"My father believed feelings and emotions were beneath a true ruler. When I was a child, to drive them from my heart, he would take me to witness executions. I watched condemned men beg for their lives. I watched the swarms of flies feasting on twitching corpses. But then, over time, I became used to the sight, the smell, and the screams. In time I felt nothing. My father had succeeded in turning death into a subject of objective study. And now I am the Shah, ruler of all we see. The king of feeling nothing."