Niccolo Machiavelli is a political philosopher with a coherent and complex concern for human liberty, as presented through his works The Prince and the Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli's two works must be synthesized, possible through the examination of the mechanism of fortune in both works. Fortune situates human politics and human history, opposed only by human virtue. This concern with virtue reveals Machiavelli's concern for the efficacy of human action in politics, which he expands to a concern for human liberty and dignity. Fortuna situates human politics, but Machiavelli retains hope that her whims may be fought by the virtuous political man with an endpoint of stability.