A Three-Layer Analysis (TLA) of Livy, History of Rome, Book 1
1. Question
Why can jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies?
2. Abstract
Jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies because they do not attack the state OS from outside. They enter the inside of kingship, succession, property, personnel decisions, legitimacy, and information routes, and directly distort A, IA, H, and V.
An external enemy appears outside the state OS. It invades territory, applies military pressure, takes resources, and attacks cities. However, an external enemy is usually easy to recognize as an “external enemy.” Therefore, the state OS can respond through applications such as defense, alliance, peace agreement, conscription, military organization, and diplomacy.
By contrast, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house exist inside the state OS. Queens, princes, princesses, relatives by marriage, powerful houses, and candidates for royal succession are already connected to the core of kingship. Therefore, when they begin to move through jealousy, ambition, revenge, comparison, succession anxiety, desire for property, or desire for honor, the state OS cannot easily treat them as simple enemies.
Here lies the danger of internal royal risk.
External enemies attack from outside.
Jealousy inside the royal house distorts decision criteria from inside.
External enemies are military risks.
Dysfunction in affinal relations becomes a risk to succession, property, legitimacy, personnel, and information routes.
External enemies invade borders.
Conflict inside the royal house invades the core of the state OS.
3. Method
This study follows the structure of Three-Layer Analysis, or TLA.
In Layer 1, this study organizes the facts of the schemes of Lucius Tarquinius and Tullia, the seizure of kingship, the murder of Servius, Tarquinius Superbus, the crime of Sextus Tarquinius, and the expulsion of the Tarquin family.
In Layer 2, these facts are connected to structures such as Family API, Marriage API, OS decision-maker, judgment against the OS purpose, OS succession design, A, IA, H, V, and Trust T.
In Layer 3, this study explains why jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies.
4. Layer 1: Fact
In Livy, History of Rome, Book 1, the destabilization of the late monarchy proceeds not mainly through external enemies, but through ambition, jealousy, affinal relations, and succession anxiety inside the royal house.
In Chapter 46, Servius effectively holds kingship and is declared king with overwhelming support from the people. However, the desire of Tarquinius to seize kingship does not weaken. It becomes stronger. He sees that Servius’s distribution of land to the plebs was done against the will of the nobles. He thinks this gives him an opportunity to criticize Servius among the nobles and to increase his influence in the senate. In his house, there is Tullia, his wife, who encourages his ambition.
The important point here is that Tullia is not merely a wife. Through affinal relations, she is connected to the inside of the royal house and strengthens the desire of Tarquinius for kingship. Her jealousy, ambition, dissatisfaction, and sense of comparison do not end as emotions between husband and wife. They are converted into political energy for seizing kingship.
In Chapter 47, Tullia presses her husband not to make the murders of husband and wife meaningless. She urges him to become a man who does not merely desire the throne, but seizes it. She appeals to the household gods, ancestral guardians, the image of his father, the royal house, the throne inside the house, and the name of Tarquinius. She claims that these call him king.
This is a scene in which family, marriage, royal name, ancestors, household gods, throne, and legitimacy are reconnected as the logic of seizing kingship.
After that, Chapter 48 shows the murder of King Servius. Chapter 49 moves to Tarquinius Superbus. Later, Chapter 58 shows the crime of Sextus Tarquinius, and Chapter 60 leads to the expulsion of the Tarquin family.
This flow shows that affinal relations, private emotions, and succession anxiety inside the royal house are connected to the seizure of kingship, deterioration of monarchy, and finally regime change.
5. Layer 2: Order
In Layer 2, this problem can be understood as a structure in which jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house work as high-coupling APIs connected to the core of the state OS.
In OS Organizational Design Theory R1.30.19.02, Family API is a high-coupling external API that connects individual OSs through blood relations, marriage, support, succession, responsibility, and emotional bonds. Family API shares resources, supports succession, supplies trust, and corrects HDR. However, when NIC deviates from moral ethics MD, it creates binding, exploitation, domination, excessive responsibility, emotional restraint, loss of freedom, and judgment distortion.
In an ordinary family, dysfunction of Family API may remain a problem inside the family or individual OS. However, in a royal house, Family API is connected to the core of the state OS. Therefore, when the Family API of the royal house becomes dysfunctional, it is no longer merely a family problem. It becomes a core risk that distorts A, IA, H, and V of the state OS.
Marriage API is also an external API that forms blood relations, succession, legitimacy, mutual support, and resource sharing through marriage. It expands succession candidates, raises the degree of connection, and creates constraints and expectations toward the other OS. However, when it brings in the other OS’s dysfunction, succession problems, or interference, it causes succession disputes, interference by relatives, and alliance failure.
In other words, affinal relations are not merely “relations with relatives by marriage.” They are high-coupling APIs connected to kingship. Because they are high-coupling, they can create trust and integration. But when they become dysfunctional, they can bring into the core of the state the ambition, jealousy, succession disputes, desire for property, house interests, and instability of the other OS.
Therefore, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can distort all of A, IA, H, and V.
A is distorted.
Jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house make the state see reality not through the question “What is necessary for the community?” but through questions such as “Who is close to the throne?”, “Who belongs to which house?”, and “Who is supported by which affinal network?”
IA becomes blocked.
Conflict inside the royal house turns information routes into factional routes. The flow of information changes depending on who is close to the king and who is connected to the queen, princes, or relatives by marriage. Painful information is blocked, and information convenient to insiders passes through.
H is privatized.
Personnel decisions, rewards, punishments, appointments, and exclusions are decided not by capability, but by which affinal group a person is close to, which prince a person supports, and which queen or house a person is connected to.
V is replaced.
The decision criterion is no longer the state purpose. It becomes family purpose, house purpose, private ambition, jealousy, comparison, honor, past crimes, and attachment to the royal name.
Trust T also declines. From the viewpoint of the community, politics driven by jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house looks like a state moved not by public order, but by the emotions of the royal house and the interests of noble families. At that point, Trust T of the Execution Layer declines, and approval turns into fear, resignation, or mere formality.
6. Layer 3: Insight
Jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies because they do not attack the state OS from outside. They enter the inside of kingship, succession, property, personnel decisions, legitimacy, and information routes, and directly distort A, IA, H, and V.
An external enemy appears outside the state OS. It invades territory, applies military pressure, takes resources, and attacks cities. However, an external enemy is usually easy to recognize as an “external enemy.” Therefore, the state OS can respond through applications such as defense, alliance, peace agreement, conscription, military organization, and diplomacy.
By contrast, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house exist inside the state OS. Queens, princes, princesses, relatives by marriage, powerful houses, and candidates for royal succession are already connected to the core of kingship. Therefore, when they begin to move through jealousy, ambition, revenge, comparison, succession anxiety, desire for property, or desire for honor, the state OS cannot easily treat them as simple enemies.
Here lies the danger of internal royal risk.
External enemies attack from outside.
Jealousy inside the royal house distorts decision criteria from inside.
External enemies are military risks.
Dysfunction in affinal relations becomes a risk to succession, property, legitimacy, personnel, and information routes.
External enemies invade borders.
Conflict inside the royal house invades the core of the state OS.
The royal house is a Family API connected to the state OS. In an ordinary family, dysfunction of Family API may remain a problem inside the family or individual OS. However, in a royal house, Family API is connected to the core of the state OS. Therefore, dysfunction of Family API directly becomes dysfunction of the state OS.
Affinal relations are also high-coupling APIs connected to kingship. Because they are high-coupling, they can create trust and integration. But when they become dysfunctional, they bring in the ambition, jealousy, succession disputes, desire for property, house interests, and instability of the other OS.
The relationship between Tarquinius and Tullia in Livy, History of Rome, Book 1, shows this structure clearly.
In Chapter 46, Servius effectively holds kingship and is declared king with overwhelming support from the people. However, the desire of Tarquinius to seize kingship does not weaken. It becomes stronger. He sees that Servius’s distribution of land to the plebs was done against the will of the nobles. He thinks this gives him an opportunity to criticize Servius among the nobles and to increase his influence in the senate. In his house, there is Tullia, his wife, who encourages his ambition.
The important point here is that Tullia is not merely a wife. Through affinal relations, she is connected to the inside of the royal house and strengthens the desire of Tarquinius for kingship. Her jealousy, ambition, dissatisfaction, and sense of comparison do not end as emotions between husband and wife. They are converted into political energy for seizing kingship.
In Chapter 47, Tullia presses her husband not to make the murders of husband and wife meaningless. She urges him to become a man who does not merely desire the throne, but seizes it. She appeals to the household gods, ancestral guardians, the image of his father, the royal house, the throne inside the house, and the name of Tarquinius. She claims that these call him king.
This is a scene in which family, marriage, royal name, ancestors, household gods, throne, and legitimacy are reconnected as the logic of seizing kingship.
This scene shows how jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house destabilize the core of the state. Tullia’s words are not merely emotional encouragement. They bind together the legitimacy of kingship, the honor of the house, bloodline, the irreversible nature of past crimes, and the sense of right to the throne. In this way, they change Tarquinius’s V, that is, his decision criteria.
The question is no longer, “Should I desire kingship?”
The decision criterion becomes, “If I do not seize kingship, past crimes and the marriage itself become meaningless.”
At this point, the V of the state OS begins to be replaced by jealousy and ambition inside the royal house.
In OS Organizational Design Theory, the failure condition of an OS decision-maker is that the personal purpose of the decision-maker overrides the OS purpose. A judgment against the OS purpose means that the original purpose function of the OS is replaced by the personal purpose of the decision-maker.
This replacement occurs in the relationship between Tarquinius and Tullia. The purpose of the state OS should be the maintenance of order in the Roman community, stable succession, and continuity of institutions. However, inside the royal house, jealousy, comparison, honor, past guilt, marital relations, and attachment to the royal name become the decision criteria for seizing kingship. Here, the OS purpose is swallowed by the dysfunction of Family API and Marriage API.
If the threat were an external enemy, the king or senate could recognize it as a threat from outside. However, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house use the language of legitimacy. They use household gods, ancestors, the royal house, the throne, and the royal name. In other words, private ambition enters the core of the state while wearing the form of public legitimacy.
