I should have castrated him before walking to my execution with my own two feet. I dreamt my demise a month ago, at the hand of the skirt-chasing, two-faced monarch: Emperor Immanuel von Sham. My death in the dream was the starting point of the actual crime, the death of truth. A war incited by my cold body granted Immanuel victory and established him as the only monarch in the world. In the future, the atrocities of the monarchy will be publicized as goodwill to the people; and the people will accept it as truths, without question. And all this was started by Immanuel von Sham. I should have paid more attention - instead of treating my dream as simply a dream - otherwise, this would not have come to pass.
Four years ago, Immanuel von Sham rose to power by making military contributions during the Great War. Before then, he was just a knight from a poor upbringing. After the war, Immanuel gained the title of Duke and six months later planned a coup d'etat. After securing his place on the throne, he assassinated the previous royal bloodline. Within the first eight months of becoming Emperor, he eliminated anyone who dared to say anything negative. Even historians, in fear for their lives, painted Immanuel to be a Saint. Furthermore, Immanuel legitimized the practice of incest - "for the sake of keeping the royal blood, royal," he stated - and married his sister.
He seduced the whole nation by pocketing every newspaper company and creating organizations to control every information channel. With such control came the ability to entice riots or put to bed his enemies without dirtying his own hands. This way, he remained the saint-like monarch. Moreover, he used his reputation and status to have any women he desired, without any worry of repercussion. This habit has ruined the lives of innocent civilians in my nation.
When Immanuel came to our country to establish trade relations, he began to pursue my sister. At first, she was annoyed by his advances, but after a week, she started to accept them and fall for his charms. Her infatuation with Immanuel grew with each passing day. Every time someone mentioned her fiance from the neighboring nation, the crown prince, she grew irritated. At her actions, my father became nervous; if his daughter did not marry the prince in four days, the relation between our nations would crumble. To ease my parents' burden, I agreed to take my sisters' place.
On the wedding morning, I woke up inside a cave with my limbs bound. "You woke up, princess," spoke a hooded man.
"Why?"
"Because I cannot have you marry the prince, it will be bad for business," the voice belonged to Immanuel.
"What war?"
"The one I will start with your assassination," I froze, "the war, where the crown prince murders you for not being your sister."
I glared at him, "you won't get away."
"But I have been getting away since the Great War. Who do you think started it?" he exclaimed, "it was all planned; why else would I court your sister?"
"You monster."
"You are correct. But sadly, I will have history paint me a hero for avenging your death. I have already murdered the true history once, and with your death, I will cement that lie into the future."
My dream was turning into reality.
Story Analysis
The narrative "Puppet Master" follows a sovereigns' rise to power and the methods he uses to keep his position. He manipulates the information flow of society to control his image and responses to his decisions. As a result, the new ruler - Emperor Immanuel von Sham - resembles a puppeteer: controlling his empire and its people with invisible strings, creating a society with limiting access to information that benefits the emperor. The extent of truths the information contains or its lack thereof marks an era based on lies.
The narrative depicts the perspective of a kidnapped princess who spent her last few minutes before death with Emperor Immanuel. From this interaction, she sets the tone of the story with a sense of defiance and irritation. She explains to the audience how a war that secured Immanuel the title of Duke - allowing him to rise in status from a commoner knight to an aristocrat - was planned by him. His greed for power did not stop there; six months after becoming a Duke, he led a coup against the existing royal family and had them annihilated. After descending the throne, he assassinated any form of opposition against his reign. By enticing fear, he had historians write him as a benevolent ruler, even going as far as creating ways to control information distribution. The princess further implies how the emperor's behavior with women - in some instances - is used to solidify his goals, like with her sister. Immanuel calculating seduced her sister, who is in a political marriage with the neighboring kingdoms' prince, to break off the means of peaceful negotiations between the two. Using the woman in his life as chess pieces, Immanuel plans a war to paint him an avenging hero.
From this point forward, the narrators' role becomes essential: the instigator of the war. She describes her last moments: "walking to her [my] execution with her [my] own two feet," after she decided to become her sister's replacement in the political union. Furthermore, she does not realize that it's an execution until the end of the story parallel in many sense to Iphigenias' end (. This allusion cements' the physical death of the kidnapped princess, which is not explicitly mentioned - given that the tale ends at its climax and not the resolution. The discrepancies between what transpired to Iphigenia - the daughter Agamemnon sacrificed to Artemis for better weather - and the narrator lies at the subtle artistic liberties in "Puppet Master."
