"He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty."
-see here.
SM Stirling's Sandra Arminger said that self-command was half the secret of ruling well and and also of dying in power, old and of natural causes. (The Desert And The Blade, Chapter Five, p. 89.)
Thus, Sandra found a way to combine "conquers others" and "conquers himself." This would be the optimum human being although how well Sandra realized it is another matter.
5 comments:
Or to put it another way, Sandra believes a ruler can afford to be brutal but not whimsically or impulsively so.
Mr Stirling,
She does indeed and brutality does not satisfy my criteria either of good rulership or of self-command.
Paul.
Depends on who you're governing. A lot of the cadre the PPA ended up with where... well, let's say not people likely to respond well to positive reinforcement.
Good point. If one feudal lord was rotten, the most that the king/protector could hope for was (i) that the others would back him up in deposing that one, (ii) that a less vicious heir could be ready to step into place without delay.
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly! And, as Mr. Stirling himself has shown in his Emberverse books, the sons and grandsons of the ex-gangbangers Norman Arminger recruited quite often turned out to be pretty decent men. Both because of being raised as mostly convinced Catholics and because it's rather hard to turn men into thugs and goons if they had been taught it was their duty to give good lordship and justice to the people of their fiefs. I don't think the Protector quite realized this was what was starting to happen at the time he and Mike Havel killed each other so spectacularly in single combat. But the Lady Regent encouraged this process, because it made for greater stability and security of life and property for everybody in the PPA.
I'm not saying all the barons of the PPA were decent guys, but enough of them were as time passed to act as a restraint on the bad ones.
Sean
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