Every kingdom remembers its architects long after its builders have gone home. Every software system eventually becomes someone else’s responsibility. That single reality has shaped nearly every architectural decision I have made throughout my career. Features are eventually rewritten. Technologies become obsolete. Frameworks rise and fall. Entire engineering teams come and go. Yet long after the original developers have moved on, the software remains, waiting for new engineers to understand it, maintain it, and continue building upon it. Whether those future engineers inherit a thriving kingdom or a crumbling ruin depends far less on the quality of individual features than on the quality of the architecture beneath them. Throughout The…