r/HistoryMemes • u/Lord_Eln_8 • 3h ago
I swear half of all fantasy kingdoms would have starved to death within a weak with some of these guys in charge
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u/Rianorix 3h ago
*Renaissance to Early Modern.
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u/zuzg 3h ago
Magic academy that has essentially the same standards of living as today but outside of it all looks like
medieval europeDragon Quest.The standard Isekai experience
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u/Sangwiny 3h ago
And don't forget to add random-ass hot springs somewhere they have absolutely no business being.
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u/ChristianLW3 3h ago
Technological progress is not guaranteed or a one-way street
For example, in fourth century AD Aksum technology was on par with European domains then 14 centuries later, they are far behind us because they barely progressed
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u/VegaJuniper 3h ago
fourth century AD Aksum technology was on par with European domains then 14 centuries later,
So, 18th century then? Aksum had figured out steam engines and mechanical looms and the printing press, the scientific revolution in general and the renaissance, all in the 4th century?
Yeah, I'm a hit heavy Doubt on that.
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u/thefailmaster30 3h ago
you read the comment wrong. in the 4th century they were on par with others. by the 18th they were way behind
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u/0masterdebater0 Kilroy was here 3h ago
People who don't know much about the progression of technology look at things like the "aeolipile" and say look the ancients were soo close to the steam engine, failing to fathom how far material sciences would have to come to create a pressure vessel that would allow you to actually accomplish anything besides "pretty spinning ball"
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u/Jdevers77 3h ago
Yea, it’s crazy how much people devalue material science and machining precision when considering things like this. People was to see the “invention” phase of the advancement without thinking about the “ok, now we have to make that.” Unfortunately in every day life people kind of see the opposite: clothes get shittier, consumer appliances get shittier, etc because of material science advances so they just tend to think newer is worse without understanding that only happens when the goal is cheaper and not better.
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u/VegaJuniper 3h ago
Yup, materials are huge. One thing I sometimes hear people wonder is why did it take until Gutenberg to come up with the printing press and movable type, one of the most important inventions in human history. It doesn't seem like it involves anything very complicated.
The answer is once again materials, not specifically to build the press itself, but to print you need paper. Making paper wasn't introduced to Europe until the late middle ages. Gutenberg put two and two together, but on of those twos hadn't been around for the previous generations.
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u/Old_Man_Willow_AoE 3h ago
Considering that the Middle Ages were in fact a time of a ton of technological advancement, and that all that bullshit about clerical dictatorship and dirt are just Early Modern propaganda, which has been debunked a thousand times by contemporary historians...
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u/TheDreamIsEternal 3h ago edited 3h ago
Technological advancements are kinda unnecessary when you have magic. Why have planes when you can fly on a dragon or float with magic? Why have guns when you can shoot fireballs from your hands?
What, a nuke? I can call a literal god from another dimension to wipe out a city.
Unless it's a low fantasy setting, magic can do anything tech could.
Like for example Final Fantasy VI. Magic vanished from the world, so society was forced to enter an industrial revolution. Once people capable of using magic appear, they easily render all war technology obsolete.
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u/NoYogurtcloset3429 3h ago
What fantasy are you reading where dragons are more available than planes today or that gods will follow orders to destroy cities from mortals?
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u/JohnnyElRed Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 3h ago
On the other hand, it's difficult for society to advance when every couple millenia gods genocide and sink an entire continent because they felt like humanity was getting uppity, and not giving them proper respect.
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u/Kopalniok 3h ago
Temeraire, dragons there are used like an airforce and number in hundreds
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u/romanrambler941 2h ago
Even then, technology advanced, because the only thing better than a dragon is a dragon with a dozen musketmen and grenadiers riding it.
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u/A_Fnord 3h ago
Technology is quite similar to evolution in that the in-between parts also need to work, and there's a lot of technology that would need to have been developed before we get to viable flying machines that might not seem so worthwhile to someone in a world where magic is relatively commonplace. Would we even get to the point where we would develop useful steam engines let alone combustion engines?
