Meditations

Private notes an emperor wrote to himself on campaign, with nobody else in mind and nothing to prove. He circles the same few ideas over and over because he was reminding himself: other people are not his to control, anger fixes nothing, he will be dead soon and forgotten shortly after.

The strangeness is in who is talking. A man holding absolute power, spending his evenings talking himself out of wanting applause. Take it a page at a time. It was assembled that way and it falls apart when read straight through like a book.