This is why it is more dangerous than an external enemy.
An external enemy attacks the state purpose from outside.
Jealousy inside the royal house rewrites the state purpose from inside.
An external enemy is easy for A of the state OS to recognize.
Dysfunction in affinal relations distorts A because it takes the form of family, loyalty, legitimacy, and obligation.
An external enemy can be handled by military response.
Jealousy inside the royal house enters H, that is, personnel decisions, rewards, appointments, and exclusions.
An external enemy is outside the border.
Affinal relations are near the king’s bedroom, the royal house, the palace, the successor, and the throne.
For this reason, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house also have a serious effect on IA. Conflict inside the royal house factionalizes information routes. The flow of information changes depending on who is close to the king and who is connected to the queen, princes, or relatives by marriage. Painful information is blocked. Information convenient to insiders passes through. Advice is interpreted as an attack by the opposing faction, and warning is treated as hostility toward the house.
H is also distorted. Whether a person is capable or not becomes less important than which affinal group the person is close to, which prince the person supports, or which queen or house the person is connected to. Personnel decisions, rewards, appointments, and exclusions are decided through such connections. This is the privatization of H.
Trust T also declines. From the viewpoint of the community, politics moved by jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house looks like a state moved not by public order, but by the emotions of the royal house and the interests of noble families. At that point, Trust T of the Execution Layer declines, and approval turns into fear, resignation, or formality.
The additional danger is that jealousy inside the royal house is connected to succession.
OS succession design means a design that safely transfers roles, domains, control variables, and access categories to a successor when an important user is replaced. If only the position is inherited and the ability to operate control variables is not inherited, successor failure and functional decline occur.
Jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house directly distort this OS succession design. Succession is no longer decided by who is suitable. It is decided by whose child someone is, whose wife someone is connected to, which house someone belongs to, and which marriage network supports someone. Then succession of the state OS becomes not the transfer of public functions, but a hierarchy struggle inside the family.
In this sense, jealousy inside the royal house is more dangerous than an external enemy. An external enemy attacks the state, but it does not rewrite the succession rules of the state OS from inside. However, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can decide the next king, the next ruling coalition, the next property distribution, and the next personnel structure.
In other words, jealousy inside the royal house destabilizes not only present politics, but also the next generation of the state OS.
Therefore, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies.
External enemies shake the state from outside.
Jealousy inside the royal house shakes the decision criteria of the state OS from inside.
External enemies create military crisis.
Dysfunction in affinal relations creates succession crisis, information blocking, privatization of personnel decisions, legitimacy disputes, and distortion of property distribution.
External enemies may even encourage unity in the state.
Jealousy inside the royal house factionalizes the core of the state and creates doubt in the community: “For whom does this state exist?”
Therefore, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies.
7. Implications for the Present
This structure can also be applied to modern organizations.
In modern companies, internal conflict inside founding families, succession disputes among relatives, jealousy among executives, affinal relations in family businesses, and factional struggles linked to capital relations can sometimes damage the core of an organization more deeply than external competitors.
External competitors are easy to recognize as competitors. Companies can respond to market competition, price competition, technology competition, and customer acquisition competition.
However, internal relatives, affinal relations, and factions enter the inside of personnel decisions, property, evaluation, information, and succession. Therefore, they are harder to correct.
A succession dispute inside a founding family distorts management judgment.
Conflict among relatives serving as executives factionalizes information routes.
Affinal relations make the criteria for appointment and treatment unclear.
Old factions or family factions privatize evaluation systems.
If succession is decided by bloodline, marriage, or faction rather than capability, OS succession design no longer functions.
At that point, the organization is not destroyed from outside. It is distorted from inside through A, IA, H, and V.
Therefore, in modern organizations, it is not enough to respond only to external competitors. It is also necessary to check whether high-coupling internal networks, family relations, affinal relations, and factional relations override the organizational purpose.
Strong family bonds and founding-family networks can support an organization. However, if they operate outside correction, monitoring, and institutional design, the organizational OS becomes unstable from inside.
8. Conclusion
Jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies because they do not attack the state OS from outside. They enter the inside of kingship, succession, property, personnel decisions, legitimacy, and information routes, and directly distort A, IA, H, and V.
External enemies attack from outside.
Jealousy inside the royal house distorts decision criteria from inside.
External enemies are military risks.
Dysfunction in affinal relations becomes a risk to succession, property, legitimacy, personnel, and information routes.
External enemies invade borders.
Conflict inside the royal house invades the core of the state OS.
What is especially dangerous is that jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house take the form of family, loyalty, legitimacy, and obligation. They do not appear as clear enemies like external enemies. Rather, they enter the core of the state while wearing the language of public legitimacy and replace the state purpose with family purpose, house purpose, and private ambition.
Therefore, jealousy and affinal relations inside the royal house can destabilize the core of the state more than external enemies.
9. Sources
Titus Livius, History of Rome, Book 1, translated by Satoshi Iwaya, Kyoto University Press, 2008.
OS Organizational Design Theory_R1.30.19.02