good kings embrace constraints
In The Eagle and The Hart, Helen Castor paints vivid pictures of kings and courts and intrigue from over 600 years ago. One that hit me square in the jaw: Aged and beloved King Edward III dies. His young son Richard assumes the throne at the age of ten. Very crudely summarized: things went swimmingly for old Ed. They go right off the rails for young Rich.
Why?
One reason Castor points out: Edward III used his court to his advantage. He courted them. They knew what they could count on from the king (a redress of reasonable grievances, when they brought them). They knew they had a forum for identifying and addressing problems - not just problems of their own, those of the entire realm, the problems they were expected to solve as a group. Edward maintained that forum by undertaking innumerable annoying, shadowy, diplomatic conversations with individuals and groups that, in every instance, had far less power than he did.
Teenage Richard, by contrast, kept counsel with a small number of yes-men and minimized his exposure to everyone else, shuttling from one of his rural estates to another. He left court and parliaments to their own devices only to swoop in with harsh (sometimes lethal) retribution for those he thought challenged his authority. He eventually gets deposed by his own cousin.
Two takeaways here, for me:
Even a king leads within constraints his people impose. There is no real leadership by dictate alone. Edward III and Richard II ruled during an era of widespread belief in the divine right of kings, an era where direct criticism of a king could be considered treason and therefore punished by death. They still faced constraints and those constraints weren’t historical circumstances alone (a poorly organized army; an embittered French enemy). They were also the constraints of other people, especially the people nearest to them. The preferences and patterns of those other people are ignored or assumed away at the leader’s peril, even in cases where the leader has the greatest possible concentration of power.
In times of leadership transition, more communication, more relationship-building, more joint problem solving are needed, not less. As a new leader, or a new leader who is too [young/old/feminine/masculine/Black/white/etc] compared to their predecessors, it can be tempting to believe that the absence of open, obvious dissent is evidence of universal assent. It can be tempting to leave the bully pulpit empty, for fear of overdoing it, for fear of abusing the privilege of the post. This is likely a mistake. Richard left his court to draw their own conclusions. Edward wrote his conclusions out in plain view and even invited the court to write with him. Maybe paradoxically, maybe ironically, Edward’s approach, which sounds conciliatory, even submissive, earned him far greater power than Richard’s.
-eric
