Interpretation
Marie Mancini played the seducer's game to perfection. First, she took a
step back, to study her prey. Seduction often fails to get past the first step
because it is too aggressive; the first move must always be a retreat. By
studying the king from a distance Marie saw what distinguished hirn from
others-his high ideals, romantic nature, and snobbish disdain for petty
politics. Marie's next step was to make a mirror for these hidden yearnings
on Louis's part, letting hirn glimpse what he hirnself could be-a godlike
king!
This mirror had several functions: Satisfying Louis's ego by giving hirn
a double to look at, it also focused on hirn so exdusively as to give him the
feeling that Marie existed for hirn alone. Surrounded by a pack of scheming courtiers who only had their own self-interest at heart, he could not fall
to be touched by this devotional focus. Finally Marie's mirror set up an
ideal for hirn to live up to: the noble knight of the medieval court.
To a soul
both romantic and ambitious, nothing could be more intoxicating than to
have someone hold up an idealized reflection of hirn. In effect it was Marie
Mancini who created the image of the Sun King-indeed Louis later admitted the enormous part she had played in fashioning his radiant selfimage.
This is the power of the Seducer's Mirror: By doubling the tastes and
ideals of the target, it shows your attention to his or her psychology, an attention more charming than any aggressive pursuit. Find out what sets the
other person apart, then hold up the mirror that will reflect it and bring it
out of them. Feed their fantasies of power and greatness by reflecting their
ideals, and they will succumb.
Observance IV
In 1538, with the death of his mother, Helena, the eight-year-old future
czar Ivan IV (or Ivan the Terrible) of Russia became an orphan. For the
next five years he watched as the princely dass, the boyars, terrorized the
country.
Now and then, to mock the young Ivan, they would make him
wear a crown and scepter and place hirn on the throne. When the little
boy's feet dangled over the edge of the chair, they would laugh and lift him
off it, handing hirn from man to man in the air, making hirn feel his helplessness compared to them.
When Ivan was thirteen, he boldly murdered the boyar leader and ascended to the throne. For the next few decades he struggled to subdue the
boyars' power, but they continued to defy hirn. By 1575 his efforts to transform Russia and defeat its enemies had exhausted hirn. Meanwhile, his
subjects were complaining bitterly about his endless wars,
his secret police,
the unvanquished and oppressive boyars. His own ministers began to question his moves. Finally he had had enough. In 1564 he had temporarily
abandoned the throne, forcing his subjects to call hirn back to power. Now
he took the strategy a step further, and abdicated.
To take his place Ivan elevated a general of his, Simeon Bekbulatovich,
to the throne. But although Simeon had recently converted to Christianity,
he was by birth a Tartar, and his enthronement was an insult to Ivan's subjects, since Russians looked down on the Tartars as inferiors and infidels.
Yet Ivan ordered that all Russians, including the boyars, pledge obedience
to their new ruler. And while Simeon moved into the Kremlin, Ivan lived
in a humble house on Moscow's outskirts, from which he would sometimes
visit the palace, bow before the throne, sit among the other boyars, and
humbly petition Simeon for favors.
Over time it became clear that Simeon was a kind ofking's double. He
dressed like Ivan, and acted like Ivan, but he had no real power, since no
one would really obey hirn. The boyars at the court who were old enough
to remember taunting Ivan when he was a boy, by placing hirn on the
throne, saw the connection: They had made Ivan feel like a weak pretender, so now he mirrored them by placing a weak pretender of his own
on the throne.
For two long years Ivan held the mirror of Simeon up to the Russian
people. The mirror said:
Your whining and disobedience have made me a
czar with no real power, so I will reflect back to you a czar with no real
power. You have treated me disrespectfully, so I will do the same to you,
making Russia the laughingstock of the world. In 1577, in the name of the
Russian people, the chastised boyars once again begged Ivan to return to
the throne, which he did. He lived as czar until his death, in 1584, and the
eonspiracies, complaining, and second-guessing disappeared along with
Simeon.
Interpretation
In 1564, after threatening to abdicate, Ivan had been granted absolute powers. But these powers had slowly been chipped away as every sector of soeiety-the boyars, the church, the government-vied for more control.
Foreign wars had exhausted the country, internal bickering had increased,
and Ivan's attempts to respond had been met with scorn. Russia had turned
into a kind of boisterous classroom in which the pupils laughed openly at
the teaeher. If he raised his voice or complained, he only met more resistance. He had to te ach them a lesson, give them a taste of their own medieine. Simeon Bekbulatovich was the mirror he used to do so.
After two years in which the throne had been an object of ridicule and
disgust, the Russian people leamed their lesson. They wanted their czar
back, conceding to hirn all the dignity and respect that the position should
always have commanded. For the rest of his reign, Russia and Ivan got
along fine.
Understand: People are locked in their own experiences. When you
whine about some insensitivity on their part, they may seem to understand,
but inwardly they are untouched and even more resistant. The goal of
power is always to lower people's resistance to you. For this you need
tricks, and one trick is to teach them a lesson.
Instead of haranguing people verbally, then, create a kind of mirror of
their behavior. In doing so you leave them two choices: They can ignore
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386 LAW 44
you, or they can start to think about themselves. And even if they ignore
you, you will have planted a seed in their unconscious that will eventually
take root. When you mirror their behavior, incidentally, do not be afraid to
add a touch of caricature and exaggeration, as Ivan did by enthroning a
Tartar-it is the little spiee in the soup that will open their eyes and make
them see the ridiculousness in their own actions.
