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Torchlight seems to add the shadows rather than the light; the silence in the room is heavy, despite the many people present. The nobles sit primly and silently with artfully concealed irritation and boredom; you have cowed them, over the last year, but not yet broken their spirit. You sup at your goblet of wine – the flickering, ruddy torchlight interacts strangely with your reflection in the wine’s rippling surface. Your duplicate’s features become distorted and shadowed in the brimming goblet; a grimacing deathmask instead of the broad and handsome face you expect to see.
Frowning, you tear your gaze away, looking for the next supplicant to step forward, but there’s some confusion amongst the crowd – you hear a man barking indistinct orders towards the entrance of the hall, but you can’t make out the words.
With no supplicant approaching, you take the moment’s respite to wrestle with your thoughts.
You’ve learned over your brief reign that despite your previous imaginings, there are no differences between <span class="mu-i">being</span> a king and <span class="mu-i">becoming</span> a king. To become a king, one must be merciless, strong, decisive, and perceptive. A king must seize power and control when given the opportunity; a lion must take the stallion in the throat in one strike, or risk trampling. To be a king simply means that you must become a king every day – <span class="mu-i">the work is never done</span>. You must hunt for weakness in yourself and crush it mercilessly before it can be exploited by others; when you find weakness in others, you must exploit it to strengthen yourself. Your eye wanders over to Creon, your maternal uncle and former regent – he sits like a vulture upon the uppermost benches, waiting for your mistake. Tiresias, that old deviant, is busy whispering with a cluster of seers towards the other end of the hall. Of all present, he does the poorest job of respecting your authority, but what can be done? The blind man’s contributions to Thebes are unassailable, and he knows it.
You regret that the elite guard must be present in the throne room and you must display your authority so brashly, but in argumentative Thebes, this is the only means to rule - this is the Cadmeian burden. When your weakling father blinded himself in shame, when he crumpled with the revelation of his crime - he discarded any pretense of respect and authority. He allowed himself to be a victim of the gods, on every level. Now you understand that he drifts through the Theban countryside like a vagrant, betraying your every childhood dream of his wisdom and fortitude. Your mother has retreated to her palace tower and has not been seen in months – you are told that she spends most days in catatonia, withering to nothing.