I. The Weight of Inheritance
- When you make a decision that affects thousands, how long does it take you to sleep afterward?
- Every decision I make affects tens or hundreds of thousands and now millions of people. When I was young I had a lot of problems doing that. I inherited the burden of the Freehold at thirteen, just after my dad committed suicide, that transfer of power happened the moment I found him dead. It didn’t just happen for the Freehold. It happened for nearly everything that wasn’t the Family Trust. I didn’t handle it well. Power scared me. It took my mom having a stroke and my sister needing me when I was seventeen to really step up.
- Do you believe power is earned, inherited, or simply accepted when others refuse to carry it?
- All of the above depending on where you are born and the circumstances you find yourself in.
- What lessons did your parents teach you about land and obligation?
- Don’t take this as me speaking ill of my parents but the best lessons I learned were the ones I learned about what not to do by watching their examples. My dad was over sixty when I was born. It had been so long since he was a kid he forgot that we didn’t just grow up knowing things he knew. He forgot someone taught him those lessons and in doing so I had to learn a lot of things the hard way. From my mom I learned you can’t just hope things will get better by ignoring problems. Those are the lessons I have tried to keep in mind as an adult and as Freeholder.
- Have you already chosen who will inherit the Freehold—or are you still watching to see who deserves it?
- I have a legally designated heir who will inherit if I don’t have children of my own. There are exactly three people who know who that heir is plus my House AI who will only unlock the freehold files for them.
- When you walk your fields alone, do you feel the company of those who came before?
- Always, both the good ones and the not so good ones. My line, like any other dynastic line, is a mix of people, but what is important is to remember they are people.
II. The Cost of Responsibility
- What’s the hardest part of saying no when everyone expects you to say yes?
- I largely have just the opposite problem. I know people out there have good ideas and wish they would bring them to me, but they are so sure I will say no that they don’t
- Do you ever wish someone else could sign the orders for a week?
- I used to and then I remembered how my middle teen years went when I abdicated my responsibilities to others. I remember what a failure I felt like when I realized that is what I had done. It took years for me to set things right that they screwed up.
- Do you see mercy as part of strength, or a luxury leaders can’t afford?
- That is the difference between a leader and a manager. A leader always has the choice and the duty to consider all options. Are you familiar with Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus. Not many people are so that’s ok. He was one of the Heroes of the Roman Republic. He was so dogmatic in his devotion to discipline he had his own son beheaded for disobeying an order in battle. Fortherecord history records it as an action which ended in the son winning the day. I keep an original 16th century print of it in my office to remind myself what the cost of not having mercy is.
Since I don’t find him all that heroic myself I also like to remind myself of the Dazexiang Uprising where the punishment for be late was death and that mirrored the punishment for rebellion which was also death. That mistake toppled the Qin Dynasty.
We could also reflect on my pop culture reputation and just say only the Sith deal in absolutes.
- That is the difference between a leader and a manager. A leader always has the choice and the duty to consider all options. Are you familiar with Titus Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus. Not many people are so that’s ok. He was one of the Heroes of the Roman Republic. He was so dogmatic in his devotion to discipline he had his own son beheaded for disobeying an order in battle. Fortherecord history records it as an action which ended in the son winning the day. I keep an original 16th century print of it in my office to remind myself what the cost of not having mercy is.
- How do you keep loyalty from becoming dependency?
- By never confusing the two.
- Do you still see yourself as a farmer who governs, or a ruler who farms?
- I am a steward of my people and this land. I can’t separate the two.
III. The Meaning of Home in a Broken World
- Why did you stay when so many others left?
- As I alluded to earlier. I did stay, though I always knew I would come back. My mom sent me away the summer before I turned 15 and during the summer I applied for both an academic year abroad to fulfill my final year of high school and at the same time filed for early college admission and to use a travel abroad program to complete my general education requirements. That is the secret to me graduating college at 18.
Like most young people though I had dreams of something else. I thought working for Amazon in Logistics at the Columbia Distribution site would let me get my corporate citizenship and use that to help the Freehold gain more international credibility. I did that for several months and then like many others got transferred into the military when the Prophet’s War heated back up.
