Strategic analyses abound on the transformation of succession models in the Gulf monarchies. They speak of gerontocracy, of economic reform, of the concentration of the levers of power. All of this is true. All of it is useful. But none of it addresses the essential: what is at stake in this transformation is, first and foremost, a human ordeal. For the crown prince who must embody alone what his family once bore collectively. For the uncles who watch their turn pass without ever arriving. For the cadet branches that carry in silence the weight of a legitimacy they were never granted. This note proposes to examine power succession not as a political problem to be solved, but as a human reality to be acknowledged.
Fraternal succession: a mechanism of psychic protection
Brother-to-brother succession - known as fraternal succession - was not merely a political mechanism. It was, more profoundly, a means of distributing the psychic burden of power. Under this model, no single man bore the weight of supreme decision. The king reigned, but his brothers kept watch. The branches of the family shared not only the offices of state, but also the anxiety, the responsibility, the fear of failure.
What political analysis calls "familial collegiality", the coach recognises as a safeguard against the absolute solitude of the sovereign. In confidential conversations I have conducted with members of ruling families, one phrase recurs often: "My father had his brothers. I have only my cousins, and they are waiting for me to fall." That phrase says everything. It speaks of the weight, of the expectation, of the silent transformation of a fraternal equilibrium into a latent competition.
What the coach hears: "I carry alone what several carried before me. And those who could help me are the very ones I had to sideline." The structural shift is also a psychic shift. The leader who inherits vertical power also inherits a new solitude, for which nothing has prepared him.
If you recognise yourself in these lines, the first sign may be a feeling of discomfort or of relief. In either case, there is something here worth pausing over.
When the son succeeds the father: the debt and the gift
The shift towards a vertical lineage logic - from father to son - is often presented as a rational response to the urgency of reform. The Saudi Vision 2030 required a young prince, capable of projecting a decade of transformation. This is true. But for the son, it is also an impossible debt to honour.
A son who succeeds his father receives power as a gift. But a gift, in return, calls forth a debt. What can a son give his father, if not the success of the project for which he was chosen? Success thus ceases to be an objective and becomes a condition of filial legitimacy. Economic failure is not merely a political setback. It is a personal bankruptcy, a betrayal of the paternal choice.
In my work accompanying leaders who inherited under similar conditions, I have observed what this equation produces: relentless activity that leaves no space for reflection, an inability to delegate, a performance anxiety that erodes the capacity for discernment. The crown prince who must succeed in order to deserve what he has already received is, psychically, in an untenable position. He cannot fail, and that very impossibility weakens him.
The question I put to leaders living through this situation is not: "How will you succeed?" It is: "To whom will you be able to show your fatigue, on the day when you are too fatigued to hide it?" Nana Zakia excerpt from a coaching session
Resentment is not a political risk. It is, first, a wound.
Strategic analysis speaks of "risk of internal fracture", of "marginalisation of cadet branches". These formulations are correct, but they objectify what is first and foremost a family wound. An uncle sidelined, a cousin whose turn never comes, a branch that watches another take all the light: these are not, in the first instance, political variables. They are men who grew up with an expectation, and who see that expectation taken from them.
In the Gulf monarchies, as in every family where power is transmitted, legitimacy is not decreed. It is recognised. It is felt. It is embodied in glances, in silences, in the seats occupied during ceremonies. The marginalisation of sidelined branches is not a singular event. It is a continuous process of silent delegitimisation. Every appointment, every public appearance, every absence from an official photograph reminds these men that they are no longer within the circle.
The "resentment" of which political analysis speaks is not a calculation. It is an unacknowledged pain. And an unacknowledged pain does not disappear. It transforms. It becomes silence, then absence, then, one day, opposition. Not calculated opposition, but existential opposition - the kind that says: "Since you do not see me, I shall force you to see me."
What the coach perceives: No structural mediation can resolve a wound that has not been named. The Councils of Allegiance, the appointments, the financial compensations - all of this treats the symptoms, not the cause. The cause lies in the gaze that was never offered, in the word that was never spoken, in the recognition that never took place.
Governing alone when one was made to govern collectively
The crown prince who accedes to power under a vertical lineage logic has not been prepared for the solitude that awaits him. Under the fraternal model, a king had his brothers. They might not have agreed, they might have mistrusted one another, but they were there. They shared the history, the memories, the unspoken codes. The new sovereign has only collaborators. He has no peers. He is alone.
