Queen's partner’s stored knowledge is a minimal sham (8)
I believe the answer is:
tokenism
'queen's partner's stored knowledge' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this definition defines the answer.
'minimal sham' is the wordplay.
'minimal' becomes 'token' (similar in meaning).
'sham' becomes 'ism' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'token'+'ism'='TOKENISM'
'is a' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tokenism that I've seen before include "Perfunctory effort to appear to conform to, eg, equal opportunities" , "Perfunctory effort to show compliance" , "making gestures" .)