{"id":"d4345a18-9839-4825-a3aa-0d613c42b08a","slug":"more-of-this","title":"More of This","subtitle":"A crown prince flew to Silicon Valley and called on a software company — not a palace, not a treaty, a workshop where a generation is learning this age's tools — and blessed a builder who was one of his own. The skeptic is right that a World Cup match made the timing convenient. He is wrong that convenience cheapens it. This is written about a small gesture that is also a large turn: the moment a monarchy spent its rarest asset, disinterested attention, not on continuity and not on philanthropy-as-usual but on the act of empowering someone who makes things. There is an office inside monarchy that survived the century by surrendering rule, and it has one move left worth making. This was that move. More of this.","content":"> *Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings. — Proverbs 22:29*\n\n## A Heroes' Welcome, and Then a Visit\n\nA few weeks ago the head of a software company was given a heroes' welcome in his home country. He had not won a war or a throne; he had built a tool, and a generation back home is learning to use it. His nation's house noticed, and celebrated one of its own. I marked it at the time as a good pattern and let it pass. Then this week the pattern repeated, and the repetition is what made me sit up. A crown prince and princess of that same small kingdom, in Silicon Valley, called on the company in person — founder met, work seen, attention spent. Two data points are not a trend, but they are a line, and the line points somewhere I have been waiting a long time to see a monarchy point. Toward the builder. Toward the workshop. Toward the act of empowering rather than the fact of reigning. I am writing this the same day, while it is warm, because some things should be named while they are still happening.\n\n## Yes, It Was Convenient\n\nLet me grant the skeptic his whole case before I take anything from it, because the case is true. The kingdom's team was playing in the World Cup an hour up the road — a match it lost, one to two, which I mention so no one thinks I am dressing the day up as triumph. The royal party was in the country anyway. The visit cost them a morning they were going to spend nearby regardless. All of that is real, and the cynic will say it reduces the gesture to a photograph. But watch what the cynic is actually claiming. He is claiming that because the opportunity was cheap, the choice to take it was empty — and that does not follow. The occasion was convenient; the use made of it was not automatic. A thousand convenient mornings are spent on nothing. This one was spent standing in a room with a man who makes things, lending him the one currency a crown still owns outright. The convenience explains why the door was open. It does not explain why they walked through it. That part was a choice, and it is the choice that interests me.\n\n## The One Asset a Crown Still Owns\n\nUnderstand what was actually spent, because it is rarer than money and the modern world has almost none of it left. Nearly every gesture you will witness today is transactional. It is bought, or it is sold, or it is cast for a vote, and you can usually find the ledger if you look. The advertiser wants your purchase, the candidate wants your ballot, the influencer wants your click, and even the philanthropist, often as not, wants the name on the building. Disinterested attention — notice that seeks nothing back — has become one of the scarcest goods in the economy of the age. And it is the one good a constitutional monarch holds in abundance, precisely because he surrendered the thing that would have made him transactional. He cannot run for re-election; he does not need your purchase; he is not building a brand he can cash. When such a figure turns and looks at you, the look carries no invoice. That is why royal attention, spent deliberately on a builder, is not the same act as a senator's photo-op or a CEO's endorsement. It is the rarest kind of blessing left: the kind with no bill attached.\n\n## The Office That Survived by Surrendering\n\nI have written elsewhere, and will write more fully soon, about the long arc that brought the crown to this narrow and useful place. Here it is enough to say the short version. The monarchies that endured the last hundred years did not endure by ruling; nearly every one that clung to rule was swept away. The ones still standing are standing because they let go of power and kept something smaller and stranger — the office of a custodian above the daily fight, a fixed point that lets elected governments tear at each other without the nation itself being torn. For generations that office has been spent on continuity. On ribbon and remembrance, on being the still thing while the loud things contend. Good work, but passive work — the crown as the anchor that holds, not the hand that sends. What I saw this week is that same office turned active. The custodian who usually only steadies the room instead reached into it and lifted someone up. That is the move I have been watching for, and until this week I had mostly seen it withheld.\n\n## Stand Before Kings\n\nThere is an old line that a man diligent in his work will stand before kings, and it has usually been read as a promise to the workman — do good work and you will rise. Read it the other way for a moment, as a charge to the king. If the diligent man is going to stand before you, what will you do when he does? The whole question of an empowering monarchy is folded into that. The old answer was that the king stood still and let the diligent be presented to him, a courtesy flowing one direction, the workman honored to be in the room. The new answer — the one a crown prince in a software office was rehearsing this week — reverses the flow. The king comes to where the diligent man works. He stands before the builder as much as the builder stands before him. He spends his rare and unbilled attention to say, to a watching nation, this is who we honor now: not the conqueror and not the courtier, but the one who makes the tools the young will live by. That is a monarchy that has understood the change of season. The deposit was given to be traded, not buried. Royal attention is a deposit. This week, someone traded it well.