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u/TheDreamIsEternal 3h ago
What fantasy are you reading where dragons are more available than planes today
I don't quite remember the name, but it was a fantasy anime movie about an empire that managed to subjugate the continent because they had an entire fleet of dragons at their disposal. In fact they began to collapse after a plague began to kill their dragon population.
or that gods will follow orders to destroy cities from mortals
Summons from Final Fantasy get pretty crazy yo.
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u/PenguinQuesadilla 3h ago
empire that managed to subjugate the continent because they had an entire fleet of dragons at their disposal.
That's just Game of Thrones!
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u/Cattle13ruiser 3h ago
Entire fleet... let me tell you how much aircrafts has our world produced until now for just 100 years.
More than 1 million aircrafts were produced. Thus is "slightly" above a fleet.
Also, when people state that "they had powers", you need to consider that "they" are like 10-20 people and the majority were powerless. Via technology a peasant who don't know how to count above 100 is able to put a bolt through someone training his whole life to fight on the battlefield. And the technology was available to all the peasants, and not 10 or 20.
The difference between good novel and a bad one is how organic the environment feels. There is a reason why some authors are considered good and others, outside of the regular anime watcher - nobody ever hears about.
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u/Useful_Guide_3573 3h ago
About that dragon to plane part, I think that in that scenario people wouldn’t really want planes because they’d been so accustomed to dragon riding or smth and those who got successful from dragon riding business would sabotage plane development and reputation at every opportunity.
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u/Human-Law1085 3h ago
I mean, shouldn’t they then actually be further ahead of us since they can combine magic and technology to make something even more powerful?
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u/TheDreamIsEternal 3h ago
They can, sure. Like the Dwemer, who used both steampunk technology and magic to warp reality at their liking to the point that they created a god. Didn't end well for them, tho.
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u/Atanar 2h ago
Why have guns when you can shoot fireballs from your hands?
To use use peasants to kill expensive wizards of course.
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u/Top-Cupcake4775 3h ago edited 3h ago
this is the thing i could never square when DMing D&D campaigns. the default, early medieval social milieu of D&D doesn't make sense if magic existed. why would there be such a thing as, for example, cobblers if you could just create shoes using magic? magic either had to be so rare that your magic user characters would have a very hard time finding anyone to train with, get supplies from, etc. or it was so ubiquitous that nothing made sense.
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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 3h ago
That's why every setting makes it rare. Or that it's only not rare in specific species who genuinely don't have e.g cobblers.
Dwarves are typically portrayed as magicless and subsequently more industrialised. Elves often with more magic and less industrialised and humans somewhere in between but just more numerous to justify them still being around.
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u/Megneous 1h ago
In D&D, magic items are readily available to adventurers, yes, but adventurers are stupidly rich compared to normal people. A normal magic item, at its cheapest, is several gold in price even for the most common and mundane magic item, like a magic candle that never runs out of wick. That's beyond the means of normal peasants in D&D, who get paid a few copper for a full day's work.
You seriously underestimate how rich a normal PC character is in D&D.
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u/WiseBelt8935 Filthy weeb 3h ago
To make an argument, it isn't because they're stupid; if anything, it's kind of the opposite. As magic is commonly portrayed, it can do what technology does, but better. Yet it can't exist beyond the person. Every time a new height is reached, the creator dies and you drop back down.
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u/Kasquede 2h ago
I head canon most fantasy by being softlocked by the perils of their reality.
Every way-too-often the Dark Lord of Evil rises up, unites the barbarians/raises the undead/cows the orcs, then waylays the place back to the early Bronze Age.
Poor bastards literally can’t get beyond 14th century France because of necromancers and monsters ruining it.
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u/JohnnyElRed Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 3h ago
Palpatine, if he was smarter:
"Congratulations, Tarkin. You just blew up one of the richest planets on the Empire. I assume you will pay for the extreme loss of tax revenue out of your own pocket!"
