I think that is spot on.
So how, in a phrase or a sentence, do they go about maintaining that balance?
Also, this is probably irrelevant, but do they achieve balance in the end?
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Not irrelevant. Total failure. No balance maintained at all.
This is whatās tripping me up. It starts in a balance. But the first action in the book has a ripple effect that undoes the balance.
They had been maintaining it by making the military leader believe he was powerful.
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Is this when the MC gets his powerful gift, and do you think thatās the First Driver?
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Summary
No, because it only affects him.
Iām reversing course on this. Yes, I think getting the gift is the first driver.
What do you mean by āhad beenā. As in thatās backstory? Or as in this is how SP1 starts and the ripple that undoes it is at the end of SP1?
The power has been maintained, and fractures at the midpoint.
But itās not like the balance was in perfect balance. Pressure has been building all along. It was going to fracture at some point.
What does it mean to have a balance of power in this case?
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Iām realizing that I think who I have been calling the Protagonist is probably the Antagonist since it is his actions that undo everything.
Trust that the Court has the right people in it to run the Empire successfully.
Could it be said that instead of maintaining the balance of power, the storyās purpose is to maintain trust in the court? Or to maintain ābeing trustingā? Or to maintain the idea that the court is trustworthy? Or do those all sound way off?
Okay, things have been percolating.
I think this may be an OS Universe. The introduction of the gift is exactly the kind of thing that throws a universe out of whack.
Almost all of the Physics has to do with the MC. Until the end, I think it all does.
I had to shake up how I was looking at the Protagonist and Antagonist ā¦ until then, I was blind to this construction.
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@Greg, @jassnip, @mlucas, thank you so much. I was totally off base and your questions pushed me to the place I need to be.
I had read this book in my early days of Dramatica and was still clinging to the assumptions I had made then. They still make so much sense! (if you look at the book wrong, haha).
For edification purposes, here were my errors:
ā¢ I flopped the Antagonist into the the Protagonist role. This character is actively pursuing what he wants. He has someone else that heās gunning for who is also screwing up the balance. But from an Objective POV, he is the one undoing the balance and is clearly the Antagonist. The other character isnāt responsible for any of the undoing, and Iām sure soon Iāll be able to place him in the chart. [Heās probably being Controlled and under a misperception.] Long story short, I was suckered by the storytelling.
ā¢ I didnāt think the MC was the true Protagonist. By assigning the gift to the MC as his burden, I saw his Universe get screwed upā¦ but the entire Universe was actually screwed up. The MC is a bit player in the machinations of the governmentā¦ I couldnāt see him as big enough to be the Protagonist. But that was the entire point of the gift: if made him HUGE.
- I failed to recognize which of two mostly-simultaneous incidents was the Driver, This was largely because the author only lightly ties the first Driver to the chaos that follows. But carefully unravelling the plot shows that it is actually the first domino.
ā¢ This was interesting too:
A totally logical set of questions and answers, and Jassnipās totally reasonable treatment of my answer like it was blah is right on. But this was kind of everything. I just didnāt see what to do with it at the time.
We should have gone with 
because it would have forced to the better question we needed.
Yes, having power doesnāt move the balance. Butā¦ having power has a positive reward ā or at least, it is perceived that way, so people are drawn towards getting it. This leads to OS Issue>Attraction. This creates so many problems and I think is responsible for the feeling of manipulation that is so prevalent.
Anywayā¦ thatās so so much. Very helpful. I couldnāt have done it without your help!
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This is one of the best threads Iāve read in a while. Highly illuminating to watch you all unravel and reassemble this 
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Iām late to the thread, and you donāt have to answer these publicly but when I get lost I revert back to these questions that the DUG uses (and that you probably already know much better than me):
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OS goal: What concretely has to happen (or not happen, in a failure) for the story to be over? Is this clear (even if just subtextually) relatively early? For the outcome, how does the audience know that this has happened (or not)?
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MC TL: Separate from the OS, what is the MC dealing with? Where is the MC at the end compared to the beginning?
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IC TL: What is the nature of the effect that IC has on the MC? And who changes to whose perspective?
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RS TL: Where is the relationship going when itās first introduced? Where is it going at the end?
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It seems very clear in retrospect, but the story points only to the keystone in the arch and says, āThat thingās a problem.ā So thereās no sense of what to do about it to make it right, and in fact, since the main voice is wrong the story is largely misleading. To be clear, this makes for a wonderful moment when the author reveals that the guy has been wrong this whole time.
A good question, but since I misattributed things into the MC TL that belonged in the OS, this was a ācertaintyā that held me back. Part of the problem here is that the MC TL takes a back seat in the second half of the story, so it got harder to track.
The IC Changes ā sort of. A particular character changes, but I think the IC is actually not the person who changes. It all works when you read it, but this part seems non-standard.
Itās a story where the characters donāt meet for a long time, so while Iām sure I can go back and find influence beginning early, it is indirect.
These are all the right questions to ask, and looking at them even now, they are difficult to answer.
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Could this be the place in the story for the Contagonist? When I first read about the contagonist, I happened to be watching TCM movies for that year. I was amazed to find that character existent in all the films (for the most part) and the books I was reading. That character sure had a hand in giving the work its zingers. The film/stories would have been flat without it, imho. [backtrack reading this topic, here]
Actually there is a lot of Temptation in this part of the book.
MC and Protagonist, both? MC? IC? Who is main voice?
Sorry, the loudest voice in the OS ā heās consciously trying to shore things up, totally unaware that he is actually inadvertently undoing things.
He wouldnāt be the contagonist, by any chance?