Richard III

Richard III is a play that perfectly demonstrated a bona fide route of what a man has to go through to achieve a place every other man would have wished; to the highest place, a throne of a king. Richard manipulated his deformity to have things his way and he actually succeeded in doing it. Well, like it or not, Richard is not the only person whom succeeded, at least to the point of achieving it, though of course bad people usually would not last till the end. Richard started off the play by pouring his feelings and justification for his upcoming devilish acts. He promised to make every other people to feel the miseries he felt, trying to prove that his power hungry, pretentious, manipulative, corruptive and sadistic act towards achieving his goal is purely based on what people did to him and they deserved what will happen to them. This play actually reflects the real stories in the whole wide world from hundreds of thousands of years ago until now on how people get to the certain extent in achieving something in their life regardless what they have got to lose along the way.

In this paper, I am going to compare Richard III with Tz’u-Hsi, a Dowager Empress from Manchu Qing Dynasty and another real historical figure, Golda Meir, an American-raised Zionist leader on how they resemble each other in getting their way to the throne or how they hurt people who unintentionally stand on their way. They are not just plain cold-blooded, they are also pure evil in their act at any rate of blood relation with the person they harmed. Why I chose to compare women rulers with Richard is because I wanted to see how far a woman can go to achieve their goals and to note that both women are from Asian continental.

Like Richard, the Chinese empress, Tz’u-Hsi also known as Cixi also succeeded, up till the inevitable moment of eventually dying at the age of 80. Tz'u-Hsi T'ai-hou, was born on 29^th November 1835 and lived her life to the date of 15^th November 1908, popularly known in China as the West Dowager Empress whom ruled Manchu Qing Dynasty for 48 years. What makes Tz’u Hsi and Richard almost similar? They began their throne climbing journey as nobody. Tz’u Hsi was a concubine before she had the chance to bore a son for the emperor and that was the starting point where everything began for her. Richard on the other hand is the youngest brother of King Edward IV of England, eldest son of the late Richard, Duke of York. The condition was not on his side because even though he is already in the blood of the royals, as the youngest brother he had no chance to be next in line to be king unless all male heirs of both his brothers are gone. Both Richard and Tz’u Hsi have strong motivation to change their life and the only reason that came out is because they felt they deserved it. They had chosen their path no matter who will be standing on their way.

The other similarity next to their motivation to change their life is their skill in manipulating the situation and people. Both of them knew to whom they should go to in order to get their mission done. Richard went to his cousin, Lord Buckingham to strengthen his ally in the succession of the throne while Tz’u Hsi went to Prince Gong and Prince Chun to help her. With both help, Tz’u Hsi got to do her ‘behind the curtain’ politics because women are not allowed to rule during that time. Both Richard and Tz’u Hsi knew what to promise to both dummies they used and what will motivate them to be their allies. In order to be the one to rule but to do it with no question asked, they cleared their way by cleaning the obstacles. By being the temporary guardian of the child king, they get to rule like a real king. Richard killed his own flesh and blood brothers so that he can get the chance to be his nephews’ caretaker which gave him the provisional term as a ruler. As a perfect resemblance, Tz’u Hsi also used the same method, except that she used her own son, Tung Chih. She kept him too busy to rule by giving him a wife and four concubines so that she can carry on ruling. Even when one of the concubines gets pregnant, the woman died mysteriously before childbirth and some of the historians said that Tz’u Hsi might be the one with the highest potential to kill as she is the only one who would be affected if the concubine bore a son for her own son. Surely that is not a question any more as Tz’u Chi moved from a fifth rank concubine to Dowager Empress of a dynasty faster than anyone can ever imagine.

