White Gold King German Nutcracker by Ulbricht — 11in

Let's be honest about kings. Most nutcracker kings are a costume party — red velvet, ermine trim, a crown the size of a cereal bowl, seventeen shades of heraldic nonsense glued on top of each other until you cannot actually see the figure underneath. Here's the thing, though. Strip all of that away, leave a king in white and gold and nothing else, and you find out whether the carver can actually carve. Most of them cannot. Christian Ulbricht can.

Look at what you're dealing with. A 10.6-inch figure painted entirely in white — the coat, the trousers, the crown, even the beard-and-wig rigging — with gold reserved for exactly five things: the row of vertical buttons down the chest, the cuff bands at the wrists, the belt and buckle, the turned-wood scepter in his right hand, and the boots. Five accents. That is restraint most workshops cannot afford because they need the noise to hide the sloppy brushwork. Ulbricht does not. The face peach, the eyes blue, the nose a single orange sphere, and the white wig full enough to cover the ears. Nothing else. A monochrome king is a dare, and he walks out of it looking like a page from a ghost story.

He stands in the Castle's west wing, in the corridor where the other kings refuse to go because they say he makes them look overdressed. Drosselmeyer has taken to calling him the blank page. Sugar Plum Fairy approves of his silhouette, which from her is a five-star review. I have been plotting against him for three weeks and have not found a single weakness. It is infuriating. Buy him.

— The Mouse King