There is a tendency in times of upheaval to overestimate the agency of certain individuals. Anxieties engender a cast of heroes and villains making games of global events. But the kernels of truth in these conceptions obscure the relatively small influence such figures exert on our daily lives. Still, there is comfort in the notion that somebody, somewhere, is in charge; perhaps because it suggests that we, ourselves, possess more agency than we perceive and are not, as so often seems, simply adrift on the currents of fate.