[HN Gopher] The daily life of a medieval king
___________________________________________________________________
The daily life of a medieval king
Author : diodorus
Score : 264 points
Date : 2025-07-17 20:54 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.medievalists.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.medievalists.net)
| dontTREATonme wrote:
| I always question how accurate these types of accounts were. Even
| if she wrote this after his death, his successor obviously
| wouldn't look too kindly on it being disparaging.
| ralfd wrote:
| Btw: The successor was "Charles the Mad" who is known for
| mental illness and psychotic/schizophrenic episodes and had to
| be placed under regency. So maybe she also wanted to give an
| example how a sane King normally ruled.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_VI_of_France
| pjc50 wrote:
| It reads a lot like those instagram/magazine profiles of "I get
| up at 7am and eat healthily" (author actually gets up at 9am
| and eats junk food on most other days).
|
| Worth noting that this is a relatively immobile king. Various
| other kings spent a lot of time on:
|
| - hunting for sport
|
| - military campaigns (e.g. Richard Lionheart spent more time
| out of England than in it)
|
| - assizes (mobile courts)
|
| - summer residences (Versailles is a huge, late example of
| this, but lots of monarchs around the world have had holiday
| homes of one sort or another)
| pyrale wrote:
| > e.g. Richard Lionheart spent more time out of England than
| in it
|
| To be fair, most of his prize holdings were also out of
| England.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > To be fair, most of his prize holdings were also out of
| England.
|
| To be fair, he wasn't really English and didn't speak the
| language either. It wasn't until Henry IV (reign 1399 -
| 1413) that a post-invasion King's mother tongue was
| English. Most people don't realise that for over 300 years
| the (language at) court was Norman French.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| If you want to talk about competent governance, look to
| William II, the "Hammer of the Scots" villainized in
| Braveheart. He made it law that legally binding contracts
| must be written in plain English, so that both parties
| would (most likely) be able to understand what they were
| agreeing to...
|
| Even though he did not speak it, himself.
| rtsil wrote:
| The article says the depiction may reflect idealization, and is
| also a deliberate inspirational portrayal.
| agys wrote:
| Nice morning routine: at 10am a little glass of wine and stringed
| instruments playing the sweetest possible music.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Little has changed, except it's coffee and Spotify for me. Keep
| in mind that back then, wine / beer were an important source of
| clean drinking water, and it would often be low alcohol.
| nottorp wrote:
| "He drank clear and simple wine, light in colour, ** well cut
| ** ". It's right there in the original medieval article.
| ygritte wrote:
| Speaking of which, do you know what "well cut" means in
| this context?
| AquilaWing wrote:
| It refers to diluting your wine with water
| mrits wrote:
| I never heard the term "cut" outside drugs that often
| involved putting something stronger but less expensive in
| rtsil wrote:
| Assuming it's translated literally from French, and the
| meaning of the French verb "couper" hasn't changed since
| the Middle Ages, it means mixing with water, and is a
| widely used expression in French.
| coffeecantcode wrote:
| I've always heard it generally used as a synonym with
| dilute - generally speaking with drugs, cut often means
| incorporating any less expensive (not easily detectable)
| substance in with the original substance.
|
| More times than not it will not be stronger, it will be
| compounds that are not psychoactive at all, effectively
| "cutting" the potency of the substance while multiplying
| the quantity.
|
| There are cases with fentanyl where a stronger substance
| is mixed in with the original and this often is what you
| read about in the news, but it is not in generally in the
| distributors best interest to be killing their clientele.
| doctor_blood wrote:
| https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-
| wat...
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| "One should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, [he
| should stop when] he has eaten to close to three quarter's
| of full satisfaction. One should drink only a small amount
| of water during the meal, and mix that with wine. When the
| food begins to be digested in his intestines, he may drink
| what is necessary. However, he should not drink much water,
| even when the food has been digested."
|
| Maimonedes Human Dispositions 4 (Trans. by Eliyahu Touger)
| dang wrote:
| Discussed once here:
|
| _The great Medieval water myth (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9031856 - Feb 2015 (71
| comments)
| braza wrote:
| > His meal was not long, for he did not favour elaborate food,
| saying that such food bothered his stomach and disturbed his
| memory. He drank clear and simple wine, light in colour, well
| cut, and not much quantity nor great variety. Like David, to
| rejoice his spirits, he listened willingly at the end of his meal
| to stringed instruments playing the sweetest possible music.
|
| For me, the most curious thing here would be to know if a person
| in today's world in 5th percentile in wealth (i) would have (i) a
| larger life expectancy than a king in the 15th century, (ii) more
| food security, and (iii) more life opportunities.
|
| Every time that I hear those stories from medieval times, as soon
| as I become fascinated by their tales and so on, I imagine how
| hard it would be to live there, even as a king.
|
| Does someone know any reliable sources about that kind of
| comparison?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I assume someone in the 5th percentile of wealth is going to
| have very negative wealth which is only really possible in
| developed countries, eg an American medical student or a doctor
| who is part-way through paying off their loans, or someone
| suffering from massive credit card debt / car loans. (I think
| this isn't really what you were thinking of though. I think the
| poorest people in the world still live, in many ways like
| medieval peasants except with much lower infant mortality and
| somewhat net food security)
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The correct metric is probably something like Actual
| Individual Consumption.
