No Place for Kingmakers (Henry VI, Part 3)

Last updated on: May 27, 2016 at 12:23 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

No Place for Kingmakers (Henry VI, Part 3) 2016-05-27T12:23:22-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Tron_Iwana_Groznego_opt A sure way to spot a dysfunctional church, business, or organization is to look for kingmakers or would be kingmakers. The kingmaker is the man who makes the man: the person not out front, but who has the ‘real power.’

The kingmaker is the member of the elder board who thinks he really runs the church. “Pastors may come and go, but my family is forever.” Contradict the opinions of the kingmaker and your head will eventually roll. The kingmaker is the member of the business or ministry who is “the neck that turns the head” and allows the titular leader to shirk leadership responsibilities. In a nation, the kingmaker role is for the shadowy influence peddlers who try to wield power without appearing to wield power.

“I am not a politician or a government worker,” they cry as they manipulate the system with favors or money. A successful kingmakers loves pulling back the curtain and showing that the Great Oz does not run the show . . . they do.

Every system will attract kingmakers, the trick is to make sure they cannot succeed. If they do, there will be endless strife, bickering, and eventually failure. Nobody should wish to be a kingmaker because the role always involves lies. Why? The kingmaker props up someone else and pretends to those not in the know that the “king” has real power. This lie eventually is exposed and people rightly feel used. They liked the King, but nobody picked the kingmaker.

How can you tell a kingmaker from a good support team? A good team has clearly defined roles, including the role for the leader. The “king or queen” does his or her job, whatever it is, and the team supports that leadership. Everyone on the outside knows the power the leader has and is not deceived about who is doing the real work.

Academic ghostwriting is an example of the kingmaker role that people might miss. The apologist or leader is not as clever as people think, but the real brains prop him or her up to look like the leader is a thinker. The leader does not read your letter, the kingmaker does. The thinker knows nothing about the topic, but the research assistant or book the ideas come from does.

As is usually true, Shakespeare has wisdom to share. He gives us the best warning about the role of kingmaker and how it (almost) always ends in his play (the one with the worst title ever) Henry VI, Part 3. If you followed the first two in the series, you know King Henry is useless as a monarch. He is a confused and muddled man whose piety might make him a good monk, but is unsuited to be king. Sadly, Henry seems to like being king and so keeps accepting the role. Since he is the son of the awesome Henry V (the hero of Agincourt) people keep propping him up and using him as the figurehead leader. He is also easy to tear down.

The kingmaker in the play is Warwick, a character who first sides with Henry’s enemies (the House of York) and then when snubbed tries to restore Henry. Throughout the play he often has more power than either claimant to the throne, but will not take the job himself. If this were a proper humility, then there would be honor in humility, but Warwick wants the power (and marries his family into both sides) without the title. This cannot work. To remove oneself from the deadly glare of public attention that the crown gives while having all the power is a self-serving lie.

He is worst of all when he is propping up poor Henry.

The entire play shows that sham has replaced real leadership. People call men “father” and then fail to act as dutiful sons. They swear love to a women and then pursue someone else. Everyone is not what they seem and no title fits the man or woman who holds that title. England’s leadership (though not the heart of England) has become “unnatural.”

Of course, Warwick dies, but only after he drags the English Civil War forward through at least one more extraneous battle. He is careless with his enemies because he never knows when he will need a new front man. As a result, England bleeds. By the end of the play there is no legitimacy left in any leader because power, rule, and piety have all become separated. House of York or Lancaster? White Rose or Red? It does not matter: England will bleed.

England needs a leader who combines power, rule, and piety and Shakespeare foreshadows the man: a young boy (the future Henry VII) who is picked out by the pious old Henry and prophesied to be the man England needs. Nobody ever needs a kingmaker, especially the kingmaker who often ends alone like Warwick:

My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows.
That I must yield my body to the earth
And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.
Thus yields the cedar to the axe’s edge,
Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,
Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,
Whose top-branch overpeer’d Jove’s spreading tree
And kept low shrubs from winter’s powerful wind.
These eyes, that now are dimm’d with death’s black veil,
Have been as piercing as the mid-day sun,
To search the secret treasons of the world:
The wrinkles in my brows, now filled with blood,
Were liken’d oft to kingly sepulchres;
For who lived king, but I could dig his grave?
And who durst mine when Warwick bent his brow?
Lo, now my glory smear’d in dust and blood!
My parks, my walks, my manors that I had.
Even now forsake me, and of all my lands
Is nothing left me but my body’s length.
Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live we how we can, yet die we must.

God, send us true leaders. God will save the King, but He is not in the business of saving kingmakers.

—————————————————————–

William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost. Brutus kills Caesar, but is overshadowed by him in Julius Caesar. We should learn not to make Much Ado about Nothing. We might all be Antony, but if we would avoid his fate then we must avoid flattery and the superficial love of Troilus and Cressida. We are fools, but our goal should be to accept it and not to degenerate into Biblical fools during our Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard III is a symptom of a bad leadership community, but be careful that use Measure for Measure to guide your reaction to the mess. The modern university is Iago in Othello playing on our sins to destroy the nation. You can’t accumulate your way to a great leader and personal piety in Henry VI (Part I) is not enough to make a great king.

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