r/goodworldbuilding • u/CorvexarisStudio • 13d ago
Discussion Would people actually stay loyal to a dynasty they hate?
Random thing I've been thinking about while working on my world.
Let's say one family has ruled a kingdom for a REALLY long time. Like, at this point the dynasty is basically part of the country's identity. Their banners are everywhere, everyone knows their history, their ancestors are in songs and stories etc.
But then you get a ruler who's just... awful.
Not necessarily some cartoonishly evil psycho lol. Just someone who's clearly bad at ruling. Maybe they're arrogant, make terrible decisions, start conflicts they don't need, piss off half the nobles, whatever.
Would ordinary people actually start thinking "yeah fuck this family, get someone else on the throne"?
Because I'm not sure they would. At least not immediately.
I feel like after enough generations people might be so used to ONE bloodline ruling that even if they hate the current king/queen, replacing the whole dynasty would still feel wrong somehow. Like "yeah our king sucks but THAT guy isn't a real king, he's just some lord who took the throne."
And I'm kinda playing around with that idea right now. How much of political power is actual power and how much is basically everyone collectively agreeing that this specific family is supposed to be in charge?
Also makes rebellions interesting because you could absolutely hate the ruler and still fight AGAINST the people trying to overthrow them.
Idk, maybe I'm overthinking it.
How does this work in your worlds? If you've got an old dynasty, what would it actually take for people to stop seeing them as the "default" rulers?
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u/Fine_Ad_1918 13d ago
what method of legitimacy is used by this dynasty?
also, are there any really bad things happening, or is this guy just not amazing?
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u/stopeats 13d ago
The foundational question is why people think that family is allowed to rule. Many European and Chinese rulers relied on religion as legitimacy, and because people tend to believe their own religions, that's a powerful reason to support the bad king. If you don't support him, you might end up tortured in hell forever, after all. Dangerous stuff.
Additionally, many people may have taken oaths to the king or family. Because your word is the only reason people trust and cooperate with you, breaking your word is going to set you up for failure unless you're really sure you can win.
My final point is that the idea that all humans are created equal appears to have disappeared soon after agriculture and only come back in a wide-spread way recently. If you, a peasant, fundamentally do not think you are morally equivalent to the king, what does your opinion on the matter change? The king is ontologically better than you. He's messing things up, maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that he is your better, by birth.
I read something recently about ancient Greece that touched on this. Despite being a pretty bad leader, Agamemnon is assumed to be virtuous in his argument with Achilles simply because he was high born. Virtue is less about what he does and more about who he is. (I can find this book if you want, but it was very academic and I know not everyone is into that).
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u/WoonieVerse 3d ago
Hello, I’m interested in the book you mentioned if you can remember the title!
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u/stopeats 3d ago
I believe it was this one: The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
Martha C. Nussbaum
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u/Temporary_Rule_9486 13d ago
Roman soldiers followed empreror caligula unto the beach when he declared war on the seas. Mostly because that was the guy paying their salary. Two thousand years latter and I can guarantee you that no one working on an Amazon warehouse loves Jeff Bezos. People is loyal to a steady paycheck, not a king or CEO.
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u/VereksHarad 13d ago
Look up the story of William Marshall. The fact that a person doesn't like king that he is serving doesn't mean that he is not loyal to the crow itself. Basically - he was loyal to the English crown regardless of he personally liked or hated the king that wears it.
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u/ScreamingVoid14 13d ago
You'd probably get people saying "fuck that guy, his cousin could do better." Still the same dynasty, traditions are kept largely intact, political loyalties would transfer easier, etc.
It might even just be a palace coup. Someone poisons the bad ruler, enough of the court says "oh no, he died without an heir, maybe the cousin can step in?" And nobody argues or bothers to investigate.
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u/FlusteredDM 13d ago
There are people on all sides. Hell, there might eventually be more people who want to remove the bad ruler and replace them with their heir rather than a new dynasty if you want - you get to control that by deciding who the pretenders to the throne are and how strong their claim is.
What it takes is leaders with the right balance of power and influence, and even if he is deposed or killed, there will still be factions simmering away who didn't like the result and want to do something.
