The Fable of the Man-God: Solmir’s Rise and Fall
Once upon a time, in a vast land surrounded by mountains and fed by mighty rivers, there was a man named Solmir. His name once meant “the one who watches,” but when he rose to power it became “the one who commands.” At first, he was nothing more than a regional governor, yet circumstances, intrigues, and wars opened the gates of the throne to him. The people, weary of a brutal tyrant, lifted him to the highest seat with hope and fervor. They thought he would be different, that his sense of justice would outweigh any thirst for domination.
Solmir, however, quickly tasted the intoxication of power. Each decision he made seemed to grant him a strength beyond all measure. His counselors told him the State was like a slumbering giant, and that he alone held the reins that could move it. Slowly, he began to believe he was entrusted with a divine mission. He no longer saw himself as a mere man, but as a kind of demiurge, shaping the destiny of his people.
The broken river and the imposed drought
One day, a crisis arose. Two regions of the kingdom needed water: one fertile but considered secondary, and the other rich in strategic resources, home to the mines and arsenals. The engineers proposed building a massive dam to divert the river toward the strategic region. But that choice meant condemning the plains on the other side to drought. Thousands of farmers depended on that water to live.
Solmir listened to the voice of his power-swollen heart and said: “Better to sacrifice those valleys so the army may survive. If I deprive them, I save the kingdom. This is the lesser evil.” And so the dam was raised. The lush meadows soon turned to dust, livestock died of thirst, children grew thin and sick, and the villages emptied. But in the capital, his decision was celebrated. The king gloried in his wisdom. Every unseen victim was erased from his sight by the triumph of his choice.
The villages sacrificed in the name of war
Soon after, war broke out with a neighboring kingdom. The generals wanted to launch a great offensive, but they needed to lure the enemy into a trap. Three villages stood on the front line, and the strategists advised against evacuating them. “If we leave these villages as bait, the enemy will feel victorious when they seize them, and then we can encircle them,” they explained.
Solmir hesitated, but his pride as a man-god spoke louder. “Better to sacrifice three villages than lose an entire army,” he declared. The inhabitants were left defenseless to the flames and spears of the enemy. Their screams vanished into the hills, but in the palace the trumpets of victory sounded. And once again, Solmir told himself he had chosen the lesser evil. His conscience warmed itself at this reasoning as if by a fire, refusing to see that it was, in truth, a bonfire of corpses.
The illusion of divinity
As the years passed, Solmir became convinced that his sacrifices were not sins but necessary, even sacred acts. He began to speak of himself in the third person, as if he were already beyond humanity: “The King is the arm of justice,” he repeated. He built temples where hymns were sung to his glory. Servile priests proclaimed that his reign embodied the will of heaven, and that every loss was an offering to preserve the balance of the world.
In time, he himself came to believe this mythology. He saw himself as a god shaping the earth with a vision inaccessible to mere mortals. His pride knew no limit. The more decisions he made, the more convinced he became that he saw further than others. He was no longer a man condemning innocents, but a demiurge building a civilization. Real suffering vanished before his dream of grandeur.
The voice of the old sage
Yet in a remote village lived an old sage named Kalyor. Having seen many kings come and go, he no longer believed in the illusions of power. One day he was summoned to the court, for Solmir wished his words to be validated by a respected figure. The king asked him: “Tell me, wise man, are not my decisions the reflection of divine wisdom? Am I not the one who always chooses the lesser evil to protect my people?”
The old man gazed at him for a long time, then replied: “Majesty, the lesser evil does not exist. Every evil remains whole, complete, and irreducible. If you deprive a child of water, his lost breath is no less heavy because others still breathe. If you deliver three villages to the flames, their pain is not lessened because your army triumphs. You believe you reduce your fault by comparing it to a worse one, but in truth you deepen it, for you wrap it in pride and illusion.”
Solmir was troubled, but his swollen pride rejected the truth. “You speak like a dreamer, old man,” he said. “I carry the burden of the kingdom. Your words weigh nothing against the realities of power.”
The curse of the Leviathan
Years passed, and Solmir’s choices piled up like stones on his conscience. Every decision made in the name of the lesser evil silently built a mountain of tears and ashes. The songs of his glory grew louder, but in the countryside the muffled cries of victims formed another music that no one wanted to hear.
One night, Solmir dreamed. He saw himself sitting on a colossal throne, but that throne rested on a sea of corpses. Every time he moved, the bodies sank and moaned. Then a creature rose from the abyss: a monstrous Leviathan, symbol of the State he ruled. Its scales were iron, its eyes were fire, and its mouth spewed the screams of his victims. “You thought you tamed me, but I am the one who holds you,” said the beast. “Your lesser evils have fed me. Your illusion has made me stronger. You are no god. You are my slave.”
Solmir woke in a sweat. For the first time in years, he felt the terror of an ordinary man. But he could not confess his fear. Before his courtiers, he still presented himself as the incarnation of justice. Yet every night the Leviathan returned in his dreams, accusing him of every tear, every stolen breath. His throne now felt cold, his feasts tasted of blood.
The inevitable fall
At last famine struck the plains he had deprived of water, and rebellion flared. Survivors of the villages he had sacrificed in war took up arms. His army, weary of endless campaigns, turned against him. The people, once ready to sing his praises, now cursed his name. Solmir tried again to claim he had acted in the name of the lesser evil, but no one would listen. The victims of his choices stood like an invisible army against him.
Captured, he was brought before a popular assembly. He was not accused of treason, nor even of cruelty, but of believing he could make himself a god by deciding which evils were tolerable. They told him: “Your crimes are not only the deeds you committed, but the arrogance of thinking your calculations could erase the pain of the innocent.”
The moral of the story
And so perished Solmir, a king enslaved by his own Leviathan. He wished to believe that ruling meant choosing the lesser evil, but he discovered too late that every evil stands absolute. Power does not lessen guilt; it magnifies it by multiplying its consequences. He who believes himself a god while pulling the levers of a State forgets he is only a man, and no illusion will ever shield him from the full responsibility of his acts.
Moral
The lesser evil is a comforting illusion that lulls the conscience. To govern under that illusion is to feed a Leviathan that will one day devour its master. True wisdom lies in recognizing that each act is judged in its own absolute, and no one can place himself above that law. Whoever claims to wield power as a neutral tool becomes sooner or later a prisoner of his own presumption. The Leviathan does not obey; it condemns. And no one commands it without bearing the weight of an immeasurable fault.