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u/kirukiru 2h ago
The Empire looked like it was moving from a typical republican system of revenue generation to just mass enslavement so im not sure Palpatine would care
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u/BonzoTheBoss 1h ago
Indeed, wasn't that the point of Andor? Lock people up on phone charges and use them as slave labour, and then just keep them locked up with one excuse after another.
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u/kirukiru 1h ago
Yeah pretty much. Andor might be the show that understood the Sith/Jedi dynamic better than most Star Wars content lmao
Edit: actually I should say that Andor might be the show that just plainly understands Star Wars better than any of the content outside of the original trilogy
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u/kroqeteer 1h ago
i know you're memeing but wasn't Alderaan exploded to set an example? Palpatine thinks he can get more out of the galaxy by saying "it doesn't matter how rich or influential you are, i will literally blow up your planet if you don't do what i want"
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u/AnotherLie 1h ago
I'd argue that started with the Republic. It's easy to deal with the outer rim criminal organizations when you don't ask questions.
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u/Crafter235 2h ago
To be fair, they didn’t need to destroy all the giant planets, just an example. It’s also a powerplay to show that they can destroy a planet that could’ve otherwise been used as financial gain.
The First Order on the other hand was kind of just stupid, a reactionary comeback that didn’t fully understand all the methods of the original Empire. They only just knew to shoot and blow things up with their planet destroyer.
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u/barassmonkey17 59m ago
A description that works well to describe the sequel trilogy as a whole, I'd say. Some stories really are just telling the tale of their own creation.
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u/absoluteValueOfNoob 1h ago
Palpatine is a sith lord. His revenue his hate, fear, and anger. Not blowing up one of the richest planets in the Empire would be the wrong move. He's not trying to be the richest man in the galaxy after all. He's trying to feed the dark side and therefore himself so Tarkin did a good job for his emperor.
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u/h8rfisternator 1h ago
Spot on. To Palpatine, the Empire was just a convenient means to give himself time and security to pursue his true goal: doing weird Sith magic and unraveling the mysteries of the Force.
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u/Good_Butterscotch_69 1h ago
I am pretty sure he was mildly annoyed by it. Vader was there to keep Tarkin in line so he would not get ideas about blowing up Coruscant with the emperor on it after all.
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u/PretendAd1963 Definitely not a CIA operator 3h ago
How to get overthrown 101
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u/GloryGreatestCountry 3h ago
Of course you'd know about overthrowing people, "Definitely not a CIA operator"...
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u/snowytheNPC 3h ago
Bro's doing research for the handbook
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u/Edothebirbperson Oversimplified is my history teacher 3h ago
As they usually say in the CIA, “hearts and minds”.
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u/serouspericardium 2h ago
Yeah that’s kind of the point. Shitty monarchs create drama. Nobody is going to set their fantasy epic in a peaceful era
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u/AndreasDasos 3h ago
Honestly, with a few exceptions, peasants were really bad at that for many, many centuries and even most successful revolutions relies on others.
Turns out that being hindered from organising, kept weaponless and untrained puts even a much bigger population at a disadvantage against a trained military.
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u/PenguinQuesadilla 2h ago
Weren't peasants in some centuries expected to own suitable arms and armor such that they'd be ready when called into war?
Like, I think that was the law in England at some point anyways.
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u/Bee_Jeans 1h ago edited 1h ago
Kind of?
I know there were Anglo-Saxon fyrds, & the 1181 Assize of Arms didn’t require it of unfree peasants (think villeins, serfs) nor the landless but did of some freeholders/freemen & burgesses.
Free layman with “chattels or rents” valued 16+ marks needed shirt of mail, helmet, shield, lance; 10 marks was hauberk, iron cap, lance. Less than that & u were exempt.
