machiavellianism fascinates me

Something chanced upon during semi-casual Literature mugging:

"According to Machiavelli's popular and controversial theory, being a successful leader has nothing to do with being a nice person or doing the right thing. Instead, it's about being inventive, manipulative, charismatic, crafty, and willful. Machiavelli said that rulers should appear good to the public but shouldn't be above doing some pretty bad stuff in private."

I like that idea. I have it in my mind to create a Machiavellian character for some future story.