This solitude is rarely what the leaders I accompany describe at first. They speak of workload, of difficult decisions, of compressed timelines. It takes time, a great deal of time, and absolute trust, for them to say the other thing: the absence of someone to whom they can speak without weighing every word. An adviser is not a brother. A minister is not an uncle. A son is not yet a peer. The sovereign is surrounded, and yet alone.
It is this solitude that governance coaching comes to meet. Not to fill it - no one can - but to acknowledge it, to give it a space where it can be spoken without consequence. Because what cannot be said ends up being acted out. And what is acted out, in the solitude of power, can become erratic decision-making, displaced anger, or worse: paralysis.
And you, in your own governance, what share of the psychic burden do you carry alone, unseen by anyone?
Three blind spots of the strategic reading
Blind spot I - The body of the sovereign. Political analysis speaks of "concentration of the levers of power". It does not speak of the body that must embody that power. Health, fatigue, age, the capacity to stand through lengthy ceremonies - all of this is banished from strategic discourse. Yet in the Gulf monarchies, the body of the sovereign is a sign. His presence reassures. His absence unsettles. His illness is an affair of state. Coaching, for its part, observes the body - not medically, but as the site where the psychic burden of power inscribes itself.
Blind spot II - The symbolic. The Councils of Allegiance, the appointments, the decrees - all of this is measurable. But there is what cannot be measured: the rituals, the seats at prayers, the length of speeches, the presence or absence in official photographs. It is there that the symbolic recognition which the sidelined branches no longer receive is at stake. And it is there that their pain takes root.
Blind spot III - The long time of emotions. Strategic analysis reasons in electoral cycles, in mandates, in reform horizons. Emotions reason in lifetimes. The resentment of a sidelined uncle has no expiry date. The solitude of a crown prince does not dissipate with an appointment. Coaching understands that emotions have their own temporality, and that this temporality always ends up converging with that of politics.
Accompanying leaders and sovereign families - Gulf, Maghreb, West Africa, Europe. ICF-compliant.
The shift towards a vertical lineage logic is in all likelihood irreversible. The monarchies that have embarked upon it will not turn back. But for this shift to prove durable, it will need to integrate what political analysis neglects: the human dimension of power.
A crown prince who carries alone what several carried before him needs a space in which to set down what cannot be said. Sidelined branches need their pain to be acknowledged - not compensated, but acknowledged. Uncles who watch their turn pass need to be spoken to, to be seen, to be given a place - symbolic, if not real.
Decisional sovereignty, the subject of my practice, is not the capacity to decide alone. It is the capacity to decide having seen the full scope of reality - including what is left unsaid, including what causes pain, including what one would prefer to ignore.
A leader who sees only strategy sees only half of reality. The other half is made of bodies, of symbols, and of emotions. That is where coaching intervenes. Not to decide in the leader's stead, but so that nothing human remains invisible at the moment of decision.
This text draws upon continuous observation of succession dynamics in the Gulf monarchies since 2015, confidential conversations with members of ruling families and senior institutional officials, and a governance coaching practice compliant with the ICF code of ethics. Names, locations, and specific situations have been anonymised or altered to preserve the confidentiality of all engagements.
Academic references: Gregory Gause, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (2010) ; Madawi Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (2010) ; Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in Middle Eastern Monarchies (1999).
Frequently asked questions on power succession
What is fraternal (brother-to-brother) power succession?
Fraternal succession refers to the mode of succession from brother to brother, historically practised in several Gulf monarchies, notably Saudi Arabia. This model guaranteed a form of familial collegiality and allowed the psychic burden of power to be distributed among the branches of the ruling family.
Why did Mohammed bin Salman break with this model?
Fraternal succession had progressively created a widening gap between the age of access to the highest responsibilities and the urgency of economic transformation driven by Vision 2030. Mohammed bin Salman embodies a vertical lineage logic (father to son) that accelerates reform, but at the cost of weakened familial consensus and heightened solitude.
What are the human risks of vertical power succession?
Three principal risks: the patrimonialisation of failure (the project and the man become indistinguishable), the resentment of sidelined branches as unacknowledged pain, and the structural solitude of the new sovereign deprived of familial peers. These human dimensions are generally overlooked by classical political analysis.
How can governance coaching assist a leader confronting this solitude?
Governance coaching offers a confidential space in which the leader can set down what cannot be spoken elsewhere - the fatigue, the doubts, the psychic burden. It is not a matter of advising, but of accompanying the leader in developing his own answers, in full sovereignty.