The Ruler attempts to bring order to the universe. As an archetype, they speak to us because of their practicality and their ability to solve problems. Capable of bringing about great progress or great suffering, they combine the dreams of the Innocent and the knowledge of the Sage, adding their own touch of realism and action.

Background

For those of us just seeing this series for the first time, I'm writing a series on using Pearson's personality archetypes (affiliate link) in storytelling. This profile, of the Ruler, is the sixth of twelve entries in this series, following the Destroyer, Orphan, Innocent, the Sage, and the Warrior. You might also be interested in my earlier series on the Hero and Hero's Journey and the Nemesis.

If you just want a quick recap or introduction, here's the gist: archetypes are recurring patterns that have proven to be pretty universal. They're cognitive schemes that allow us to examine behavior and narratives in light of a coherent whole. That makes them valuable tools to audiences and storytellers, since they make stories authentic and lend them meaning.

Understanding the Ruler

The Ruler is powerful and mighty because they seek to bring order to a chaotic universe, and doing that requires no small amount of commitment and drive. Where the other archetypes often seek to live within the existing framework, the Ruler will try to change it to fit their needs and desires.

A good Ruler also accommodates those around them. Part of their goal is to bring order to their society by forming or taking a role in a community. A well-developed Ruler will turn their view away from themselves, and toward the world as a whole (or at least their immediate social/political neighborhood).

The Ruler is reliant on having knowledge, internal strength, and social connections. They often rise to the elite not simply because of some aristocracy or nobility from their family but because their desire for perfection and order drive them to judge and criticize themselves as harshly as they view the unkempt state of the natural universe.

Unfortunately, the fact that the Ruler is high-octane does not always work well for them. They are prone to cracking under stress and the pressure of the weight they choose to carry. They may view others as manifestations of the disorder they fundamentally loathe, causing a disgust or fear reaction, and they can fail to comprehend the fact that they are going to be creating chaos in their own right.

Although self-sacrifice is not a goal of the Ruler, many iconic rulers sacrifice themselves for their people in order to preserve the positive changes they have caused.

The Ruler as Hero

Because we often see the Ruler portrayed as a villain or tragic figure, I want to quickly talk about three examples of the Ruler archetype that can illustrate heroism.

King Arthur, one of the ur-Rulers, is interesting for a number of reasons. He is chosen based on his merit (albeit being of noble blood), is often portrayed as taking an egalitarian role with his closest knights (a source of advice and wisdom befitting a good Ruler), and is often portrayed as waiting to return as a sort of messianic figure.

King Arthur is interesting because he is sometimes associated Christianity in later myths, but still has a high degree of interaction with the pagan world around him. This paints him further as an archetypal character who brings order (continent-spanning religious and social orders) in chaos (tribes and paganism).

King Arthur illustrated by Newell Convers Wyeth
Beowulf is a second heroic Ruler. I'm not as familiar with Beowulf as I should be, but one of the things about Beowulf that is quite interesting is that he develops across archetypes, starting as a fairly clear-cut Warrior but ending his life as a Ruler.

In any case, it is the third battle of Beowulf that we are most concerned with, because Beowulf's motivation in fighting is to fulfill his role as a bringer of order and king of his people, fighting against a dragon (again, a chaos symbol), which ultimately proves his downfall.

In this battle, he is deserted by his men (except for one captain) and killed. This illustrates the Ruler's singular strength among the other archetypes (they push themselves beyond others' capabilities), and the mourning that Beowulf receives echoes the role of the necessity of the order-bringer and protector.

A third example can be found in Odysseus. He's not always a great Ruler (because he's myopic despite his cunning), and winds up losing his men on his journey home, but during the Battle for Troy he is the one who comes up with the plan to help the Achaeans win the war (creating the order of the Trojan Horse from the chaos of a military standstill).

We also see his archetypal role reflected in the trends in Ithaca while he is absent, with suitors taking over his house and preying upon his family. The absence of a heroic Ruler is the return of chaos unbridled by its former opponent.

The Tragic Ruler

When I think of the tragic Ruler, I think of Theoden from The Lord of the Rings while he is still under Saruman's influence. Theoden becomes arbitrary and bitter, This sort of Ruler has betrayed their own role in life.
King Lear is also cited as an example by Pearson herself, who notes that he operates on self-deception (by accepting only those who say what he wants to hear).

The tragic Ruler remembers their archetypal responsibility: bringing order in chaos.

However, they rely on bad information and are deceived (a Sage lost to their Shadow is often the culprit if this deception comes from external, rather than internal sources).

One important hallmark of the tragic Ruler is that the harms that they cause are not immediately obvious to them. They earnestly believe they bring order out of chaos, and they are ignorant of the consequences of their actions.

In this sense, the tragic Ruler is not only tragic for themselves, but a mechanism for further tragedy, actively causing people grief through their actions.

