Governors' Wives (State First Ladies)

*The office of State First Lady has no place in the 1999 Constitution — no section creates it, no law funds it. It is nevertheless the most consistently resourced unelected office in every Government House: a pet foundation, an office in the Governor's Lodge, seconded civil servants, and in most states a recurrent budget line. We record it for the same reason we record the federal office — because the money and the patronage are real even where the office is not.*

*No state First Lady is publicly recorded for the incumbent Government House in this pass. This is not an oversight of the archive but a feature of the office here: in most of the emirate-belt states the governor's wife holds no public protocol rank, is not photographed at state functions, and is named in no official gazette. Where a pet foundation exists it is usually registered in the name of a trustee rather than the wife. Source from the Government House protocol office and CAC foundation filings.*