The Art of Being Overlooked

"You're wasted playing the fool," said Gorenflot, one of the few men at court Chicot trusted enough to say anything true to at all. "Anyone with eyes can see you're sharper than half the men the king actually consults."

"Anyone with eyes had better keep that observation to himself."

"Why? You could have real position, real influence, inside a year, if you simply showed them what you're actually capable of."

Chicot poured them both more wine before answering. "I watched a man do exactly that, my first month at court. Sharp, capable, entirely too visible about it. He lasted four months before the men whose comfortable positions his talent threatened found a reason to have him reassigned somewhere considerably less pleasant. I intend to last longer than four months."

So he played the fool, deliberately, for the better part of a year: laughing loudly at jokes he found tedious, agreeing readily with opinions he privately thought foolish, letting courtiers of demonstrably inferior judgment believe themselves considerably cleverer than the jester who nodded along so agreeably at everything they said.

"You've gotten very good at that face," Gorenflot said, watching him do it again one evening, the wide, harmless smile Chicot had practiced until it no longer felt like practice at all.

"I've had a year to get good at it."

"Doesn't it wear on you? Being taken for considerably less than you are, every single day?"

Chicot didn't answer that one immediately. He was thinking of a conversation two weeks prior, when he'd watched a courtier explain, at considerable length and with complete confidence, a point of statecraft Chicot understood considerably better than the man explaining it, and had simply nodded, and agreed, and said nothing that would have revealed how thoroughly he understood the matter.

"It wears on me," he admitted finally. "More than I expected it would, when I first decided on the strategy. There isn't a single person at this court, besides you, who has any idea what I actually think about anything. That gets lonelier than I accounted for, some evenings."

"Then why keep doing it?"

"Because the alternative is the four months I mentioned. I'd rather be lonely and still standing a year from now than sharp and gone by summer." He drained his cup. "Watch the newcomers who don't learn this lesson. Watch how quickly the court finds a reason to be rid of anyone whose talent shows too plainly, too soon. I intend to still be here long after every one of them has been quietly removed for exactly that mistake."