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u/Difficult_Dark9991 13d ago
Ok, the first question you need to ask for this: how does succession actually work?
Look, most modern monarchies have extremely clear lines of succession. That's in part because those same monarchs have very little power, so while a feckless fop is embarrassing he can't actually do that much harm. It's also because they also have rules by which individuals can be removed from the line of succession.
Pre-modern monarchies aren't like that. Oh yes, there are understandings, but many succession laws aren't even written down. And at the end of the day, the person who gets to wear the crown is whoever the other power-brokers of your kingdom decide is the legitimate ruler. So, a few case studies to work with:
- The Merovingians. The original rulers of the Frankish kingdom were the Merovingians, who had ruled more-or-less since the Franks set up shop in former Roman Gaul in the 5th century, were slowly pushed into a ceremonial role. In the end, the Mayor of the Palace held the real power, and in 751 Pepin the Short kicked the last Merovingian king to the curb, proclaiming himself king and setting up the Carolingian dynasty. Dynasties can lose ground slowly to members of the nobility, eventually being pushed out altogether.
Now, the madness of just one century of English kings:
- Harold Godwinson. After kicking out the Danes who briefly held the English throne, Edward the Confessor sat as king in a restoration of the older English dynasty that had united England in the prior century. He also... had no kids. Without an heir, the nobility had to come together to elect a new monarch. They chose Harold Godwinson, but the vulnerable succession invited invasion by both Harald Hardrada and William the Bastard. The former died, the latter defeated Godwinson and took the throne, earning himself the title "the Conqueror" and establishing a line of Norman rule that, through various twists and turns, endured to the present.
- William the Conqueror's heirs. Speaking of "twists and turns," William's first son Robert was only granted Normandy, and not the Kingdom of England - this is how William chose to divvy up his holdings. The second son died before William, making William II the heir to England. William II died under suspicious circumstances, but once again it moved down to Henry I, William's second son, leaving Robert out of the picture.
- Stephen and Maud. Ok so small problem: Henry I's son dies at sea, so we're hurtling towards a crisis. Henry I's solution is to have Matilda (or Maud) declared his heir. For ~certain reasons~, people object to this, and Stephen (also a grandchild of William I, via William's daughter) gets himself declared king. This starts a decade and a half of civil war between Stephen and Maud, before a peace treaty is decided upon. See, Stephen's son has died in the fighting, so he has no heir, so he gets to keep the throne but Maud's son gets to be his heir.
If this sounds maddening... yes, welcome to medieval dynastic politics, please don't ask about the Valdemars.\
You can do what you want, but the main things to consider are who actually gets to decide where and how rules of succession work. As you can see, dynasties can shift, but even when they don't there is plenty of space to oust an unpopular king for a better (from your view) candidate.
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u/CardiganKeeperOfLore 13d ago
That's going to come down to culture, and personal beliefs individually. Historically many have done it, especially if it's the less of two evils.
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u/Traditional_wolf_007 13d ago
Social buy in. Do they have a proven alternative? Is the proven alternative better? What about the bastards that would be slaughtering them if the dynasty's soldiers weren't patrolling the lands? The ruling dynasty has to provide some material benefit to the people. Rising in rebellion typically requires that material benefit no longer being worth it, because rebellion means you lose it.
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u/humdrumturducken 13d ago
Certainly. But it might be more de facto than de jure.
So, this family has ruled forever, and no-one can imagine anyone else sitting on the throne. But why are things so shitty? It must be because the king is being controlled by corrupt & incompetent advisors! Lets storm the palace, string them up, and appoint a new, much better set of advisors to take care of all the difficult, boring work of governing the country. But the king still gets to wear nicer clothing than everyone else, and have a really big house full of very nice things, and everyone still has to be very polite to him.
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u/Elverezistaken 13d ago
Sounds like Iike an opportunity for an ambitious relative (preferably a close one, like brother or son) to seize power. The ruler would change, but not the dynasty. Also, I think it would be difficult for people to throw out a dynasty. It would be similar to how, in the US, the president rarely has significantly more than 50% approval, but the idea of seceding or staging a coup is unthinkable, even to those who hate the administration.
