Gulliver and the Emperor of Lilliput
The relationship between Lemuel Gulliver and the Emperor of Lilliput is the central political and personal drama of the first voyage, tracing a complete arc from captive and captor to honored servant and, finally, to condemned traitor. It is a relationship built on a radical asymmetry of power that shifts over time, and it serves as Swift's primary vehicle for satirizing the vanity, ingratitude, and dangerous whims of absolute monarchy and court intrigue.
First Encounters: Captivity and Curiosity
The relationship begins not with a meeting of equals but with the Emperor asserting total control over the giant stranger who has washed ashore. Upon the first intelligence of Gulliver's arrival, the Emperor determined in council that the sleeping man-mountain should be bound, fed, and transported to the capital. The Emperor himself, accompanied by his court, came out to meet the procession, but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person by mounting on Gulliver's body. When the Emperor later approached on horseback, the beast reared up at the sight of the moving mountain, and only the Emperor's excellent horsemanship prevented a fall. After dismounting, he surveyed Gulliver with great admiration but kept outside the length of the chain. This initial phase is marked by the Emperor's cautious, commanding curiosity. He orders a lavish supply of food, has a bed of six hundred common beds sewn together prepared, and appoints three hundred tailors and six scholars to serve and instruct the captive. The Emperor himself frequently honored Gulliver with his visits and assisted his masters in teaching him their language. The first words Gulliver learned were to express his desire for liberty, which he repeated daily on his knees, and the Emperor's answer was that this must be a work of time, not to be thought on without the advice of his council.
Service and Reward: The Nardac
Gulliver's service to the empire transforms his standing. After he captures the entire Blefuscu navy by wading into the channel and towing fifty men-of-war, the Emperor and his whole court stood on the shore expecting the issue. When Gulliver succeeded, the great prince received him at his landing with all possible encomiums and created him a nardac upon the spot, the highest title of honor among them. This pinnacle of favor, however, immediately reveals the limits of the Emperor's gratitude. His majesty desired Gulliver to take some other opportunity of bringing all the rest of the enemy's ships into his ports, and seemed to think of nothing less than reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into a province. When Gulliver plainly protested that he would never be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery, the Emperor could never forgive him. From this time began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers maliciously bent against Gulliver, which broke out in less than two months and had like to have ended in his utter destruction.
The Conspiracy and the Sentence
The Emperor's true character is fully exposed in the secret conspiracy against Gulliver. A considerable person at court, to whom Gulliver had been very serviceable, came to him privately at night and revealed that several committees of council had been called in the most private manner on his account. The articles of impeachment, prepared by Skyrris Bolgolam, Flimnap, Limtoc, Lalcon, and Balmuff, accused Gulliver of high treason for extinguishing the palace fire by an illegal method, for refusing to enslave Blefuscu, and for aiding the Blefuscu ambassadors. In the debates, the Emperor gave many marks of his great lenity, often urging the services Gulliver had done him and endeavoring to extenuate his crimes. Yet this lenity was a mask: the final sentence, after much deliberation, was that Gulliver should be blinded. The Emperor's mercy was a performance, a custom of the court whereby after decreeing any cruel execution, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council expressing his great lenity and tenderness. The more these praises were enlarged, the more inhuman was the punishment. Gulliver, having never been designed for a courtier, could not discover the lenity and favor of this sentence but conceived it rather to be rigorous than gentle.
Escape and Final Rupture
The relationship ends in flight and permanent estrangement. Taking advantage of his license to pay his attendance upon the Emperor of Blefuscu, Gulliver left Lilliput before the three days allotted for the reading of the articles of impeachment had elapsed. The Emperor, never imagining Gulliver had the least notice of his designs, believed he was only gone to Blefuscu in performance of his promise. But when Gulliver did not return, the Emperor sent an envoy with the copy of the articles against him, demanding that the Emperor of Blefuscu send him back bound hand and foot to be punished as a traitor. The Emperor of Blefuscu refused, and Gulliver, having resolved never more to put any confidence in princes or ministers where he could possibly avoid it, departed from Blefuscu in a boat he had repaired. The relationship thus concludes with Gulliver's disillusionment, a lesson learned about the nature of courts and the weight of a prince's favor when balanced against a refusal to gratify his passions.