| mihaic wrote:
| > someone in the 5th percentile of wealth
|
| I find the percentile measure terrible to technically mean
| 95% of the population, but is often colloquially understood
| the other way around. It's like German numbers, when people
| say five and forty to mean 45. The general population rejects
| needless complexity.
| psychoslave wrote:
| The general population cultivate disagreement on every
| matter it can afford to.
| fmbb wrote:
| https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-
| stub...
|
| Hunger worldwide has been getting worse for the last quarter
| century or so.
|
| 733 million people don't have food security. I think about
| 5-10 million die every year from starvation.
|
| In medieval times there were famines, but they were caused by
| there not being enough food to go around due to disease or
| bad harvests.
|
| Today millions of people starve even if there is no bad
| harvest or animal pandemics.
| rtsil wrote:
| And malnutrition isn't only about lack of food, it's also
| about mediocre quality of food:
|
| > Similarly, new estimates of adult obesity show a steady
| increase over the last decade, from 12.1 percent (2012) to
| 15.8 percent (2022). Projections indicate that by 2030, the
| world will have more than 1.2 billion obese adults. The
| double burden of malnutrition - the co-existence of
| undernutrition together with overweight and obesity - has
| also surged globally across all age groups.
|
| Obesity will soon, if not already, become a major public
| health disaster in poor countries.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Well giving people food doesn't solve hunger problems
| because those people just breed.
|
| Why doesn't Africa have more farms and infrastructure?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Short answer: Climate (even without climate change) and
| war.
|
| Long answer: Western colonialism.
| Ishxnxibz wrote:
| > Long answer: Western colonialism.
|
| How do you explain lack of farming / infrastructure prior
| to colonialism? More or less all environments populated
| by sub saharans struggle with infrastructure. This is
| true before, during, and after colonialism.
| gjm11 wrote:
| > Hunger worldwide has been getting worse for the last
| quarter century or so.
|
| That doesn't appear to be true. E.g., following links from
| the WHO page you cite gets me to https://openknowledge.fao.
| org/server/api/core/bitstreams/39d... ...
|
| where Figure 1 shows hunger consistently _decreasing_ from
| the start of the graph in 2005 to somewhere around 2014, at
| which point it plateaus for a while and then starts
| increasing somewhere around 2019-2020.
|
| My recollection is that by 2005 where that graph begins,
| hunger had been consistently decreasing for quite some
| time, but a bit of googling hasn't found anything that
| quite answers that question. I did find
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/40572886 (looking at data from
| 1930 to 1990) whose publicly-accessible abstract says that
| "the proportion undernourished has been in decline since
| the 1960s and that the absolute number has also declined in
| recent years".
|
| So I _think_ the truth is not "hunger has been getting
| worse for the last quarter century or so" but something
| more like "10 years ago, hunger had been improving for
| about half a century; the improvement stalled for about 5
| years and over about the last five years it has been
| getting worse".
|
| (Which is still bad news, as far as the present state of
| things is concerned, but a rather different sort of bad
| news.)
| jajko wrote:
| > I think about 5-10 million die every year from
| starvation.
|
| That's an outrageous claim you need to back with some hard
| facts, otherwise patently untrue.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "According to the World Food Programme, an estimated 9
| million people died from hunger and hunger-related
| diseases in 2021."
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+die+world
| wid...
|
| Unsupported claims are not "patently untrue"; THAT claim
| also requires citation.
| raincole wrote:
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/43292/what-was-t...
|
| > For England, including the Kings of Wessex from AEthelberht
| on (the first I could find a birthdate for), and the Kings of
| England up to Edward IV, whose reigns extends to 1483 (and
| consequently into Modern Ages, if we take the usual date of
| 1453 - the fall of Constantinople - as the end of the Middle
| Ages), I found the average age of death of monarchs to be 44
| years. (http://ideias.wikidot.com/reis-da-inglaterra-na-idade-
| media)
|
| Life expectancy is longer than that in even the poorest
| countries today:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
| gampleman wrote:
| And very very importantly, this is taking the death ages of
| kings (i.e. people who lived long enough to actually become
| monarchs) compared to life expectancy at birth (i.e. people
| who lived long enough to be born).
|
| Given that until roughly the 1700s infant mortality was
| brutal (according to [1] fully 50% of children died before
| reaching adulthood), this comparison becomes even starker,
| since average life expectancy of a crown prince at birth
| would be far lower (somewhere in their 20s).
|
| [1] https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-
| death-an...
| bluGill wrote:
| how much of that early death was poison or in war?
| rcxdude wrote:
| Given their position, kings and other members of a warrior
| elite generally would likely have downwards pressure on
| their life expectancy from that.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This "average life expectancy in the ancient world" thing
| is nothing more than an illustration of when to pick the
| median over the mean because the data is skewed by
| outliers.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Quite the opposite in this case--the median is single-
| digit; adults are the outliers.
