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Aziraphale did not realize how much he had loathed being middle management until he retired. Principalities were not high ranking angels by any means, but they were the highest ranking of the third sphere.
As a Principality, Aziraphale technically held authority over the archangels (lowercase a, of course there’s two wildly different ranks named the same thing differentiated by only a capital letter. It makes more sense in enochian.) and the archangels held authority over common angels.
Aziraphale never used this position to his advantage and on the rare occasion something was brought to him that actually required him to use his rank he was reluctant to do so. Telling someone to do something is one thing but giving them a direct order with the expectation that bad things would happen if they did not carry it out was another entirely. He was grateful for the freedom the position gave him and not much more.
A principalities main job is to find a place or group of people or idea and guard it. They are, for all intents and purposes, the bouncers in heavens arsenal. Aziraphale was soft at points but if he decided something was going to be protected then nothing could break through. He was issued a sword, a crown, a scepter, and was told to go defend the earth. Problem being he didn’t know why the garden of eden shouldn’t be broken into if there was nothing else going on. Crowley very happily took the blame.
The sword was given to the humans to defend and protect them. The crown and the scepter were...somewhere. He had genuinely almost forgotten about them until the small box of belongings showed up on the doorstep of his bookshop.
His retirement was final. No going back. He was thankful in many ways that they had just let him go after the hellfire thing. No more contact, just a “I’m leaving!” And they let him. He knew at some point he would have to interact with someone from heaven again but for the time being he was content to not worry about it. He’d had six thousand years of worrying about it under his belt and that was plenty.
But the crown and the scepter were curious. Obviously he had put them in some kind of locker at some point and the contents had just been left with him. He didn’t remember opening a locker but it was exactly the kind of thing he would have done as an afterthought. There were also some old tablets, a mummified fish of some sort, a carefully pressed flower suspended in ether, a few metal ringlets, an (empty) wine jug, and a snake skin that was decidedly not Crowley’s.
When he’d opened the box he had been tempted to just throw the whole thing away without even looking inside it. Clearly it had been put together about six thousand years ago, after he’d been on the earth maybe only a couple of years. Much like the sword was an extension of himself, the two ruling objects were as well. He knew simply by their proximity that he shouldn’t throw the box away. So he didn’t.
He instead rifled through the box, pulled out both offending objects, and then threw the box away.
The problem with the crown and the scepter was that they reminded him specifically of what he hated about heaven. There shouldn’t have been class divisions. There shouldn’t have been rankings. A crown indicated that he was supposed to rule over lesser angels and a scepter was to intact divine right and authority. He’d put them away for a reason.
The sword was different. He actively wanted the sword. To protect and defend and take care of what he considered his own. You couldn’t protect anything with a crown. You can’t defend anything with a scepter.
But he didn’t want to toss them out. Just as the sword was a part of him, so too were these objects. He gently placed the crown on his head and felt like a very small piece of himself had been slotted back into place. It made him feel a little sick.
Crowley watched the whole thing in silence, listening to Aziraphale’s explanations of the objects. They couldn’t destroy them, for that would be cruel. But they couldn’t keep them, for what they represented. Crowley gently lifted the crown from Aziraphale’s head and held it in his hands. It was heavy, cast in iron and gold with small gemstones pressed in at the front. He thought it was beautiful. He also thought it was very not-Aziraphale.
Aziraphale’s magics tend to lie in the happenstance. Things just tend to happen based on a lucky occurrence. He could alter the physical world if he really needed to, but it was draining and didn’t necessarily always have the optimal results. Crowley, on the other hand, was very good at altering the physical world. He also had some really shit luck. So they balanced each other out perfectly. If they needed a dinner table reservation opened up, Aziraphale could make it happen. If they needed a convenient bottle of wine summoned from nothing, Crowley was more than happy to supply.
So when Crowley made the suggestion to just change the crown into something else Aziraphale looked at him as if that thought had never occurred to him. Because it hadn’t.
Crowley carefully raised the crown again and then shook it as the form changed. He kept a close eye on Aziraphale during the process to make sure the former angel wasn’t being hurt by the process. This was a piece of him, after all. If Aziraphale had any discomfort from the transformation he didn’t make it known.
And after a quick fifteen seconds Crowley handed him back a thin gold necklace with an iron clasp. Aziraphale was quick to put it on and tuck it under his shirt. No one would be the wiser, and he would be more complete. Upon later inspection that evening he would realize the gemstones had been crushed and now formed a very delicate pattern if a snake winding around the whole thing.
Crowley had no idea what to do with the scepter. Unlike the crown, which was meant to be worn and never taken off, the scepter and the sword were more forgiving. He asked if missing the sword caused him any pain. If keeping the scepter in storage for so long had led to any grief.
For how complete Aziraphale felt when he put the crown on, he couldn’t remember any strife when he had decided to get rid of them in the first place. The problems with the sword arose because he had given it away, not because it pained him to do so. Then Crowley had the strange idea to give the scepter away as well. Just as the sword had been given to the first prince of the earth, let the current prince take the scepter.
Aziraphale didn’t know how he felt about letting a young boy take a part of himself. But Adam was a prince of the earth. A prince should rule justly and fairly. An antichrist with the infinite powers of hell and a rod of heaven to enact them seemed like a good balance of the system. Though Adam had already proved himself to not sway towards either side too much, both the angel and the demon agreed it might be a good idea. Plus they needed a birthday present for the boys upcoming 12th.
What happened after Adams time on the mortal plane would be a mystery. Aziraphale made a very large mental note to keep track of the scepter unlike he had done with the sword. The last thing he wanted to happen was for humans to invent some kind of new war.
He was very glad to pack it away. Not hiding it like last time, but changing its meaning. Altering what it stood for. And that was enough.