Law shares with characters and metaphors a purely ideal existence, sustained only in human memory and discourse. But unlike characters and metaphors, which openly acknowledge their fictional or figurative nature, law denies its ideal condition and presents itself as an autonomous entity. Through characters such as the “legislator” and metaphors like “sources,” legal norms appear to exist independently of those who draft, interpret, or apply them. This illusion corresponds to reification in the Marxian sense: just as commodities come to be treated as if they possessed intrinsic value, legal norms are imagined as things with inherent meaning. In reality, they depend entirely on the repertoire of jurists, lawyers, and judges, yet positivization requires constant reaffirmation of their supposed autonomy. The same inversion extends to the State, increasingly conceived as an impersonal apparatus rather than the personal patrimony of rulers. Across three historical waves—the consolidation of early kingdoms, the independence of colonies, and the reshaping of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—political power gradually shifted from personalized sovereignty to the reified Nation-State.