While in the earlier parts on the novel, Royal is described as an enigmatic, mastermind figure, in the second section we learn he is as much prisoner to the building as everyone else.
Early on, the information about Royal we are privy to is limited. Everyone in the building knows who he is, but nobody really knows what to think of him. Wilder notably observes,
“There’s something about him I haven’t put my finger on. Perhaps even a sense of guilt – he hangs up there as if he’s waiting to be found out.” (25)

And even Laing who plays squash with him weekly “hardly [knows] the man” (24). There is something ominous in his description – there is a sense that he is a mastermind sitting atop the high-rise watching everything unfold all according …show more content…
At first, Royal took the building’s disorder as a person attack against himself – he could sense “hostility” (87) from his neighbors, and even feared physical retaliation. Yet, he soon was of the persuasion that “the present breakdown of the high-rise might well mark its success rather than its failure” (87). That is, the failures of the building are not something that it needs recover from, but rather something that will lead to its success. In this way, perhaps Royal is interested in viewing the inhabitants as test subjects in a social experiment; he is “[waiting for] the emergence of the new social and psychological order” (94). There is something scientific and detached in his where his interests lie. He is not interested in fixing the faulty equipment or stopping any fights from breaking out – only observing whether or not his hypothesis proves true. At the same time, to be a mastermind or mad scientist, he’d have to actually be above the chaos he observes, but he and his wife Anne’s attempt to evacuate is as fruitless as anyone else’s. When Anne goes to pack, it is unclear whether she is packing or unpacking:
“Anne had begun to empty the half-filled suitcases. She seemed barely aware of what she was doing, as if a large part of her mind had been switched off”