Let us not forget that you are reading a book.

As you discuss issues of leadership and power, keep in mind that you are reading a work of fiction. You are using fiction in comparison to actual historical events - they are NOT one in the same.

So, what value to this discussion does "fiction" add?

To answer this question you MUST consider HOW fiction creates meaning:

Characters and Narration
In the same way that historical figures influence and shape events, the characters in a novel influence and shape events according to who they are, and what they believe - but remember, that these characters are constructs of the author - they are not "real" people and cannot be discussed as such. A novel is not a reality TV show. In fact as you think about the characters it is also importnat to analyze HOW the story is told - the "term" for this is "point of view".

For example, let's look at the following quotation.
And when we think we lead, we are most led. - Lord Byron

1. One way to interpret this quotation is to simply define the terms as YOU (the reader) understand them. In this case all you need to do is decide what "lead" and "led" mean to you, understand why you think this, and then compare this understanding to the world that you live in.
    
2. However, a fuller analysis asks that you understand who Lord Byron was, why he would have said this quote, and the context in which the quote was said..
   
   A quick Google search reveals the following: 
       A website at Arkansas State University (.edu = assumed reliable) reveals that Lord Byron, born George Gordon Byron in 1788, was a leading Romantic Poet (the term "Romantic" does not mean what you think it does). Byron was of aristocratic stock - educated at Cambridge - and traveled the world (customary for young nobles). In 1811 he took a seat in the House of Lords where he was a strong advocate of social reform. Byron also lived a scandalous social life (he had many hetero- and homosexual affairs) and eventually lived abroad to escape censure.
   
       As stated above, Byron was a leading "Romantic" poet. Romanticism was  an intellectual movement of the middle 18th century that was, partly, a response to the social and political ideals of the "Enlightenment". The essential focus of Romanticism was on the authority of the individual imagination to makes sense of the world around him.
   
       The quote comes from Byron's play The Two Foscari which is a historical drama highlighting the failure of political action. Specifically, The Two Foscari contains autobiographical elements, embodied in the character Jacopo Foscari.. Jacopo, after a youth of aristocratic gaiety, has been unjustly exiled from his native land. He had been the boon companion of the city’s most promising young men, had been admired for his athletic vigor, particularly in swimming, and had drawn the attention of the city’s most beautiful young women. Then the powerful had intrigued against him, and his banishment had begun. Jacopo’s persecution is carried out as an act of vengeance by an enemy of the Foscari family, an act that corrupts its perpetrator.
   
   Specifically:
    

   All is low, And false and hollow – clay from first to last, The prince’s urn no less than potter’s vessel. Our fame is in men’s breath, our lives upon Less than their breath; our durance upon days, Our days on seasons; our whole being on Something which is not us! – So we are slaves, The greatest as the meanest – nothing rests Upon our will; the will itself no less Depends upon a straw than on a storm; And when we think we lead, we are most led, And still towards death, a thing which comes as much Without our act or choice, as birth, so that Methinks we must have sinn’d in some old world, And this is hell: the best is that it is not Eternal..

3. Now - how does knowing these specifics affect your interpretation of the quote?