A Royal Mindset

He was born a prince

 

One of the princes of the official royal household of his tribe

 

His father was the King before he died

 

After his death, the kingmakers crowned a prince from another family within the royal household

 

There were four of them

 

Four royal branches from which the King was chosen

 

His father, His father’s older brother, His Father’s Step Brother, and His father’s younger brother’s family

 

It was a bit complicated but the Kingmakers trust the deities to choose the right price to be crowned whenever the throne was vacant

 

Sometimes they drag the issue to the court of law

 

If any of the princes feel the process has been compromised by the kingmakers in any way

 

There were set rules for throwing your hat into the ring to become a King and for conducting yourself as a crown prince

 

There are many crown princes in the kingdom at the same time

 

Because the Kingmakers can choose any one of them

 

There was no particular order to choosing who reigns

 

The kingmakers are human

 

They simply sit down and look at which of the princes had the best prospect of leading the kingdom at the time

 

Education, Wealth, Popularity, Charity (Having a willingness to sacrifice one’s interests for the people)

 

Morality – (maintaining a high moral order in one’s personal conduct)

 

Altruism – (being generous towards the people, avoiding selfishness),

 

Honesty (fulfilling one’s duties with loyalty and integrity)

 

Gentleness (being kind and gentle, never arrogant)

 

Self Control (to perform one’s duties with dispassion)

 

Non-Anger (remaining calm in the midst of confusion and chaos)

 

Non-Violence (Being non-violent, not persecuting the people)

 

Forbearance (Practicing patience in one’s duties)

 

Uprightness (Respecting public opinion, promoting harmony)

 

The kingmakers claim they consult the deities but it is a known fact that the deities are simply an excuse to persuade those who desire to disagree with their choice to take it up with the gods

 

It is not expected that everybody would be persuaded by the choice of who the king should be

 

In every contest, there would be a winner, some losers, and in some cases one or two extremely sore losers

 

The royal princes were raised to embody the characteristics listed above from childhood

 

They were not allowed to be trained or raised by their natural mothers who came from different backgrounds and could their training by their upbringing

 

They were all raised by royal instructors and guardians who not only trained them but also observed them to be sure they adhered to the teachings in every way

 

The kingmakers take their duties quite seriously

 

They observe all the princes from childhood in a dispassionate manner so that when the time comes to choose, they will not be persuaded by the moment but by knowledge

 

He knew all these while growing up and he kept to the principles of his training

 

He was a software test engineer by profession and he had a contract with the Department of Defense of a country which netted him a good income every year

 

He married early and had three children but lost his wife to childbirth in the eighth year of his marriage

 

He decided to raise his children as a single parent for a while

 

Nurture them with the help of the royal governesses and trainers

 

He had a string of relationships but it was nothing serious

 

He was involved in the politics of the kingdom, involved in the life of the people

 

Even though he was not the king at that time, the king was old and the crown princes must all do whatever they could to ensure that the King got all the help he needed in steering the ship of their kingdom in the right direction

 

He traveled to his kingdom often, even though he lived abroad

 

And he ensured the physical distance he had to the kingdom was not felt at all by the people

 

Then he met her

 

A lady from his tribe who took his breath away

 

She was not only beautiful, she was an Amazon

 

She was an accountant by training and from the moment he saw her, he felt her head looked just as if it was made for the crown

 

She didn’t give him any stress

 

She was thirty, he was forty-five

 

She had never been married and desired to be his bride

 

He got married to her

 

She was not working at the time and asked if she could help him manage his finances

 

He agreed

 

As soon as she started handling his finances she noted a lot of expenditures that she felt were questionable

 

This amount to this family monthly, that amount to that family monthly, a certain amount to another family annually, etcetera

 

He was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on charity cases in his community annually

 

It made no sense to her

 

How could someone be spending like this?

 

Even if the money was flowing down from Tigris and Gihon, a man ought to be accountable and spend wisely, she reasoned

 

She had nothing against charity but spending that much in her opinion was way too much

 

She began to cut off the funding one by one

 

The number of students in his community whose education he was sponsoring both locally and internationally

 

The number of clubs that made him their patron just to collect free money from him

 

The number of families he was sending financial support yearly

 

It was exploitative and ridiculous

 

She confronted him about it and it led to a huge fight

 

She called him a spendthrift who was wasting scarce resources to seek validation from people who had nothing to offer him

 

Her argument would have been valid if he was not of noble birth

 

Nobility requires that those who have no hope must look up to it

 

