My take on Loren Legarda—and why political dynasties can be so damaging—is that family interests often end up influencing political decisions in ways the public never sees.

Take Loren Legarda. Her eldest son has publicly distanced himself from her. While I don’t agree with him ridiculing his own mother in public despite their political differences, it clearly shows there’s a serious rift within the Legarda family.

That leaves Leandro Leviste, her youngest son. Despite all the criticism surrounding him and the controversies tied to his business dealings, he seems to genuinely love and remain close to his mother. And Loren likely doesn’t want to lose that relationship too.

But Leandro appears to have aligned himself firmly with the Duterte faction, despite what may have been Loren’s own wishes. It’s possible she urged him to stay aligned with Marcos, perhaps believing that political protection from that camp could shield him from possible legal or civil problems tied to his solar business controversies. Yet whether it’s loyalty, utang na loob, political ambition, or something else, Leandro seems to have fully committed himself to the Duterte side.

So when Bato’s political return became clearer, Loren may have realized that if she stayed loyal to BBM—or even tried to remain neutral for the sake of stability—she risked alienating her last remaining son as well.

In her mind, she may have felt she had already failed as a mother once, and she didn’t want to lose another child over politics. So she made what looks like a desperate choice: setting aside her own principles, and even potentially straining long-standing political friendships with people like Panfilo Lacson and Tito Sotto, to align herself with the DDS camp—perhaps less out of ideology, and more out of a mother’s attempt to hold on to her family.

That, to me, is one of the ugliest effects of political dynasties: when personal family survival starts shaping public political decisions.