In Iphigenia among the Taurians, by Euripides, Iphigenia mentions upon reaching Aulis: "... they held me aloft in my misery over the sacrificial hearth and put me to the sword," (4. 25-26) illustrating a sense of betrayal, after her father, Agamemnon, used the ruse of marriage with Achilles to bring his daughter to be sacrificed. In the "Puppet Master," the narrator is void of such emotion since a betrayal requires an already established form of trust, which never existed between the kidnapped princess and Emperor Immanuel. To be more precise, from the tone of the narrative, Immanuel is calculating and manipulative; he openly seduced the narrators' sister, caused her parents distress, forced a last-minute marriage on her, and made her a sacrifice. By contrast, Iphigenia's father struggled with his decision to hand his daughters' life to Artemis, as scripted in Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis,
At this point my brother, making every sort of argument, persuaded me to bring myself to do a terrible thing. In a folded tablet I wrote a message and sent it to my wife, telling her that she should send our daughter to marry Achilles. I made much of the man's high position and said that he was not willing to sail with the Achaeans unless a daughter of mine came as a bride to his house in Phthia (6. 95-103)
The parallels drawn between Iphigenia and the kidnapped princess, we see both walking to their deaths on their wedding day - the former in a rudimentary sense, and the latter in a decisive means - and become a reason for war.
The driving force of the narrative, Emperor Immanuel, resembles Zeus, the ruler of Olympus. Immanuel's portrayal as a puppeteer and a monarch alludes to work by Lucian and Hesiod, respectively. In Lucian's, Dialogues of The Gods, a conversation between the God Ares and Hermes give an insight into how Zeus views himself:
"If I please," he [Zeus] says, "I'll let a cord down from heaven; you'll be hanging on it, trying with all your might to pull me down, but you will be wasting all your efforts, for you will never succeed. And, if I choose to tug up, it won't be only you, but I'll pull up the earth and the sea into the bargain..." (7. 2-6)
In his satirical work, Lucian pokes fun at Zeus' superior-sense of ego and authority, when in the continuation from the previous conversation, we learn how after Poseidon, Hera and Athena rebelled and were planning to capture Zeus, "he went crazy with terror" (7.18-20). These faults in Zeus's perspective and contradictions in his behavior translates into Emperor Immanuel's reigning method: the constant need to control information distribution in his empire, especially about him. To make up for his lack of power, if there is a future rebellion, where all his outlets to control public view - the cords Immanuel needs to pull apart his enemies - will cease to exist. All these actions to establish himself as a monarch who closely resembles the description of Zeus in Works and Days, by Hesiod:
For easily he strengthens, and easily he crushes the strong, easily he
diminishes the conspicuous and increases the inconspicuous, and easily he straightens the crooked and withers the proud… (Works and Days.1.5-7)
Furthermore, the narrative explicitly draws a parallel between Zeus' marriage to his sister Hera (Homeric Hymns 12) and Immanuel's marriage to his sister. In both instances, the practice of marriage between family members is strictly applicable to individuals of a reigning family. Other privileges of the sovereign - Zeus and Immanuel - allow them to engage in extramarital relations without consequences (Hercules 3.1-2), which their subjects face. For Zeus, his affairs lead to many progenies, and for Immanuel, the women were stepping stones for his political career.
References:
Lucian. 1961. Dialogues of the Dead. Dialogues of the Sea-Gods. Dialogues of the Gods.
Dialogues of the Courtesans. Translated by M. D. Macleod. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Euripides. 1998. Suppliant Women. Electra. Heracles. Translated by David Kovacs. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Euripides. 1999. Trojan Women. Iphigenia among the Taurians. Ion. Translated by David Kovacs. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Euripides. 2003. Bacchae. Iphigenia at Aulis. Rhesus. Translated by David Kovacs. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Homer. 2003. Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer. Translated by Martin L. West. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Hesiod. 2018. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia. Translated by Glenn W. Most. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press
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