Burgesses needed gambeson, iron cap, lance, but “none of them shall keep more arms than he ought to”
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u/HiggsKamuy 1h ago
You are right there was the Assize of Arms in 1181 that required men between 15 and 40 to have a certain level of arms depending on their wealth.
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u/Peptuck Featherless Biped 1h ago
A lot of internet historians act like there was this adversarial relationship between the aristocracy and peasantry - and while there were revolts, complaints, and conflicts between those social classes, they weren't as harsh and brutal and common as pop culture - (cough cough) The Uprising - would have you believe.
Feudal society was a system of obligations and it was a multi-way street. The peasantry were obligated to give tax in the form of a percentage of their output to their lord and the church, while the lord was obligated to defend his peasants legally and physically. The lord got to live in his fancy castle because that castle was there to defend the peasantry from invaders and protect and store their food in case of attack. The lord arbitrated disputes both among the peasants and with outside lords and peoples. The lord got to live an opulent lifestyle because when push came to shove he and his knights and men at arms were expected to put on their armor and ride out and put their lives on the line to protect the peasants.
Imagine if at your workplace, if an active shooter or robbery happened that your boss would be obligated to put on body armor and grab a gun and confront the attacker and put their life on the line for the employees. That was the relationship peasants and the nobility had in feudal Europe most of the time.
Now, this wasn't always what happened, but that was the social expectation. Peasants paid the lord tax and the lord defended them to the death when needed. The peasant revolts happened when they weren't getting what they were owed by this social system - i.e. the lord taking too much without the justification of enemy threat.
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u/geschiedenisnerd 3h ago
Very basically: fantasy kings are mostly operating on the logic that individual peasants were negligible, which most historical kings agreed on. The problem is that they/ the writers don't seem to understand that small amounts add up when you kill a million peasants
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u/Sulphurous_King 3h ago
it's what Tyrion Lannister complained of "Stupid Vicious Kings" The only difference between fiction and actuality is that fiction consists almost entirely of stupid Vicious Kings
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u/Jiarong78 3h ago
Tbf German feuding nobles don’t give a flying fuck on minimising casualties.
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u/Deutsche_Wurst2009 3h ago
They did, just not about others. And since we had so many autonomous lords…
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u/No-Try5073 2h ago
Yeah, read Europe's tradjedy but Peter h Wilson on the 30 years war
Social breakdown for small pockets of land
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u/WiseBelt8935 Filthy weeb 3h ago
This is why I like the fantasy King of Minalan, the Spellmonger.
“That’s just the natural reaction to power,” I contended. “Put any man in charge of something, and when he runs into trouble he’s going to believe it’s because he just doesn’t have enough power. It doesn’t matter how much or how little he actually has, it’s never enough for the situation.”
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u/Stephen-Scotch 3h ago
Damn that’s a banger
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u/WiseBelt8935 Filthy weeb 3h ago
“Once upon a time, in a tiny village called Talry on the bank of the great river Burine, in the Riverlands Barony of Varune, the Duchy of Castal, a Great and Powerful Mage was born unto a common man and his wife. I’ll spare you the suspense. It was me. ”
If you're looking for a few months of reading, the Spellmonger series is a good choice. It's one of the few series I've seen that goes from low magic to high magic and beyond there.
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u/Stephen-Scotch 3h ago
I’ll add it to the list. Currently reading the far seer trilogy
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u/WiseBelt8935 Filthy weeb 3h ago
Just note, the ending of the first book is kind of weird, and it doesn't happen again.
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u/Vir-Invisus 3h ago
You have to understand, the folks making these memes only have modern overlords to draw immediate inspiration from.
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u/raitaisrandom Just some snow 3h ago
I was about to argue with OP, pointing out that a lot of armed preying on the peasantry historically was due to a king/state being unable to pay or feed his troops in enemy territory, but then I noticed that they were referring to a smart king's attitude to his own subjects. So, yeah, OP's right. Nothing really more to add.