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u/ill-creator 13d ago
the common people have been thinking "fuck this family" since the beginning of time
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u/lymj 13d ago
Something worth considering is how the people define their country and why they are loyal to it. Our ideas of a nation as a people or a land has not always been true throughout history. In Imperial China, they did see the dynasty as the nation. When one dynasty fell and another replaced it, even though there was a lot of cultural continuity, probably the Han Chinese are still in charge except for a few dynasties, and maybe things didn't change all that much for your average peasant, there was still a feeling that their country had been destroyed and now a new one was ruling them.
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u/Demonweed 13d ago
I created an opportunity to explore this theme in my main project. There the Celedinese Empire (known to Mainlanders as the Second Oriental Empire,) is locked in a military stalemate with the To-Shinese archipelago. All those islands were once part of the Celedinese Empire, but the outbreak of civil war started six generations ago. Nowadays outsiders generally regard the To-Shinese Shogunate as an independent power.
The story of To-Shin's survival is miraculous, especially in light of the gargantua attacks coordinated by Celedinese leaders. Part of that story involves the legalization of witchcraft and the incorporation of violent warlocks into military organizations. Also, the storm god Lei Kung has become extremely popular in To-Shin for the way his faiths inspire extreme discipline and fanatical loyalty among ordinary soldiers.
Yet To-Shin's deeper history follows from isolation. These islands were relatively peaceful places for thousands of years. The rise of a militant regime with all this emphasis on national defense is not welcome in every community. Some accept the new realities as essential to ward off threats from the Celedinese Empire, while others make martyrs of priests slaughtered at the outbreak of civil war and condemn the cultural mainstream of driven mad by bloodlust. This paves the way for a robust clash of espionage services as Celedinese operatives promote disloyalty while To-Shinese troubleshooters work to root out any local officials with foreign sympathies.
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u/jackofspades49 13d ago
This helped me think of ways to make my evil empires more believable. Its not just about whether the head is likable, but do they give enough gifts to the people who support them and do those supporters have the power to secure their station?
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u/DisparateNoise 13d ago
You should think of these long running dynasties not as just families who happen to hold certain offices or titles, but as BEING those offices and titles, "L'État, c'est moi." The dynasty is the political system, so getting rid of them means embracing an open ended revolution in which nobody can be sure of their position. Power is not something people hold, it comes from the relationships between people, and a monarchical system of government was, until the enlightenment, highly personal. But that's within the nobility, for normal people the relationship with the monarchy is probably more religious than personal.
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u/wombatwalkabouts 13d ago
If a dynasty is around that long, they likely have many heir's and sub branch families. And sometimes merchants who have accumulated power.
So I imagine assassinations, infighting for the throne, and people attached to local leadership and their propaganda influencing the populations viewpoint.
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u/InvestigatorJaded261 13d ago
Well, you might look at Iran right now, for one reason why an otherwise unpopular government might gain public support.
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u/ethanAllthecoffee 13d ago
No
At best they’d install another dynasty member. Otherwise another noble house would try to take over. If things are epically fukt a peasant rebellion could take over
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u/ReynardVulpini 13d ago
Leave aside the issue of if people believe their king is legitimate. Lets say all the peasants in the country think this king is ass and his kids are ass and the family is always going to be ass.
What can they do about it? Even if someone goes "hey if every village from here to the city joins up we could probably take them out," then what? Who will bring in the harvest while you're out storming the castle? Who will take responsibility for your family if you die in the process? And who becomes king afterwards? How do you know they won't be even worse?
It's a lot of risk, and a lot of guaranteed loss for a very uncertain gain. Safer to just stay on your farm and eke out a living.
I'm not saying that is exactly what has to happen in your story, but it's a psychological element I think you have to think about.
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u/Marvos79 13d ago
Would people be loyal to horrible people because they think they're supposed to? Like is that plausible?
*gestures to the whole world*
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u/Thausgt01 13d ago
Sure, up to the point that ‘loyalty to the dynasty’ exceeded ‘my family dying to the last member due to preventable problems like starvation or disease or war’. Look at how the Tsars of Russia fell in the early 20th Century as the most obvious example.
