Doing good, staying compliant, supporting one’s nation and business, all starts (and falls) with a clear, non-naïve perspective on situations, actors, and behavior – and that is where thinkers like Machiavelli or Clausewitz offer models that can help. If (and only if) applied at the right circumstances and adopted accordingly, in order to better recognize certain patterns of human and state behavior, and prepare for them. However, five centuries on, Machiavelli remains the most misread strategist in our Western canon - invoked as shorthand for cynicism, rarely read for what he actually did: describe power as it behaves, not as we wish it behaved. He called this the verità effettuale della cosa, the effective truth of the matter. It is, near enough, our own first principle. At HFASA we advise on geopolitical reality – sanctions exposure, counterparty risk, the widening gap between what actors say and what they do. Work of that kind rewards a particular temperament: one that prefers the world as it is to the world as it is marketed. Machiavelli is one of the clearest voice of that temperament. He studied rulers, states, rules, and people with the cold attention a good analyst brings to a diligence file, and he recorded what held true across cases. The principles below are that residue. A caution, and not a small one. To describe how power works is not to endorse every use of it. Machiavelli mapped the terrain; he did not bless every road across it. We present these principles as observations – instruments for seeing more clearly, anticipating more accurately, and deciding more soberly – not as a license. Read that way, the fox and the lion, fortune and preparation, the early diagnosis of trouble are not period curiosities. They are working tools, and they have aged remarkably well. We started to publish below Historic Principles we have identified in the masterpieces of great analysists – analysts who actually served in the topics they reflect on, such Machiavelli or Clausewitz. This series starts with the Prince, by Machiavelli. Thereby each principle is anchored to its place in the original text. Where others reach for slogans, we prefer the source – calm, determined, and, as ever, with a hint of a smile.