“Fear cuts deeper than swords.” - Arya Stark, Game of Thrones
Machiavellian (adjective): cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics.
One indicator of a writer’s impact upon culture is the adopting of a writer’s name into an adjective to represent the themes contained within their works: Homeric, Platonic, Shakespearian. More often than not such adjectives have negative connotations: Dickensian, Orwellian, or – my favourite – Kafkaesque. So it is with ‘Machiavellian’.
“The only way to keep your people loyal is to make certain they fear you more than the enemy.” – Cersei Lannister, Game of Thrones
Background
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) was an Italian historian, author and playwright. It should be noted that at that time ‘Italy’ was a series of warring city states, which included Machiavelli’s native Florence. His most famous work is The Prince (1532), a work of political science, or how a ruler should govern. In it, Machiavelli seeks to advise the new ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici, how to govern, specifically with regards to ruling what was previously a republic. This last point is crucial to Machiavelli’s often ruthless advice.
‘…men must be either won over or destroyed…’
After several years in the political wilderness, The Prince can be read as giant resume for Machiavelli. He states his case from the beginning, outlining why the prince should listen to him to begin with:
‘…because, just as men who are sketching the landscape put themselves down in the plain to study the nature of the mountains and the highlands, and to study the low-lying land they put themselves high on the mountains, so, to comprehend fully the nature of the people, one must be a prince, and to comprehend fully the nature of princes one must be an ordinary citizen.’
The subject of how to govern was not new. But where past philosophers had determined that a ruler must be of good virtue to begin with (Plato in The Republic), Machiavelli notes that this does not always ensure effective rule. In other words, the means justifies the ends:
‘He should appear to be compassionate, faithful to his word, kind, guileless, and devout. And indeed he should be so. But his disposition should be such that, if he needs to be the opposite, he knows how…And so he should have a flexible disposition, varying as fortunes and circumstances dictate.’
The Fox and the Lion
‘Varying as fortunes and circumstances dictate’ is probably the characteristic we recognise most in modern politicians. It is this duplicity that Machiavelli’s name has been associated with, and is best illustrated by Machiavelli’s comparison of the lion and the fox:
‘So, as a prince is forced to know how to act like a beast, he must learn from the fox and the lion; because the lion is defenceless against traps and a fox is defenceless against wolves. Therefore, one must be a fox in order to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten off the wolves. Those who simply act like lions are stupid.’
However, as Machiavelli was all too familiar with the vagaries of (mis)fortune, any charges of duplicity can be viewed as a flexibility to unforeseen circumstances.
Contemporary Interpretations
The past decade has been called the ‘Golden Age’ of television, with shows such as The Sopranos, House of Cards, Breaking Bad and, of course, Game of Thrones. One thing these and others like them share is the tag of ‘Machiavellian drama’: full of intrigues and backstabbing (often literally) and struggles for power. Here is Machiavelli on power:
‘Men in general judge by their eyes rather than by their hands; because everyone is in a position to watch, few are in a position to come into close contact with you. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are. And those few dare not gainsay the many who are backed by the majesty of the state.’
And here is Lord Varys from Game of Thrones:
“Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
Additionally, we saw how the martial nature of books such as The Book of Five Rings (and its cousin, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War) were adopted by business executives in the late twentieth century. So it has also been with The Prince, though like those two books, matters military, rather than business, are of primary concern:
‘A prince, therefore, must have no other object or thought, nor acquire skill in anything, except war, its organisation, and its discipline. The art of war is all that is expected of a ruler…’
This historical reading is perhaps more logical and pragmatic. The instructions in The Prince are an attempt to restore some stability to the chaotic local politics of the day by emulating the strategies of past leaders, and Machiavelli provides many examples from ancient Greek and Roman history:
‘Above all, he must read history so that he can do what eminent men have done before him: taken as their model some historical figure who has been praised and honoured; and always kept his deeds and actions before them.’
But what if there was a darker motive for Machiavelli’s advice? What if Machiavelli despised tyranny and deliberately misled his intended audience – potential tyrants – into behaving so cruelly towards their subjects that it would eventually incite revolution? It’s a theory proposed over the centuries by some very eminent thinkers, with evidence for and against. The Prince then becomes the most elaborate revenge plot in history, and makes for a fascinating second reading.
Ultimately, this intrigue illustrates the enduring appeal of The Prince: is it a moral philosophy, political science, history…or revenge plot? Perhaps all, certainly some. Take from it what you will.
The Prince and Julius Caesar, linking the themes
COMPLETE AUDIO BOOK
Joel Ingles