In 1834, when Prince Alexandru II Ghica came to the throne, Heliade became one of his close collaborators, styling himself "court poet". Several of the poems and discourses he authored during the period are written as panegyrics, and dedicated to Ghica, whom Heliade depicted as an ideal prototype of a monarch. As young reformists came into conflict with the prince, he kept his neutrality, arguing that all sides involved represented a privileged minority, and that the disturbances were equivalent to "the quarrel of wolves and the noise made by those in higher positions over the torn-apart animal that is the peasant". He was notably critical of the radical Mitică Filipescu, whom he satirized in the poem "Căderea dracilor" ("The Demons' Fall"), and later defined his own position with the words "I hate tyrants. I fear anarchy".