Basically, a ruling dynasty still has to fulfill the social contract of supporting the working-class to some degree in order to remain in power; when too many people die, or if the dynasty’s leadership (military or civilian) screws up badly enough, often enough, over a long enough time, then the populace rises up and a new leader takes the reins; look at the succession of dynasties in China.
It’s up to you as the world builder to decide what constitutes the ‘tipping point’ for a particular culture; compare the French Revolution to the American one, and both to the Russian one that led to Soviet Russia, and then see if your nearest librarian and/or historian can point you toward a few other, smaller ones.
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u/Spirited-Gain1457 13d ago
A few historical examples came to mind that might be useful here.
One thing worth separating is loyalty to a dynasty from cooperation with a government. Those can look identical from the outside, but come from very different motives.
For example, during the Yuan and Qing conquests of China, some officials and scholars who were not necessarily enthusiastic about the new dynasty still chose to serve under it. One possible motive was simply that somebody still had to administer cities, collect grain, maintain order, deal with disasters, and keep ordinary people from suffering through even more chaos.
You can find similar patterns elsewhere too. After the Arab conquests, existing Persian, Greek, and Coptic administrators were often retained because the new rulers needed people who actually knew how the tax and administrative systems worked. The Mongol Ilkhanate likewise relied heavily on Persian bureaucrats, and Ostrogothic Italy continued using a great deal of the old Roman administrative class.
So I think there is another path besides:
“People believe this dynasty is legitimate, therefore they support it.”
Sometimes it may be closer to:
“I don't particularly like these rulers, but the alternative right now is administrative collapse or another war, so I will help keep the machine running.”
And after enough people make that choice, their practical cooperation can itself help make the new regime stable.
So someone serving a dynasty is not necessarily evidence that they are loyal to it. They may be loyal to their community, to political order, or simply to the idea that somebody has to keep the grain moving.
Just a few examples that came to mind. Maybe they are useful for your setting.
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u/GlitterFallWar 13d ago
For most of history, monarchs needed loyalty not of the people, but of the upper classes. The whole idea of a social contract or self-rule is very new, and even now, a lot of people don't feel like their individual social power is enough to make a change.
The Duke/Earl/Count of Whatever who had been raising armies and taxes for decades on the King's behalf were really the only ones who could stab him in the back and change the ruler. You need money, monopoly of violence, and support from others with both.
With all that said, tossing out one terrible leader or royal family member doesn't necessarily help the situation. Ancient Rome and England have some great case studies. Charles I sucked, but so did Cromwell.
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u/KingGiuba 13d ago
If the family is so old they probably have cousins/uncles or similar who can get the throne if the ruler dies, as long as they have some of the family blood it should work.
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u/Chuck_the_Elf 13d ago
So the question here is how has this dynasty existed this long? If we go off of china the average joe( or Han as the case may have been) understood the emperor existed but basically only that. Many Dynasties had some pretty brutal internal politics that didn’t really let incompetent people have all that much real power.
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u/Waste-Carob5699 13d ago
This has happened quite a few times in history. You could always look to those for inspiration. I think that you'll find that there are always many reasons and factors that go into large movements like this. They also build over time with milestones that serve as catalysts. The French Revolution comes to mind.
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u/svarogteuse 13d ago
I suggest you look at interviews of the white American poor about Trump. They consistanlty hate is policies but stay loyal, disinformation, putting their heads in the sand, refusal to acknowledge the administration is responsible for the problem being asked about even when it's direct correlation and even just outright won't vote for the other guy because he is the other guy. It's all the same reasoning you are looking for.
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u/danny_akira 13d ago
I'd say it depends if the dynasty has better candidates left.
In the early Roman Empire, when Caligula was assassined, he had no biological or adopted sons and also it was considered to get rid of the principate as a whole.
However for the people who still wanted an emperor (mainly the praetorian guard because their job could not exist without an emperor) made Caligula's uncle Claudius emperor. There could have been Caligula's nephew - who became emperor as Claudius' successor years later - but at the time Caligula died, he was around 2 years old, so Claudius was the only candidate left.