Absalom understood this in the scriptures and it worked for him with the children of Israel

 

Royalty must be persuasive and engaging, once it is perceived as aloof and condescending or elitist, it becomes a reproach to the people

 

Peasant mindsets find this difficult to understand

 

This is why royalty is a deliberately cultivated lifestyle

 

2 Samuel 15

 

15 After this, Absalom bought a chariot and horses, and he hired fifty bodyguards to run ahead of him. 2 He got up early every morning and went out to the gate of the city. When people brought a case to the king for judgment, Absalom would ask where in Israel they were from, and they would tell him their tribe. 3 Then Absalom would say, “You’ve really got a strong case here! It’s too bad the king doesn’t have anyone to hear it. 4 I wish I were the judge. Then everyone could bring their cases to me for judgment, and I would give them justice!”

 

5 When people tried to bow before him, Absalom wouldn’t let them. Instead, he took them by the hand and kissed them. 6 Absalom did this with everyone who came to the king for judgment, and so he stole the hearts of all the people of Israel.

 

7 After four years,[a] Absalom said to the king, “Let me go to Hebron to offer a sacrifice to the Lord and fulfill a vow I made to him. 8 For while your servant was at Geshur in Aram, I promised to sacrifice to the Lord in Hebron[b] if he would bring me back to Jerusalem.”

 

9 “All right,” the king told him. “Go and fulfill your vow.”

 

So Absalom went to Hebron. 10 But while he was there, he sent secret messengers to all the tribes of Israel to stir up a rebellion against the king. “As soon as you hear the ram’s horn,” his message read, “you are to say, ‘Absalom has been crowned king in Hebron.’” 11 He took 200 men from Jerusalem with him as guests, but they knew nothing of his intentions. 12 While Absalom was offering the sacrifices, he sent for Ahithophel, one of David’s counselors who lived in Giloh. Soon many others also joined Absalom, and the conspiracy gained momentum.

 

Abigail had a royal mindset, this was why David married her

 

Absalom also understood how royalty works

 

A royal mindset does not see the people it has been placed over as leeches

 

A royal mindset counts it a privilege to be able to serve and be a blessing to the people

 

She however didn’t get this mindset

 

Being raised by poor parents, she had to hustle her way to the top and she couldn’t understand why so many people were living off him

 

She ensured that he closed down as many “holes” in his pocket as possible and those who managed to get anything out of him had to go through her scrutiny before they got the help they needed

 

This went on for six years and then the King died

 

He immediately travelled to their kingdom to pay his condolences and throw his hat into the ring as a potential King

 

When he got to his kingdom, he found himself being resisted on every side

 

The people who used to welcome him didn’t show up

 

The ones that used to come calling didn’t show up

 

He travelled home like an ordinary man

 

He felt isolated and unwelcomed by all those who used to celebrate him

 

Later in the evening, he went to see the kingmakers to discuss his intention to enter the fray

 

They told him they had consulted the deities and he should not bother getting into the race because the deities had rejected his wife

 

Wow!

 

How did his wife come into play?

 

The people were persuaded that since he married this new wife he had become aloof and disengaged from the community

 

They didn’t want his wife as their queen

 

They did not want a woman like that deciding their fate while lying on the bed with the king

 

It was a huge blow to his ambition

 

He returned home and filed for divorce from his wife immediately

 

She wondered what she did wrong

 

He tried to explain it to her but she didn’t understand it

 

Some things cannot be explained but are yet true

 

She had saved him a lot of money but most likely cost him the crown

 

She didn’t know what one had to do with the other

 

She didn’t know this because she was not of royal stock

 

Royalty is a training, a conditioning, a mindset, and a persuasion

 

Nobility is a way of life

 

PS: They got a divorce

 

He paid her handsomely for the six years they spent together

 

She was also given custody of her son and daughter

 

He consulted with the royal families close to his kingdom

 

He found himself another wife, one of royal birth and royal training

 

He married her

 

The Kingmakers delayed the process for six months until he had remarried

 

For they would never have allowed him to enter the race as a bachelor

 

It was against their custom

 

Finally, along with eight other crown princes he was allowed to throw his hat into the ring

 

He also had to do a lot of damage control with the people who had felt slighted by his conduct towards them while he was married to her

 

Six months after he threw his hat into the ring, he was chosen as the next King of the kingdom

 

She still did not understand what she did so wrong that she was shown the door

 

Again, being royal is a mindset

 

Those who lack it have no place on the throne

 

-GSW-