There is a queen who rules over her people with utmost love, care and severity.
The millions over which she is granted power are opiated, dulled to Reality, and carry on with their daily lives in a state of only half-wakening. The people do not suffer with this ignorance, because the world is a terrible place, and the threat of disaster constant. To be a citizen is to be spared this knowledge.
The people do not want for comfort either. They live in suitable homes and indulge in pleasures of food, shopping, culture and entertainment. Jobs are secure, and pay sufficient. The citizenry are at physical and emotional peace.
Only the Queen knows the terrible truth: that the blue skies are illusion, that constant medicinal intake is required if the people are to drink the water and eat the distorted fruits of the land. Only pain-relieving chemicals can mask the agony of joints bent out of whack, and blisters that the population suffers under the roiling yellow sky that they cannot see.
But the people are not prisoners of their condition, because it was agreed long ago that the peace depended on the people knowing that they are living protected lives. They should be aware that they are skating on the thin icy crust of reality, millimetres from the freezing waters of untold suffering. They must be able to appreciate that the Queen is there to see Reality as it truly is, and maintain the systems that keep it at bay.
A citizen who, through guilt or curiosity, cares to know the full picture can petition to be ejected from the illusion. If their petition is accepted, the veil is drawn back, and the existing monarch is relieved of their duties. The petitioning citizen then becomes queen or king, exposed to the psychological ravages of Reality, truly a prisoner of Truth, until another citizen submits their own petition.