Power looks different from close range.
From a distance, the CEO is an institution. The governor is His Excellency. The billionaire is the man newspapers write about. The celebrity walks into a room and phones appear in the air.
Get close enough and something strange happens.
You discover that the great man is, in fact, a man.
He gets tired. He misunderstands simple things. He is sometimes insecure. He loses arguments. He becomes emotional. He makes terrible decisions. He might be extraordinarily intelligent in one area and surprisingly ordinary in another.
He probably snores.
And proximity creates one of the great cognitive hazards of power:
once you see through the mystique, you can begin to forget the machinery.
Vashti Knew the Man
This is one reason I find the opening chapter of Esther so interesting.
For most of the Persian Empire, Xerxes was the Great King.
He ruled an enormous territory. People encountered him through decrees, armies, governors, tribute, palace architecture and court ritual. Access to him was scarce.
Vashti experienced something different.
She knew Xerxes privately.
Whatever royal mythology surrounded him outside the chambers, she lived close enough to see the human being underneath it.
And perhaps that matters.
It is easy to imagine familiarity producing a thought along the lines of:
Please. I know this man.
Maybe.
The Bible does not tell us Vashti's psychological motive, and we should be careful not to invent one.
But the broader problem is real.
The person closest to power can become the least impressed by it.
That is sometimes healthy.
It can also be dangerous.
Because Xerxes' human weaknesses did not abolish Xerxes' authority.
The man may have been ridiculous at breakfast.
He remained king by noon.
Familiarity Is Not Equality
I have seen variations of this in business.
A founder's childhood friend gradually starts speaking to him in board meetings exactly as they spoke twenty years earlier.
A young executive becomes a chairman's favourite and begins interpreting privileged access as equal standing.
A consultant becomes personally close to a political officeholder and slowly starts behaving as though the officeholder's influence belongs partly to him.
A spouse sees all the frailty that the world never sees.
There is a subtle psychological slide:
I know him.
becomes:
I understand him.
then:
I am not impressed by him.
and eventually:
therefore his power is not particularly significant.
The last step is the mistake.
Understanding someone's humanity should make you more accurate about power, not contemptuous of it.
The Weak Emperor Can Still Be Emperor
This is something Empress Ki dramatizes repeatedly.
Formal authority can sit inside an imperfect vessel.
A ruler may be frightened, manipulated, dependent on advisers or emotionally unstable. Powerful people around him may be substantially more competent.
Yet everybody continues struggling to control the imperial centre.
Why?
Because the throne remains consequential even when the person sitting on it is unimpressive.
Modern organizations are not imperial courts, but the distinction survives.
A CEO may know less accounting than the CFO, less law than the general counsel and less technology than the CTO.
He may still determine who occupies all three offices.
A governor may depend on technocrats for almost every sophisticated policy idea.
He still controls the political authority through which those ideas become action.
One of the first disciplines of navigating power is therefore:
Never mistake your superior knowledge of one subject for superiority of position.
The Opposite Mistake Is Worship
Of course, there is another error.
Some people become so impressed by the throne that they stop seeing the man altogether.
Then every sentence becomes brilliant because the chairman said it.
Every joke becomes funny.
Every policy becomes visionary.
Every contradiction becomes "strategic."
This is sycophancy.
A wise adviser must therefore hold two truths simultaneously:
This person is merely human.
And:
This person's decisions can have consequences far beyond an ordinary human interaction.
That balance is difficult.
Too much fascination with the office produces servility.
Too much familiarity with the person produces contempt.
Neither is wisdom.
Esther Seems to Understand Both
What fascinates me about Esther later in the story is that she appears to understand Xerxes as both man and king.
She knows how to engage his affection, curiosity and ego.
But she never behaves as though intimacy has abolished hierarchy.
When the moment comes to approach him over the fate of her people, she does not say:
This is my husband; I will simply walk in.
She takes the danger seriously.
That is political intelligence.
She sees the man clearly enough to influence him.
She sees the throne clearly enough not to become careless.
That may be the balance we need around powerful people today.
Know that the CEO can be wrong.
Know that the governor can be badly informed.
Know that the billionaire can be insecure.
Know that celebrity is partly theatre.
Know that political majesty contains ordinary flesh and blood.
But after you have seen behind the curtain, remember something important:
the curtain was never the source of the power.
The machinery remains.
See through the mystique.
Do not become enslaved by it.
But never forget the throne.