This is a niche question for Jack Vance fans, and specifically about his trio of Alastor * novels: Trullion: Alastor 2262, Marune: Alastor 933, and Wyst: Alastor 1716. The three novels all take place in the Alastor Cluster, which has an interplanetary government, run by a monarch, the Connatic, Oman Ursht. However, the Connatic's government interferes very little with the planet-bound affairs of individual worlds. (Out in space, things are different, and the Connatic's space fleet, the Whelm, is overpoweringly strong.)
In the first and third novels (Trullion and Wyst), there is a common character, Ryl Schermatz, an official from the Connatic's government, who always has documents showing that he possesses sufficient authority to take charge of a situation. When my wife and I read the books, though, we differed on our answers to a key question: Is Ryl Schermatz the Connatic?
It is mentioned several times that the Connatic is rumored to travel about the cluster in disguise (like Harun al-Rashid, the caliph whose anonymous wanderings among his subjects feature in multiple Arabian Nights tales). Moreover, at the beginning of the third book, the Connatic is waiting to receive a group of ambassadors from the titular planet Wyst. He discusses the events of the first book, and implies that he is closely familiar with what happened there. Then, after the meeting with the Wyst ambassadors goes very strangely, the monarch's curiosity about what is going on on the planet is piqued.
To me, this suggests that Ryl Schermatz is an identity used by Oman Ursht when he travels incognito. However, my wife disagreed, and I was wondering if there was any more clear evidence one way or the other in any of the three books.
*Having already read Vance's Demon Princes novels and enjoyed them, I picked up the omnibus edition of the Alastor novels because I knew that "Alastor" was also (among other things) the name of a demon.
