The Nature of Ruling

These past few weeks I have been continuously visiting my grandmother and although the conversations have always been sometimes light and sometimes dark, it has allowed me to gain some insight into my grandmother.

Life has been quite hard on her, Peter the First's death caused a lot of enemies of his to target his family, and my grandmother was one of them, her father, mother, and fiancee all died within a few years, and to make matters worse, her cousin Anna, who became empress, hated my grandmother for her beauty and was wary of my grandmother's claim to the throne and my grandmother was now ostracized in the Russian court but even through all that my grandmother still has a happy face, a strong-willed woman I guess.

However, today's visit was different, I asked my grandmother a question that still eludes, "Granma how do you manage to rule Russia that has so many cultures and people?", a gaping mouth was soon on her face but she quickly covered it up, she kept quiet for a while then I got a response.

"Follow me to the balcony", a quick and confusing sentence that I thought had no relation to my question but I still followed her.

We reached the balcony and my grandmother moved to the edge of it and beckoned me to come over. "Paul, look at the garden below us, what do you see?" she asked me, all I see are some gardeners, soldiers and servants, "I see gardeners tending to the garden, soldiers patrolling the garden, and servants doing various tasks, but grandma what does this have to do with my first question?" I asked confused.

"Paul, you have such a bright mind but you don't imagine hard enough, I'll give you a hint, imagine the garden as a country, that should help you find the answer now", the garden as a country? I don't understand what she me- wait wait a second, the garden as the country? Does that mean the gardeners, soldiers, and servants are all part of the country? And that they all each have a purpose.

"The garden in the country and all the workers here each all have their uses? That each group have their own interests? and that every ruler should understand that concept?" I asked and the more I thought about it the more it made sense.

Peter was deposed because he didn't understand his people and their interests and that should be the most important concept a ruler should know.

"You went in the correct direction but you didn't dive deeper, everybody in this garden is part of an interest group and each group may have a united desire for example, look at that guard walking by the bush, what do you think he desires the most?" she asked while pointing at the guard by the bush, I thought about it for a moment and my conclusion was money and promotion, every guard will probably want that.

"Money and a promotion" I declared.

"That may be true for a lot of guards but what about that specific guard can you guarantee that he would want that? What if he wants to faithfully serve the royal family to the best of his ability? Or maybe he wishes that his family were nobles?" my grandmother's voice echoed in my ears and I was stunned because she was right and I didn't have an answer.

"Another mistake in your thinking was that you thought everybody part of the same interest group will think alike, but that's not always the case, all merchants want taxes to be decreased but once you change the wording by saying that you'll decrease taxes on selling furs then which group will be most in trouble and opposing? and which group that's not part of the fur merchants will support the fur merchants?", I had no answer to my grandmother's question.

"It would be the merchants who have clothing that rival the fur merchants wouldn't it? and the most supporting group will be the hunters who would be able to sell more due to the lower taxes, you can always use this tactic to weaken a group's unity, and it also means that anybody can always be an ally, anyways back to the guard we were talking about, the situation resembles something doesn't it?", I know what she wanted to say but I won't say it cause I'm four and me knowing something about it will be suspicious.

"The military is a good ally for a ruler but the military is made up of many interest groups and those interest groups can also be split into interest groups and why do you think I became Empress? It's because even though I didn't have the entire support of the military, I had the support of the most important part of the coup, the Preobrazhensky Life Guards, they are stationed so close to Saint Petersburg and they didn't support me because I had money or rewards for them, no they supported me because I was the daughter of my father, Peter the First and I seized this opportunity and formed a close relationship with them and they inturn helped me claim the throne. So Paul what lesson did you take from this?" my grandmother asked me.

"Well isn't it the ability to tell who is important and necessary, who are not important but aren't a threat, and most importantly who is a threat to the ruler?" I said.

"Exactly the eyes of a ruler must be able to judge the character of a person correctly and know when he is an ally or a threat and the advisors didn't have good eyes to see that I was a threat to them and which interest group was the biggest ally to me and they lost" my grandmother showed me the glimpse of what would happen when a ruler didn't have good eyes and their fate awaiting them? I already knew.