\n\n## To the Ones Still Holding the Old Posture\n\nSo let me address, plainly and warmly, the houses that have not yet made this turn — and most have not. You hold an office that the century nearly abolished and that you saved only by emptying it of power. Do not now let it sit empty of purpose too. The attention you command is the last great asset of the crown, and it is wasting in ceremony when it could be commissioning. You do not need a vote to bless a builder. You do not need a budget to lend your notice to the ones in your realm who are making something that empowers. You need only to go, as one house just went, to where the work is being done, and to be seen valuing it. The cost is a morning. The signal is a generation's worth. Every young maker in your kingdom who sees the crown stand in a workshop instead of a ballroom learns something about what their nation prizes, and learns it faster than any speech could teach. The season has changed. The square is filling with the diligent. Go and stand before them, and let them see you do it.\n\n## More of This\n\nI keep coming back to three words, and I will end on them because they are the whole of the matter. More of this. Not more pageantry, not more careful neutrality, not more of the crown as a beautiful fixed object that does nothing because doing nothing is safe. More of the crown that moves toward the maker. More of the rare, unbilled, season-reading attention spent on the ones who build what the young will inherit. I do not know how many houses will make this turn, or how soon, and I am not in the business of predicting the hearts of kings. But I know the move is available, because I watched it made. A small kingdom, a convenient morning, a workshop, a builder, a blessing with no invoice. It was real, it cost almost nothing, and it pointed the right direction. The opportunity to add value was there, and it was embraced. May it be the first of many. More of this.\n\n---\n\n*A word on what this essay claims and does not. Its counsel — that the surviving function of constitutional monarchy is disinterested custodianship; that disinterested attention is a genuinely scarce good in a transactional age; that a crown can turn this attention from passive continuity toward the active work of empowering builders; and that sitting monarchs are free to make this turn at low cost and high signal — stands on its own and is offered to any reader regardless of creed or eschatological frame. The scriptural anchors are Proverbs 22:29 on the diligent standing before kings, read here in both directions, and Luke 19:13 on the deposit given to be traded rather than buried.*","excerpt":"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings. — Proverbs 22:29 A Heroes' Welcome, and Then a Visit A few weeks ago the head of a software company was given a heroes' welcome in his home country.","category":"general","readTime":7,"coverQuote":null,"relatedMindIds":null,"author":"Odysseus Melchizedek Shiloh, The Wellkeeper","authorId":"50228441","tags":["more of this","empowering monarchies","the disinterested crown","royal attention as instrument","Jordan","the builder blessed","custodianship over rule","the surviving office","from reigning to commissioning","the change of season","occupy till I come","Proverbs 22:29","Luke 19:13","WellSpr.ing","TheTimeOfTheReturn"],"featured":false,"isFeatured":false,"heroQuoteText":null,"heroQuoteAttribution":null,"metaDescription":"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings. — Proverbs 22:29 A Heroes' Welcome, and Then a Visit A few weeks ago the head of a…","metaKeywords":null,"shareableHook":null,"coverImage":null,"coverImageUrl":"/api/files/blog-cover-more-of-this-1782245723606.png","coverImagePrompt":"Envision a grand, atmospheric scene set within a dimly lit workshop, where the glow of candlelight flickers against the walls, creating dramatic shadows that dance with life. In the foreground, an imposing wooden workbench brims with tools and blueprints, symbolizing innovation and craftsmanship, while a backdrop of vast, translucent windows reveals a dusky Silicon Valley skyline, merging the realms of tradition and modernity. The color palette is rich with deep blues and warm yellows, invoking a feeling of innovation against the depth of history. A crown, subtly placed on the workbench, glimmers with its regal sheen, representing the monarchy's shift from rule to empowerment. Ethereal wisps of steam rise like dreams of the future, mingling with tangible elements like metal tools and glowing screens, evoking the intersection of royalty and entrepreneurship. The overall mood is one of contemplative anticipation, suggesting the powerful potential of collaboration and creative agency in an era of change.","attachments":[],"status":"published","publishedAt":"2026-06-23T12:00:00.000Z","published":true,"showOnNaturologie":false,"isSyndicated":false,"localitySlug":null,"siteAssignments":[],"practitionerId":null,"practitionerName":null,"viewCount":0,"createdAt":"2026-06-23T20:13:55.329Z","updatedAt":"2026-06-23T20:13:55.329Z","dispatchType":null,"callingSessionId":null,"covenantNameKey":null,"agentmailAddress":null,"areaCode":null,"parentPostId":null,"localRelevanceScore":null,"reviewStatus":"published"}