if i remember correctly... her puppets were a gift from his father, the last emperor, who is a master of puppetry. one of them represents her father and the other one, her mother. those puppets are able to mimic her parents too. i do remember watching in a toau mission cutscene that one of them played a recording of a vocal message from her parents or something like that. they also have some authority over the officers as they are regarded as the living legacies of the deceased emperor and empress, maybe only surpassed by Aphmau the current empress herself and her brother, the grand vizier, Razfahd.