"I manage everybody, and it's permission to not do that anymore, or at least to do it exactly to the degree it pleases me..."

"Hm."

"I realize it's horrifying. I might need it less when I'm just less exhausted."

"It's not that - if the others find it exhausting at all I haven't noticed, they seem rather to thrive on it."

"I love managing people. Managing them into death and things worse than that, less so."

"It's still not clear why ceasing to do it at all would constitute stress relief."

"In that case I'm not sure how to explain it. I'd spent forever being so so excruciatingly careful because if the Valar guessed anything about me they would erase everything about me, and then I did the most calculatedly selfish, horrifying, permanent thing I could possibly desire and - no one stopped me. It was mine. And I brought everyone around to being all right with it. It was enormously reassuring."

"...So it was still sort of a verification of your people-management capacity."

"- oh, of course. A more satisfying one. Getting someone to fall in love with you is an easier problem than getting everyone to accept that you keep your defeated political enemies chained to your bed."

"I do not think you will be able to pull the latter off with respect to people here."

"I noticed."

"Do you think you can switch back to getting him to fall in love with you at this point?"

"If I thought I were going to lose him I'd try. It'd be - challenging. He hates me - which is of course entirely warranted -"

"I'm surprised you decided that would be tolerable - it was, I assume, predictable -"

"Didn't really have a choice about it. He was going to hate me once I had his parents killed and hundreds of people'd died that day in clashes in the streets I needed the war to end. So the only question was, given that he was going to hate me, whether I wanted to just have him live far enough away I didn't get reminders very often, or - not that. It's really only tolerable because of the oaths, I don't know how I'd handle it without that."

"How do the oaths make it tolerable?"

"I sort of asked myself - what is it that makes it miserable for people to hate me? And it was - I can't hand them things they'd be good at, can't be confident that we can work together, can't trust them, can't be relaxed or feel safe in their presence, have to recalculate everything that touches them around the possibility they'll undermine me on purpose..."

"So their regard in itself is - secondary, or not a factor at all?"

"Secondary. Like wanting them to be happy."

"Were you listening in when Findekáno said he prefers you to want him around -?"

"Yes. I usually am paying attention to him, if he's in range. If he weren't magically bound to obey me but I were very sure he'd do it anyway, I think that'd work, is that - a reasonable thing to aim for?"

"I was thinking that obedience qua obedience wasn't on the list of things you mentioned - if you have the usual expertise at matching tasks to people that can certainly be understood without you assigning them by fiat, the very fact that he prefers to be present should ensure that you can work with him and trust him because the alternative would be somehow slipping subterfuge past you..."

"Might work."

"If it didn't work why would that be?"

"It's outrageously stressful to have him around, or he won't sleep with me without orders..."