Power Turns the Best of us Into Lunatics
When my younger brother was crowned king of Kaharian, our kingdom and the home we'd known our entire lives, I rejoiced and celebrated with all the proper festivities. My seventeen-year old self was naïve and foolish, thinking that at least one good thing came out of my father's early and cruelly timed death; my brother, Julius, finally got the chance to be what he had always wanted. Though he was only fifteen and had yet passed the proper training to becoming ruler, it was only right that he, the eldest male heir of the throne, would take over the crown. I was just glad I would be there alongside him to support him, smiling in the background of his pictures, guiding him through the procedures of being king since, though I never would've had a chance to be a ruler, watched each of my father's moves more carefully than he did himself.
But that was before... everything. Before my brother fired all of his councilmen, turned our once beautiful city into the rubble of a harsh civil war, and kicked me and my mother out of the palace.
"Power turns the best of us into lunatics", my father had once told me when I was just ten years old while I played around in his royal high chair. I giggled because I thought 'lunatic' was a very funny word and we went about our day.
But, now, each day, I reflect upon his words again, wondering why in the world I didn't take caution from his warning. They are, at the same time, the reason of my constant despair, but also the spark of my only hope.
Power. It's what Julius had gained too much of, at too young of an age. But it my also be the only thing he has left. I wonder far too often, can he see the destruction he has caused? Perhaps not. But no matter what he has done, no matter how terrible he acts, our unbreakable bond relationship makes me not want him to become a lunatic. Is that insane?
There have been far too many dictators and tales of fallen kingdoms from a crazy ruler, but now I wonder whether their sisters, their parents, their children, think of them the way the rest of the world does.
Because I think I'll forgive Julius no matter what he does, yet the thought of him turning into a lunatic because of something I have no control over keeps me sleepless at night.
Yet, I have to also focus on the silver lining of father's words.
Power turns the best of us into lunatics. When I was a little girl, Julius was the 'best of us'. He, unlike any of my friend's brothers, let me practice my hair-braiding skills on his silky hair, and didn't scream at me when my barbie dolls mixed with his superhero action figures. Even though he was always two years younger, he never hesitated to make fist-clenching threats at any of my boyfriends who treated me poorly. So I made a promise to myself, when Julius created the first of the so-called 'Intolerable Acts', that no matter what, I would always remember him at his best, and I would always remember that it was the power which made him the monster he is becoming.
He made 'Intolerable Act I' just a few days after his coronation ceremony. Just days after the flowers and confetti had been cleaned off the streets by our dutiful caretakers, Julius found out that he had the power to regulate commerce and salaries, so to pay for the new marble statue of himself, he cut the caretakers' salaries by nearly half, lower even than the minimum wage. (When his chief advisor informed him of this, Julius fired him immediately and subsequently lowered the minimum wage).
They started out small and irrelevant, but once they started affecting people by the masses, our friends, our family, I realized Julius had gone crazy with power.
With 'Intolerable Act XXIV' to be announced in less than a week, I huddle in the corner of a small hut with my mother, our eyes filled with the same anguish, terror and regret. And the worst feeling in the world is regret with no solution.