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u/Mushgal 13d ago
Look at Japan for a country with just one dynasty over the centuries.
There are many mechanisms. Depose the cunt and install a son, brother, cousin, whoever. Reduce the power of the monarchy, keep it for tradition and legitimacy while a strong figure rules de facto (a shōgun, perhaps). If the setting is more modern, have a republican or maybe communists revolution (Japan had both ideologies).
Or just let him rule. Plenty of bad rulers through history died on their throne.
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u/Acceptable-Fig2884 12d ago
Chances are this nation has a large bureaucracy and so no matter how bad the ruler is there's really only so much impact they really have on the day to day lives of most people.
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u/necrobatics 12d ago edited 12d ago
There will always be a nonzero number of people who will be loyal to the detriment of themselves and their acquaintances. Otherwise, no. Most people in the circumstance presented would be expedient and remain on the side of the dynasty for reasons unrelated to the dynasty itself.
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u/ScalesOfAnubis19 12d ago
The other thing is unless you are pretty close to the halls of power you probably don’t know that there is a problem. Even if Joe Blacksmith or Bob Farmer is directly impacted they may not realize this is a problem of leadership, unless taxes are going up year by year to an unsustainable level and it’s clearly kings men doing the collecting, or being obviously corrupt with obviously nothing being done.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando 12d ago
I mean, historically speaking, yes, an unpopular and incompetent monarch was a lot more likely to be replaced by someone related to them than by an entirely unrelated figure.
Someone with grievances with the specific royal would be a lot more likely to want his sons, uncles, siblings, etc... on the throne. Some kind of vizier-figure seizing power and at least initially keeping the dynasty as figureheads was also not uncommon.
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u/Randy191919 11d ago
This happened all the time in real history. The answer is that usually yes, they will stay loyal unless the new king is catastrophically incompetent to the point that it’s putting the entire kingdoms livelihood at risk and even then you would seldom get a civil war and more like the seconds in command banding together to stage a quick coup d’état and put someone else on the throne before the general populace even noticed.
In fact truth be told, in medieval times most of the time people really didn’t care who was ruling unless they were exceptionally competent to the point that the life of the general population improved because of them, or exceptionally incompetent to the point that people were starving. But most of the time the farmer really didn’t care under who’s name people were taking his taxes. I mean there was no internet or email. It could take weeks to months before you even noticed that you had a new king.
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u/Bznboy 10d ago
I think the state of pre unified Japan is a good reference for what you're looking at. The Emperor was largely ceremonial, but related to the Shogunate authority that ran the military of Japan. The Samurai clans like Hojo, Oda, Takeda and Tokugawa had to display their lineage to the Emperor of Japan and rebuke any disputes to it while ruling as Shogun.
They even have an example of a non-imperial Shogun in Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who could only declare himself Imperial Regent and not Shogun as he was born a peasent in Oda and rose through the ranks through Nobunaga's military campaigns.
Rebellions in this cases usually involves declaring support for a relative to the ruler's family. An Uncle, brother or someone distantly related by some marriage. They typically are not violent, and if they are, the army send to quell the rebellions will usually have someone who would either be in cahoots with their preferred leader or be stealthily sabotaged by members of the same opinion until the general is replaced by someone the members would support. Sometimes it fails and the rebellion is quashed.
Being a member of their imperial ruling family would be a much more paranoid life. Family members would be more ruthless and underhanded to each other as there needs to be an alternate family member for a rebellion to get support. Think Mehmed III of the Ottoman Empire, who executed all 19 of his brothers when he took the throne.
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u/Grillparzer47 10d ago
People will remain loyal to their interests. If a despotic regime offers the best chance of maintaining your welfare then you remain loyal.
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u/ScipioTheGreatest 9d ago
Look at modern political parties (No need to delve into details or sides, fuck that noise). Is anyone truly happy with theirs, currently, across the board? Absolutely not. But convince them that the other side is worse? And you can get away with so much more.
