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Royals Who Actually Do Something: Difference between revisions
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Due to the [[Ermine Cape Effect]], [[Everything's Better with Princesses]], and other such tropes, there is a belief that being royalty means doing almost nothing else but, well, being royalty. Aside from all the pomp, ceremony, galas, [[Dances and Balls|balls]], [[Deadly Decadent Court|intrigue]], and the occasional dealing with actual government of the country, royalty just doesn't do anything else with their time.
This has some [[Truth in Television]], such as the court at Versailles or the Forbidden City in China, (it's also partly true in the case of the current English royal family - though to be fair, most of the senior royals are now at an age where normal people have retired, and [[Royals Who Actually Do Something|many of the junior royals hold actual jobs]]) but not uniformly so. Just as often as not, royalty would actually do something worthwhile with their time. For centuries from prehistoric Mesopotamia through to the Middle Ages, kings were expected to be strong warriors to defend their holdings and inspire the men around them; in fact, "strong man who can lead the other men of the village in fighting off enemies" was probably the original meaning of kingship. Three examples are Alexander The Great, Charlemagne and Genghis Khan, kings who gained and kept their power through their skills as generals and warriors and, in the case of the latter two, administrators.<ref>Sadly, there are many royalty who conspired against their people in their free time. This in turn gave them greater power, so an incentive to carry that out, as well. Many of the nouveau riche, for instance, were generals and warriors who started wearing crowns and intermarrying, while taking out their competition.</ref>
This convention also led to the establishment of the feudal system. It was actually a deal between the king, nobles, and serfs (though for the serfs it was usually [[An Offer You Can't Refuse|an offer they couldn't refuse]]). The serfs would work on the land owned by their lords, and the lords would train to be warriors (aka, knights), who would defend the kingdom against invaders, like [[Badass|the Vikings]].<ref>It was after the protection part was dropped by the lords that serfdom became no different than slavery. [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized|And we know how well that turned out.]]</ref>
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