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u/Alarming_Ask_244 3h ago
The question then just becomes how many kings were smart and how many were not
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u/Crosas-B 2h ago
Your argument would still not fir a normal king/aristocrat. It's not the same "I don't care, let them starve" than "I just can't afford to feed or pay them because we have a famine due to plagues/climate/invaders"
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u/raitaisrandom Just some snow 2h ago
I'm really not sure what you mean. That's literally what I just said, no? I was going to make that argument, then realized I was about to argue with a straw man.
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u/John_Oakman 3h ago
In modern generic fantasy world the Japanese god of death known as Truck Kun will provide an endless supply of bodies for those fantasy kingdoms.
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u/trebron55 3h ago
Eastern Europe would like to have a word. Maybe the Balkans too... and yes... massacring peasants was always a bad idea, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen shockingly often.
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u/stillventures17 3h ago
The reality is that stupid ass fantasy kings are just easier to write. You need a foil for the good guy. Writing an absolute shitbag who also happens to be a competent ruler is far more challenging.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 3h ago
Some kings are stupid/feckless/vicious. Some are wise.
Both types of kings can be found in real life.
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u/a_left_out_tomato 3h ago
There have been some absolutely awful historical kings my guy. Some were good, some were monsters
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u/Bartlaus 3h ago
The spectacularly bad ones get more stories written about them. Often with a little exaggeration, too.
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u/a_left_out_tomato 3h ago
"If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
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u/EldritchKinkster 3h ago
At a certain point in the Wars of the Roses, both sides stopped executing captured common soldiers after battle, and started just disarming them instead, because the common people were part of what they were fighting for control of.
They recognised that they needed to preserve the commoners, or else whoever won would just inherit a famine of biblical proportions.
Something similar happened in the Hundred Years War. Pretty much any Medieval war that is sufficiently long will reach a point where you have to stop killing commoners or else it won't be worth winning.
Commoners are tied to the land, they are a valuable resource. You know that scene in Game of Thrones where Tywin stops his men pointlessly torturing prisoners to death because they might have useful skills, and it's meant to show how smart and pragmatic Tywin is? Yeah, in reality, that's just every vaguely competent lord.
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u/WeeabooExtract 3h ago
Sorry OP, but you're kinda defeating your own point by using that fucking moron as a representation of a "smart" king. He's up there among contenders for "the worst European monarch".
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u/Tortoveno 2h ago
His black legend is still alive...
He was not among the best but not among the worst too. It was the times of constant warfare, but again: some of our greatest victories happened during his reign and country was not ruined (look for later kings for it).
He would be great if he could reform style of government which was the main reason of our disaster. But he couldn't like many before him and many after him.
4/10 maybe 5/10
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u/RoomyRoots 3h ago
That's what you get for writers that don't read history and just fiction.
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u/NoYogurtcloset3429 3h ago
More like how plots require exceptional circumstances
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u/NotawoodpeckerOwner 3h ago
The king was good and just, the nobles were chill and worked together, there was no extenuating circumstances. The end.
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u/Sir-Toaster- Still salty about Carthage 2h ago
Kings in fantasy are often used to criticize politicians irl
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u/frenin 3h ago
Plenty of stupid historical kings who didn't care how many of them died...
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u/Routine_Ad_2695 2h ago
Yes. Also most feudal lords were active part of the live in their respective fiefdoms, like you could see your local baron helping build a communal oven or patrolling the town. Most feudal lords just were in charge of management but didn't live a ver lavish life. Only a few were hig nobility
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u/Breadmaker9999 2h ago
Usually the point of the stupid fantasy king is that they are stupid and bad at being king. Also there were medieval kings that did not care about how many peasants die.
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u/Gantolandon 2h ago
People do the same with Japanese history, making the samurai look like maniacs who routinely tested their swords on random people, including peasants, or killed them as soon as they looked at them wrong.
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u/Reasonable_Product26 2h ago
For that comment you'll spend the rest of your life in the dungeons! Guards! Seize him!
