial of the Knave of Hearts makes the harshest, with the Queen calling for sentence before the jury has even retired. Carroll, who spent his life inside Oxford colleges and Anglican committees, knew what he was looking at.