Since I know you know him, that is how I met Doug Meyers. We went through OCS together and then got stationed in the same miserable spot in North Florida.
- As I alluded to earlier. I did stay, though I always knew I would come back. My mom sent me away the summer before I turned 15 and during the summer I applied for both an academic year abroad to fulfill my final year of high school and at the same time filed for early college admission and to use a travel abroad program to complete my general education requirements. That is the secret to me graduating college at 18.
- What does home mean to you now land, memory, or people?
- All of it. I truly am steward of this place I protect the land and people but also honor the memories. One place you should visit before you leave is my pleasure park just south of the homestead here. Got talk to the priests of the shrine.
Ask them about the ring we all wear. My great grandfather Dale Wallace Boone Marmaduke made all twenty of them. Ten stayed here, ten went back to the Mitaki-Dera. I don’t know if their priests still wear them, but we do. Dale Wallace donated a significant sum to help with the shrines restoration and upkeep. In appreciate for that donation he was offered many things what he took was a large piece of steel that survived the bombing, a support beam from the school to be precise. He forged these rings from it.
- All of it. I truly am steward of this place I protect the land and people but also honor the memories. One place you should visit before you leave is my pleasure park just south of the homestead here. Got talk to the priests of the shrine.
- When newcomers first step onto your soil, what do you want them to feel before they speak?
- That they can always speak up and tell me if they think I am doing a bad job and that they expect me to do better.
- Do you think exile can ever end or is every home rebuilt from exile?
- When I exile someone it is forever. There is no coming back from the things that earned them exile.
- How much of home is built by architecture and how much by trust?
- If you don’t truth the people around you, then you don’t have a home, you are in a prison.
IV. The Quiet Mechanics of Power
- You’ve built a system that runs on contracts, not constitutions. Does that make you freer or more accountable?
- Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. I am however both freer to act as an autocrat but I am also more accountable to my people. I mentioned it earlier today. My people could easily rise up against me and since I am but one man, I wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
- When your advisors disagree with you, what earns your respect, their courage or their correctness?
- It takes no courage to stand up to me and tell me I am wrong. As a student of history, I know the cost of not listening to your people. It wouldn’t be just my personal death that would be a tragedy, it would be that they would end up with a Robespierre in their attempt to form order from chaos or worse a Pol Pot.
- Have you ever reversed a decision just because someone lower in rank made a better argument?
- I have people bringing up things I missed all the time. I am not afraid to be wrong.
- When do you most feel the weight of your title, at a table, in a crisis, or alone in the dark?
- When I am in crisis mode. It is hard for me to step back sometimes and remember I am not a lieutenant whose forward supply depot is under fire, but the general who has to think about how to save them while still fighting the rest of the war.
- How do you define victory: peace, prosperity, or simple survival?
- You can’t have prosperity without peace, and you can’t have peace if you don’t survive. It is a sociological version of Maslow.
V. Legacy and Continuity
- Do you ever worry that people will remember the myth and not the man?
- I used to until I realized that worrying about it was a lost cause, people will always remember the myth, so you ought to make it a good one.
- Is legacy something that can be built, or only left behind by accident?
- It isn’t legacy if it is done by accident. Often what looks like legacy by accident is actually legacy by incompetence.
- What would failure look like—not for you, but for the generations that follow?
- Not producing a heir either by birth or decree. The CCA locks our structure in place, but should I not produce an heir it falls to the family trust and that would turn into a blood bath the likes of which you haven’t scene outside of a George R.R. Martin novel.
- When a child born today comes of age, what do you want them to inherit beyond the land?
- A sense of duty to that land and the people on it.
- And finally—what will be enough, when it’s time to lay the title down?
- Death is the only way I can put it down. I can’t alienate the freehold out of my family and there is no mechanism for just giving it up either other than death. I told you my mother sent me away. She once told my sister she did it to protect me and I often wonder if what she meant was so none of my relatives tried to kill me.