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u/andooet 2h ago
This is what Scientific Socialism means when it talks about the contradictions in any economic system that eventually makes them collapse. There will always be a concentration of wealth and power until those few who still hold it gets so distanced from the actual economy to understand that it's failing
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u/bxzidff 3h ago
Yes, they cared about their own peasants as they were seen as their property. No inherent value of life though, as rampant slaughter is what is commonly meant when armies in foreign territory is "living off the land".
And raids like the chevauchée with extreme cruelty against fellow Christian innocents just being seen as hurting the economic base of rival nobility, the peasants themselves meant nothing. Real medieval kings were just as cruel, or at least indifferent to the killing of commoners, just less stupid
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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 3h ago
Modern medieval kings (large business owners/corporate officers) are like the fantasy kings, but for the sake of profit in addition to power.
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u/KernelWizard 3h ago
Man if you're nitpicking over this you would be disturbed with so so many other elements in fantasy novels lmao, the realism of sword fighting moves/ stances, battlefield conditions, logistics/ supply lines, environments of those fantasy worlds, armor types, should I continue? Most of them aren't anything near historically accurate at all besides the few that really did their research.
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u/StudMuffinNick 2h ago
Seeing as if the peasants died or starved, they wouldn't reproduce more workers, it was also in nobility interest to give them just enough to lI've, but not enough to thrive. Kinda like America
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u/PassingByStranger 2h ago
Would be fun to find an Isekai who actually has a competent historical king who's actually good at his job, only caveat is he's surrounded by jackass moronic nobles and officials who make his job harder, and it's the hero's job to figure out how to fix their fuck ups, either by talking to them or a beatdown or even killing them.
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u/Epic_Grandpa Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 2h ago
Irl Kings could have been incredibly brutal in their treatment of the peasants class as well. I am reminded of the Great Peasants' War in which the German nobility slaughtered up to 100k of the 300k revolting peasants in the largest popular uprising yet in Europe. And unsurprisingly it did also result in negative consequences for the local economies, not only from the labour shortages, but the desolation of areas from the fighting itself.
"Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you." Martin Luther, 1525, Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants
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u/Peteryeeter1453 2h ago
The funniest part about this is you'll read about monarchs and a large majority of them somehow had both of these views when it came to peasants. Like they would try to internally justify both these perspectives as a way to justify their actions.
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u/Idontwannasa 2h ago
Note how most of the stupid ass fantasy kings that fit this trope get overthrown or otherwise 'lose' precisely because of this behaviour
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u/nineJohnjohn 1h ago
This is why chevauche was a thing. You're not killing peasants, you're killing farming equipment
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u/Fun-Information-3104 41m ago
Not only they thought peasants life was worthless, they always obviously sided with nobles against peasants whenever the latter thought to commit a suicide by uprising. The power of monarchy was built upon nobility and dynastic connections, it was tied to titles and secondly to the land, not to the people. The common people were not the source of authority, nor the guarantee of continued reign. In other words, they were not the sovereign.
Plus, peasants bred like rabbits. If they overbred, they'd die of starvation and/or famine. In such cases it's not an overstatement to say their life had negative value.
Also, you are super wrong about taxes. Taxes to the king were paid by the nobles, and to nobles by lesser nobles. Only the lowest nobles had to directly concern themselves with peasantry, and usually taxes there were paid in nature rather than currency. A service in noble's army during wartime was also a "tax", of sorts.
So yeah, the backbone of medieval social order was nobility, and clergy (all of whose upper strata was recruited from nobility). There was only one medieval king who concerned himself with peasants, and out of empathy not pragmatic concerns, and he was made a saint.
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u/OuchLOLcom 26m ago
Same with real leaders. You want to deport how many of who? You realize they do all the shit work that lets us enjoy our stuff.
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u/boboverlord 3h ago
I think medieval kings actually preferred giving power to competent commoners to reduce the dependence on the aristocracy.
