The Prince

The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli

I admit it…I’m a rampaging Vampire: The Masquerade player.

I lay the blame fully at the feet of my friends Kari and Patric. They sucked me in with stories of angst-ridden vampires, and I lapped it up like a half-starved kitten let loose in a dairy. My first lessons in real politics were at the feet of maniacal VtM role-players, out to rule our little vampiric domains and plot against one another in never-ending schemes of conquest and total annihilation.

I cut my teeth, (no pun intended), on the complex, Byzantine labyrinth of intrigue that was my old gaming group. Sad as it is to say, it is very true. Which is why, when I finally got around to reading Machiavelli’s classic treatise, The Prince, I was blinking at it with the consternated frustration of one who thinks, “Duh, doesn’t everyone know this already?”

And perhaps they don’t….or at least it had never been quantified in one document set firmly in the European mindset. Machiavelli’s most famous work, published in 1532, is more a treatise and entreaty written to Lorenzo de Medici. An outcast from his beloved Florence, and seeking to regain favor with the current powers-that-be in his home city, Machiavelli wrote down his observances on the best way by which to govern and maintain a state as a ruling head. Sometimes using common sense, sometimes using more than a fair dollop of ruthlessness, Machiavelli weaves then current politics amongst the Italian states and Europe, with ancient stories familiar to them from the Greece, Rome, and other periods. He creates a system that he believes will not only effectively help a prince to lead his people, but shows examples of how other leaders of the time are flagging miserably.

There are many themes that Machiavelli picks up on and most of them are common sense to anyone who’s spent even half-a-minute watching History Channel shows on ancient and medieval European history. His antipathy towards mercenaries is a common theme in the annals of ancient history, even my own medieval history professor, Patrick Geary, used to warn loudly, “Don’t let the barbarians come to defend you, else they might get the idea that they like the joint and will want to stay.” Even worse, as was the case in the waning days of the Roman Empire, auxiliary troops, made up of non-Roman, barbarian soldiers would often be so depended on in the outlying regions, the regular army just assumed they would always be there, and always be loyal. Thus one of the many reasons for the Fall of Rome, and countless other nations up to Machiavelli’s time, this isn’t a particularly new idea, but never before had it really been pointed out in literature for everyone to see. It’s one of those common sense things I suspect that many a strong ruler knew, and Machiavelli finally gave voice to for everyone to understand.

Machiavelli’s opinion of rule over the centuries has been noted as being callous, calculated, and amoral, “ruling by any means” in other words. And this has given rise to the modern English word “Machiavellian” to describe anyone who tends to plot in this sort of manner. And yet, when one reads The Prince, one realizes that Machiavelli is less about being a cruel or dispassionate man, as you can tell by his work that he does care very much about a great number of things, Florence in particular. Rather, he is a man who sees the role of a ruler as that of a man who has to balance practicality with sentimentality, and how does one maneuver both in order to not only maintain his throne from those who threaten it within, as well as protecting both his people and his power from enemies without. It’s a fine line that any ruler is asked to tread, even in modern democracies. This theory isn’t so much cruel or manipulative as it is strict politics. It is how one maintains their state.

However, Machiavelli is certainly a man of his time, and writes very much that way. He is focused on the political situation that has been and is ongoing in 14th century Italy, and his observations are very much colored by the city-states and papal empire that existed in the land at the time, not to mention the rising powers of Spain and France to the east. Modern historians and political scientists look back on that with the benefit of hindsight, and wonder what Machiavelli was thinking at times, (medieval and early Renaissance France, straight out of the Hundred Years War, being a good example of strong, central government to anyone was a particular laugh.) But his observations do mark a time when things were changing in Europe, when it was less and less about small, feudal governments, and more about expanding powerbases, when rulers had to care more than about their duties of fief to some overlord, and more about ensuring their lands, people, and power base to create what would, in the next few hundred years, become the nation-states that we have inherited in our own world today.

Much of the advice that Machiavelli gives is very common sense now at days, the sort of thing that we all take for granted in modern politics. Not that we have much in the way of singular ruling princes in modern democracies, but the themes make sense to us even in our current political landscape. And it is hard to tell whether it is because Machiavelli isn’t necessarily inventing the wheel here, or if it is because he had, and its effects on the politics of Western society were forever changed by it. To be sure, it is a seminal work, but it’s hard to tell which came first, the chicken or the egg. At times I sort of shake my head and think, “Why is this book so important? This isn’t anything particularly new or ground breaking?” As this wasn’t particularly a matter of literary discussion before Machiavelli, we will never know, and perhaps that is part of why is work is so seminal in Western literature.

Needless to say, one can not become Prince of a vampiric Camarilla city in Vampire: The Masquerade without employing more than a few of these methods.

A warning, however, as I mentioned this is a text that is from Renaissance Italy, and if you read it in English it is a translation to boot. Also, Machiavelli has the tendency to like to wander in many of his explanations and examples, (oh if I could have gotten away with that when I was in my history classes). Because of this, the reader often wonders why it is he is discussing Cesare Borgia one moment, then Heiro of Syracuse the next, (there is a point, and it takes him a while to get to it). For the historians out there, such as myself, you get giddy when he mentions events and people you learned about in your history classes, (I got excited at the Orsini and Colonna, having stayed at the Colonna Palace in Rome and heard the whole sordid story about those two families). For the person who is simply reading this as a political treatise, you will want to pull your hair out, especially if you know nothing about ancient or Renaissance Italian history.

However, it’s a lot of fun to read about, so go pick up Rome: The History of a City by Christopher Hibbert one of these days. It doesn’t cover Florence, but it does discuss a great many of the events, particularly with the Popes, that Machiavelli brings up.

Rate this wormy book: Machiavelli earns a FAT WORM from me. It’s not that his book isn’t good, (if very convoluted and long winded to those who aren’t used to reading texts from this period), but it’s not as if this is anything the modern reader doesn’t know. The true value in reading it is that it is codified here, complete with Machiavelli’s political thoughts on the matter, which leads you down the train of thought he himself was taking while writing it.