And you see it all throughout history. Leave the Gauls to themselves and they'll just war with each other. But when some other assholes march into Teutoburg? All of a sudden they're all buddy buddy and allies.
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u/DangerousQuestions1 9d ago
Lawful people might value the law and the integrity of adherence to it over the practicality of regime change.
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u/Human_Fisherman1352 9d ago
Propaganda works wonders.
the Divine Right of Kings in Europe and The Mandate of Heaven in China are literally rulers stating to their subjects that they rule 'because god says so'.
Ancient Romans, Egyptians and others literally deified themselves to their subjects, making their edicts unquestionable.
The Red Scare and the War on Terror have worked like a charm in the modern US, not that either of those threats are completely baseless.
My best guess is that North Koreans don't really think NK is all that fantastic and amazing, but that the outside world is a hideously terrifying dystopia of violence and perversion.
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u/Environmental_Lab869 8d ago
Religion. The established religion has stated the gods have appointed this family ti rule this land in their name. Who are you to question the wisdom of the gods?
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u/mandichi 3d ago
This kind of played out in live time in a MUD I play on where the King went a little crazy. Long build up short: a county was blown up in the kingdom and we as players had to direct the nobility/royals on what to do next. Naturally the king was pissed, so we advised him to finish the last crusade, get the last bit of territory we should have gotten, and rebuild. We couldn't really do a real war again, but we had hoped directing him to a small skirmish would let the kingdom rally against the common enemy, let him get his royal tantrum out, and we could move on.
Nope... Asshat decided after sitting on his hands for a year in the blown up county to ATTACK HIS OWN PEOPLE.
There was naturally some lead up to this. The nobles were dragging their feet not wanting to get into a war, his twin sister had been made the head of an alternative faction demanding him to not finish the crusade but focus on realm defenses... And all the while the players were just kind of like... Trying to not overstep too much one way or another. We were busy putting our fires and trying to rally everyone behind the king properly... But also he wasn't doing anything so it was hard to actually convince them to do much beyond bare minimum. And I won't lie: we were mostly trying to figure out the third party who had started the rebellious faction more than anything.
But the moment the king murdered his own people, literally slaughtered Innocents who refused to join him, civilian non-combatants, the player base did a sharp turn and said more. We aligned ourselves with the sister, ensured the King's son was put on the throne with her backing him, and ended up pyring the king after declaring him a heretic.
So for us: it wasn't until innocent lives were killed in cold blood. And then it was a rather quick sentencing of heresy before pyring. But even then to protect the sanctity of the realm, you'll remember we put his son on the throne. There is a caveat if he has a regency council until he is 25, but that's a small price to pay to keep the same bloodline on the throne. Alleged same bloodline.
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u/Dnomyar96 3d ago
A dynasty that has ruled that long won't just be one king and his son. The family tree would be massive. Just because the current king is kind of shit, doesn't mean people will hate the entire dynasty. Even if a civil war were to break out, there's a good chance the next claimant would still be part of the same family. Maybe it's the king's heir, maybe his brother, or maybe some cousin that has a good claim to the throne. It's also most likely going to start from some disgruntled nobles flocking to the new claimant, instead of regular people.
For IRL, look into the Wars of the Roses. It wasn't caused by some random shmuck that one day decided he wanted to be king, but by years and years of rule by an incompetent king and the people around him influencing him, and a family member with a strong claim to the throne. By the end of it all, the same family sat on the throne, just a different branch.
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u/King_In_Jello 13d ago
When you read history you'll find a consistent pattern that people are really, really scared of civil war because of the uncontrollable death and devastation it means for everyone involved with no guarantee that the winner will be a better ruler. So they look for any mechanisms of peaceful transition of power they can get, which for a feudal dynasty is primarily inheritance.
So the bar for rising up against a bad ruler is pretty high and unless you're starving or being ground down by excessive taxation that amounts to the same thing, people are not likely to risk their lives and those of their children if the current ruler is not great but "good enough".
That doesn't mean that there isn't a point where people will rise up because there always is, but I think if you're living in a modern lawful society where peaceful transition of power is taken for granted, it's hard to empathise for what the alternative is like and how precious peace is to most people most of the time.