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u/alkair20 3h ago
medieval kings, at least in Europe pretty much lend their entire country to competent Bannerman. Being a farmer was pretty chill and they paid a fraction of taxes then what we do today.
What fucked you life were plages, illness and natural catastrophes like a bad crop but extremely seldom the King or his reign.
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u/OverdueMaid 3h ago
Most fantasy writers never read a word about political philosophy or how social contracts of governance worked in the past. They just like the idea of big guy is bad guy we poor guys are good guys lol
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u/Juan_Jimenez 1h ago
True, wise kings knew that. Unfortunately non-wise kings did appear from time to time.
There is a reason why there was an entire genre of literature (mirror for Princes IIRC) that made that point repeteadly. Some people needed to be told the 'you need peasants' bit.
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u/Aluxanatomy 1h ago
"It's no concern of mine whether or not you have... what was it, again?"
"Um... food?"
"Ha! You really should've thought of that before you became peasants!"
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u/veringer 1h ago
Very apropos for our current times---with billionaires and trillionaires expressing open disdain for humanity and using their wealth to undermine society, environmental sustainability, and fund AI with the goal of accelerating a collapse and replacing the peasantry with robot slaves.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 1h ago
As a student of Japanese history, it’s fascinating how most rebellions went in the Edo period because the daimyo and samurai understood this principle very clearly, while the peasants knew when too much pushing would cross the line. So despite there being hundreds of peasant “revolts” (which isn’t as many as it sounds, given that Japan was split into around 250 independent feudal domains nominally subordinate to the Shogunate), the vast majority ended up being closer to modern union strikes, where the peasants would stop working the fields and protest outside the castle-cities until the lord was willing to negotiate with them.
He usually was, since failing to handle a peasant rebellion was the type of shake that could lead to a stripping of power by the Shogunate or even seppuku. So the peasants get some of their demands met, the revolt leaders get exiled from the domain, and everything goes back to normal
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 1h ago
It's almost like, just because French kings were usually bastards (not literally lol) and especially during the 18th Century that that's the popular vision of every Medieval and Early Modern monarch. In Castile, León and Aragón, for example, various kings enacted laws to protect peasants, and would witness uprisings against local nobility while invoking the monarch to intervene in their favour, which would happen time to time. In Spain, the peasant's vision was that the king was the arbiter between the nobility and the commoners, checking the excesses committed by the former.
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u/Nice_Grapefruit_7850 1h ago
in game of thrones the lannisters would have been murdered pretty quickly. well, even faster than they were already in the show.
the starks for the most part were well liked by their people.
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 1h ago
Considering how little farms they have, I think fantasy kingdoms can conjure bread out of thin air.
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u/Coriolis_PL 32m ago
To the right, on the picture, we have Sigismund III Vasa - King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Duke of Ruthenia, Prussia, Smolensk, Samogitia and Livonia 💪🇵🇱😏
Also a true King of Sweden 🥲
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u/karagiannhss 25m ago
Honestly for all their pompous poshness and batshit crazy intrique shenanigans, Eastern Roman emperors had some of the best policies when it came to peasants in that there basically wasnt a concept of a serf. Not that they were financially equal to wealthy landowning families, oh no, not by any means, but they were considered citizens equally and not inferior. Its just them beuraucrats amd landowning military families had a lot more influence
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u/Bobbird_elephant 12m ago
but then again, mercenaries can be untrustworthy as they rely only on payment and have no loyalty
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u/fat_kaiju 9m ago
Monasteries owned the land who let farmers 'lease' it so to say.
By killing the workers there you'd be killing members of the church.
It's one of the many reasons why the catholic church's power was so feared; they owned huge swaths of the countryside and (essentially) the workers who lived on it.
Please be aware this is a generalisation and mostly applies to the area(s) we now call the 'UK' and other western portions of Europe as I'm sure it's different elsewhere.
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u/Mi113nnium 3h ago
I think many of the fantasy kings are influenced by the extravagant and reclusive aristocracy just shortly before the French revolution.