You cannot understand history unless you understand its flowings, its
currents and the ways leaders move within such forces. A leader tries to
perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader
requires the outsider. I caution you to examine my career with care.
I am both leader and outsider. Do not make the mistake of assuming that I
only created the Church which was the State. That was my function as leader
and I had many historical models to use as pattern. For a clue to my role as
outsider, look at the arts of my time. The arts are barbaric. The favorite
poetry? The Epic. The popular dramatic ideal? Heroism. Dances? Wildly
abandoned. From Moneo's viewpoint, he is correct in describing this as
dangerous. It stimulates the imagination. It makes people feel the lack of
that which I have taken from them. What did I take from them? The right to
participate in history.

-- The Stolen Journals
--[god-emperor]--