The other advantage of being highly motivated is one will do anything to reach the goal regardless to what extent the sacrifice need to be given. Richard killed his own brothers; King Edward and Clarence, his nephews; Prince Edward and the young Duke of York, his wife, Anne Neville after he killed her husband and father, without a blink of thinking or any guilt towards it. Tz’u Hsi might not be as cruel as that but she did her part in killing up until the day before she died of poison at the age of 80 years old, she killed her nephew by poisoning him using acute arsenic toxic. In one of the historical book written of her, during the war when Peking was looted, many Chinese people were tortured, raped and killed. Tz’u-Hsi fled to Siam. Before fleeing, she summoned the emperor's concubines and told them to stay behind. One of them begged to be allowed to accompany the emperor. "Throw this despicable minion down the well!" She ordered the guards and the order was carried-out. In the play during the killing of Clarence, the innocent man tried to plead to the murderers to spare his life but his death was still pursued though Richard’s hands was not dirty doing it. We can see how ruthless and merciless these people can be and how easy they forget of their roots.

The other historical figure which portrays Richard’s devilish acts but maybe worse as she had caused billions of death more than Richard got to kill is Golda Meir. Meir, the Kiev-born woman is an American-raised Zionist leader who immigrated to Palestine in 1921 and held many political roles in the state's early years before becoming prime minister, in 1969. She herself was not much of a mother to her own two children, Sarah and Menachem. She would likely to leave her daughters with her husband, Morris whom she cheated on and eventually divorced or with the babysitter who usually put the girls to bed, and run off to attend a Mapai meeting or catch a plane that would enable her to harangue American Jews into sending money to Israel. Perhaps inevitably, given the time and dedication needed to help lead the Labor Zionism movement, the Mandate-era Yishuv and ultimately the Jewish state, she spent little time with Sarah and Menachem, to the extent that they would rejoice when their mother suffered a migraine attack, because it meant she actually stayed home with them. Her family is nothing more than just a perfect picture to be shown to public as a good political promotion. Shortly after her wedding, while Meir was crisscrossing the United States as a fundraiser and organizer for the Zionist socialist group Poale Zion, she had an abortion, because she felt that her Zionist obligations simply did not leave room for a child. Meir has no problem killing a person which is her own baby so that it would not stop her from killing more. She refused to acknowledge the existence of one of her own grandchildren, Menachem's daughter Meira, whom Meir wanted institutionalized because she was born with mild Down syndrome.

The characteristic that Golda Meir shared with Richard and Tz’u Hsi is her ability to manipulate and play act. The easiest example can be seen from her own not so long lasted marriage. Before her marriage, Golda tried reason, persuasion, and manipulation. When all else failed, she resorted to the tactic that would become a staple in her arsenal, an ultimatum which Morris has to move to Palestine with her or there will be no wedding. Israelis once shared the American affection for her, and for the same reasons. They too reveled in her sarcasm, her staunch certitude, her strength. But after the war, Israelis began viewing Golda as a woman who steered Israel into obduracy, ignored peace signals from Arab capitals, and led her people into the exuberant arrogance that sparked the disastrous Yom Kippur War.

As much as in any other scene in this meticulous, disturbing and frustrating story of Golda Meir raiding other’s decent life, the inexpressible tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians resides in that brutal, heartbreaking image. On the one hand, the Jews were fighting for a safe refuge three years after six million of them had been murdered. Undoubtedly some of those soldiers on patrol that day were survivors themselves, who had lost their entire families in Europe and been handed rifles after washing ashore in Haifa or Tel Aviv. And then there were the Palestinians, who had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Can the grandmotherly look woman, Golda Meir give back the life they deserved?

All the three figures had shown to what extent they have been to get what they want. People sometimes forget no matter how high the place will be, but to live it alone will not be as good as how they thought it would be. No one will be happy up there alone. Even the evil Agamemnon felt the lost when his brother Menelaus died during Trojan War and even the brutal killer Achilles seek revenge for his beloved cousin’s death, how can a normal human being resort to be an empty suit of armor just so that he or she can be on the throne is still unexplainable. The only answer is human’s strongest motivation are lust and greed, and only few people can see beyond it.