I quite agree that 'seduction of/by Power' is the core. But this work is far more compelling to read than any prose attempt at such a massive idea. Only poetry might be briefer, if we had any Great poets left.

I'd only put a veneer over that encapsulation - that it is of such 'scale' as to suggest many? most intrigues of the day == Any Day! In that, it is like all 'scripture', anthropomorphizing that which we do not / cannot 'understand', so we fake it.

IMO he 'fakes it' exceeding well, and his aim to incorporate his lifetime studies of the myths of his own milieu - I think is quite akin to Jos. Campbell's various opera, The Power of Myth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, etc.

Campbell chose prose; Tolkien the oft-times more emotionally powerful form of.. a legitimate Saga or Edda or whatever, undiminished for being only less-'true' than the more familiar others.

We each can read into / out-of? [either author's version] our own metaphors; as metaphor seems to be the machine language of homo-sap mentation. (Assembly language is - - )


Ashton
who concurs that it is assuredly among any list of the top-5? from that past Century of War Madness