Nikolai II Romanov, Tsar of all the Russias and twenty years later, last of his dynasty, walks down some stairs at his coronation, accompanied by a bunch of people dressed in very fancy outfits.
If distance lends enchantment, then what does immediacy do? The Little Father might be a beloved ruler if you never saw him, or a voluptuous monster, depending on whether you were a loyal serf or a bomb-throwing nihilist. In either case, he is superhuman, dread in both senses of the word. Yet, what if he is nothing more than a man walking down stairs, captured in a piece of nitrate, who appears on a bed sheet tacked to the wall for a couple of kopecks? Then he is merely a man and revolution depends on who has more guns.