Othello is another example of the tragic Ruler, though it is not always his dominant archetype–he fails to see the true value of his companions, listening to them for advice (the Ruler cannot supplant the Sage) but focusing most on the whispers of the treacherous Iago.

However, the tragic Ruler is required to have actions that seem right in their own eyes, so they often shy away from more brutal and horrible methods: their actions still bring order, but it is incomplete or flawed.

The Villainous Ruler

The villainous Ruler actively creates chaos, either believing that it is the first step to the order that they desire or acting in willful malevolence against others.

One of the important things to note about the heroic Ruler is that they tend not to be in conflict with others; they see conflict as either endangering order or a betrayal of those who they believe to be their charge (if the perceived boundaries of community extend over all humanity).

The villainous Ruler seeks this conflict, viewing others as manifestations of chaos. Driven by disgust, fear, and their desire to improve themselves, they seek to improve the world by destroying those that they consider to be a step back for order.

This villainous Ruler is almost always totalitarian: they may be charming and open on the surface, and may even seem benevolent to those who are in their favor, but they demand a following. There are variants of this archetype that rely on cunning and manipulation, but they can be easily confused with other archetypes (like the Magician, who also relies on manipulation).

In the modern zeitgeist, most of the archetypal villainous characters are Rulers, and not Magicians, though there is a decent chance that these archetypes co-exist in a character.

One of the great examples of this comes in the form of Tony Stark in Marvel's cinematic universe, who jumps between heroic, tragic, and villainous Ruler archetypes across the stories he is in (often serving as a Magician as well), but always with subtlety and good intention.

The Ruler in Star Wars

The Ruler in Star Wars is most easily evidenced by Sheev Palpatine (yes, the Emperor's name is Sheev, in case anyone was unaware) and his reign as head of both the Republic and the Empire.

Inspired to bring about a new era of Sith rule, his main goal is to create order (in the form of a totalitarian and genocidal government) where there is chaos (a relatively free but strife-ridden coalition of pretty much all known sapient life).

He illustrates both sides of the villainous Ruler; in his interactions with much of the galaxy he is a tyrant seeking to consolidate his power and make sure that he has the ability to call the shots. In his interactions with the Jedi and Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Palpatine shines as a manipulative and cunning Ruler (and, again, as a Magician).

Using the Ruler in Writing

The Ruler is an interesting character archetype, and is useful in almost all situations. Many of our stories, including the Hero's Journey archetype wherever it is found, essentially amount to a primordial desire to bring order and creation out of chaos and formlessness.

As a result, the Ruler can be used wherever you want to put them in writing; they can be supporting characters, providing the resources and environments needed to continue a plot, or they can be your main protagonists and antagonists who are vying to change the world in a very deliberate, calculated manner.

The Ruler also represents self-perfection, in much the same way as the Warrior. It is possible to have characters who execute this archetype along unfamiliar paths, but in doing so you need to remember that the Ruler exists for community and their motivations are unique: their desire is to shape the world to their vision.

In this sense, they are different from the Warrior, who seeks survival (even if not their own) above all else. The Ruler seeks almost as much to create a legacy or a system around them as they care about life, either their own or others'. This is not to imply that they are callous, but the Ruler will often be forced to make hard decisions about where exactly their priorities lie.

These decisions may also be centered around what the definition of order–and the ideal society–are. You can have Rulers who are anarchic, but desire to bring about a safe community for those around them even though they don't seek a traditional role in a social hierarchy. You can have Rulers who seek to create a world centered around someone else, though this is rare: since the Ruler reflects their own pursuit of perfection, this model has to be someone with an exceptional claim to power.

As opposed to the Warrior, the Ruler has a strong internal compass. Even a minor character distal from the plot can serve to drive the plot along when they are a good incarnation of the Ruler.

Using the Ruler in Gaming

The Ruler is difficult to use in gaming because they often seek a fundamental change in the universe. Tragic or villainous Rulers can occasionally desire to continue an imperfect order, and heroic Rulers may have already managed to create their order, but generally the presence of a Ruler is disruptive to a game. With that said, you can still create situations that reward the Ruler archetype:

• Provide a way for characters to move the universe from the primordial to order
• Provide opportunities for characters to make decisions that impact the order
• Provide challenges and pitfalls that revolve around the potential of an imperfect order being established

Dealing with corruption or the unknown tends to catalyze Rulers, giving them an opportunity to rebuild or establish systems that improve their world.

Wrapping Up

The Ruler is a powerful force, though they are reliant on external guidance and internalized knowledge and values to serve their part in stories. As someone who seeks to create order, they are inherently destined to project their will outward, and may come into conflict with others.

If they are noble, they seek everyone's benefit. If they fall to their Shadow, they become arbitrary or tyrannical, and they can justify any action in the pursuit of their purpose.