last month I realized that i've misunderstood what power has looked like for most of history. i'd taken what I'd been taught about totalitarian regimes of the 20th C and projected that backwards

this popped up when reading about galileo getting in trouble with the church, but being safe for a while cuz he went to a different city in italy.

me: wut? why doesn't big man Pope just order to fuck him up?

the prince of the city galileo was chilling in was just not a Pope controlled place.

the church's reach was not absolute. there were SHIT tons of city state esque entities which, while not always explicitly at war with each other, were alwasy jockeying for power

and if the pope pisses off enough of them then he's gonna lose influence.

basically, i'd forgotten about everything that goes into Diplomacy. everything about power that isn't sending the SS to kill anyone who might be a dissident.

that's like... a LOT of the game. oops