If Niccolo Machiavelli were alive today, he would not be surprised by the breakdown between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte. He would recognize it for what it is: not the failure of unity but the fulfillment of ambition. In The Prince, Machiavelli warned that alliances built on convenience are the most fragile kind of peace. What we are now witnessing is not a rift. It is the natural end of a fiction.
Marcos Jr. is the modern principe of Machiavellian imagination, not a conqueror but a curator of appearances. He inherited a name steeped in infamy and repackaged it as nostalgia. He does not need to terrify; he only needs to reassure. His genius lies not in action but in endurance. He has made patience a political weapon. When accused, he delays. When challenged, he smiles. When cornered, he calls for calm. His composure projects control, but it conceals indecision. Machiavelli warned that fortune favors the bold. Marcos treats fortune as inheritance, something to be protected, not pursued. He governs as if stability were strategy. In reality, his calm is paralysis disguised as peace.
Sara Duterte, by contrast, is the prince Machiavelli would both admire and fear. She rules by instinct, not design, a creature of dominance, loyalty, and vengeance. Her politics mirrors her father’s: control the narrative through intimidation, command loyalty through fear, and turn grievance into spectacle. She speaks not of unity but of strength, not of governance but of enemies. But Machiavelli also cautioned that cruelty without measure leads to ruin. Fear, he said, must be wielded with precision, not rage. Duterte’s recent outbursts, her public threats of physical harm against critics, reveal a leader driven not by strategy but by fury. She confuses ferocity for power, forgetting that those who live by fear often die by it.
The so-called Uniteam is dead. What remains is a civil war within the throne. What began as a marriage of convenience has now devolved into open hostility. The Vice President’s recent tirades and her video laced with threats of violence mark a complete rupture of pretense. She now speaks as an insurgent, not an ally. The President, in turn, plays the patient Machiavellian, withholding retaliation, letting public opinion bruise her image, and allowing her to self-destruct in the court of perception. But silence, too, is strategy, and weakness. Marcos and Duterte no longer orbit each other; they collide. He sees her as chaos incarnate; she sees him as betrayal made flesh. Both are correct. He believes she seeks to inherit his office. She believes he already stole her father’s legacy. And so the fiction of unity burns.
Machiavelli warned that alliances founded on fear and convenience always end in either blood or ruin. This one is heading toward both. The President no longer commands loyalty. The Vice President no longer pretends to obey. The kingdom has become a mirror, reflecting two heirs of power locked in mutual destruction, each convinced the other’s downfall guarantees their survival.
Both now fight not for governance but for narrative. Their battlefield is not Congress or Cabinet but public perception, and in that arena, both bleed. Marcos cloaks himself in civility, projecting a steady hand while letting his proxies attack. Duterte wraps herself in populist rage, turning grievance into theatre. They are not leaders; they are performers trapped in competing scripts. Machiavelli would recognize the choreography, each pretending to defend the people, both really defending only themselves. He would also remind them of a truth they have forgotten: that the people may be deceived for a time, but not forever.
The Filipino people have been reduced to spectators in a royal feud. They are asked to pick sides between paralysis and provocation, between the prince who hides behind composure and the princess who attacks out of fury. Both speak of love for the country. Neither has shown the discipline to govern it. Machiavelli taught that the state exists to maintain order and protect its people. When rulers become the source of chaos, they cease to rule. They merely reign.
Marcos governs through inaction; Duterte through rage. Between them, the nation drowns. Machiavelli would watch this drama unfold with fascination: two princes trapped in a duel of mirrors, each reflecting the other’s fatal flaw: one’s indecision, the other’s fury. He would write that the greatest danger to power is not rebellion from below but rivalry at the top. And he would end with a warning fit for our time. When princes wage war for survival, the state itself becomes collateral. And the people, once again, are left to rebuild the ruins of the rulers’ pride.