| anovikov wrote:
| Except kings very frequently died for "good" reasons: being
| killed in battle, or by political opponents, or during
| hunting accidents, or victims of coups, or beheaded. As a
| leader, you lead your subjects into all kinds of battles and
| take all kinds of risks and today's politicians don't do that
| anymore.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Richard II starved to death. Voluntarily. After signing
| over his crown to someone he had previously banished. While
| in prison.
| em500 wrote:
| Not that I have any direct knowledge, but I think a real king
| (either medieval or modern day) has a huge number of
| constraints on life opportunities. They have a lot of nominal
| wealth, but probably also too many obligations and duties (real
| or perceived) to just say, the heck with it, I'm going to be a
| full time traveling musician or rock climber or some such.
| walthamstow wrote:
| We've seen this recently in British and Japanese royal
| families. Some people just don't want it, and to get a normal
| life they have to leave the monarchy.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is reminding me of folk tales where the king, prince
| or princess disguises themselves and goes among the
| commoners, but I can't name a definite example of the trope
| at the moment.
| samlinnfer wrote:
| Kangxi emperor being disguised as a commoner in some kind
| of undercover boss scenario is a common trope.
| bmn__ wrote:
| https://allthetropes.org/wiki/King_Incognito
| IAmBroom wrote:
| The Prince and the Pauper is the classic Western version.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Clark Kent.
| cyberlimerence wrote:
| I think there are multiple versions of this. One example
| is Grakappan.[1] It was mentioned in the Severence
| series, funnily enough.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XI_of_Sweden#Gr
| eycoat
| pjc50 wrote:
| I remember many years ago the Economist pointed out one of the
| Rothschilds died young of something that would have been
| readily solvable with penicillin, but no amount of money could
| get you something that didn't exist yet.
|
| I'm going to go with a cautious "yes" to the first: the ages at
| death of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs
| are not great.
|
| "No" on the second (king is never going to have to worry about
| food security, that's for the peasants)
|
| And "life opportunties" .. bit of a divide by zero situation.
| As king, you technically have all the opportunities. But you
| can only do things which actually exist at the time. And you're
| bound by the social and religious conventions of the time,
| which you mess with at your peril. Doing so worked for Henry
| VIII but not for the various Georges. See, for example, the
| controversy over whether James 6 might have been gay.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Addendum: food _security_ was assured, food _choice_ was very
| restricted by modern standards. Remember the medieval period
| is pre-Colombian exchange, so no potatoes, no tomatoes, no
| peppers. Some spices, but a different range to what modern
| palates are used to. No refrigeration either, so you 're
| limited to seasonal availability. In the winter that means
| you're eating a lot of root vegetables and bread, even if as
| king you're guaranteed a supply of fresh meat and fish (from
| the royal holdings dedicated to producing it).
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury
|
| This is where you get the memes about shocking medieval
| Europeans with a time travelling bag of Doritos: both the bag
| and its contents are completely impossible items for them.
|
| Worth noting that durable items could be shipped long
| distance - precious metals, gems, textiles - but foodstuff
| shipping was more limited to high value density stuff like
| spices and the European wine trade.
|
| Speaking of wine: no modern stimulants. No coffee, no
| tobacco, no weed, no cocaine, no opiates. No painkillers, no
| anasthesia. For all those situations, you have one option:
| alcohol.
|
| A huge number of critical historical decisions were taken by
| people who would fail a brethalyser.
| defrost wrote:
| Quite a few precursors to modern stimulants though, there
| were many Solanaceae (nightshade) variations in Europe,
| from harmless through high to deadly. Papaver somniferum
| (opium poppy) got about the place quite a bit (according to
| archaeologists at least.
|
| Hemlock and henbane were both used as painkillers and
| dulling agents .. up to unconsciousness and death,
| depending on dosage.
|
| Added: Monastery herb gardens often had quite the range,
| eg: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-
| me/blog/ar...
| VilleO wrote:
| Also willow bark was chewed as a painkiller because of
| the acetylsalicylic acid it contains.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Quite powerful, BTW. I've used it while hiking for a
| headache. Damn thing tastes like it's half-aspirin,
| bleh... but the headache went away.
| antonvs wrote:
| > No refrigeration either, so you're limited to seasonal
| availability.
|
| Well, except for food preserved via pickling, salting,
| drying, smoking, fermenting, sugaring, and confit. Which
| makes for quite a long list.
|
| Plus, various foods like grains, root vegetables, onions,
| and even apples could be stored for months using proper
| techniques. They didn't have the luxury we have of not
| paying much attention to how we store things and just
| replacing them when they go bad, so they became quite good
| at this.
| ben_w wrote:
| > pickling, salting
|
| Yes, but also my understanding is that the preservation
| technique of that name involves much more salt than
| modern palettes are willing to tolerate, and also salt
| itself was much more limited in supply.
|
| Despite this, salt as a preservative was indeed critical
| to civilisation.
|
| > fermenting
|
| True, and also I want to say "blessed are the
| cheesemakers" etc. here. :)
| mik1998 wrote:
| There's nothing intolerable about pickled vegetables. I
| eat them all the time
| ben_w wrote:
| Properly picked, as in preserved and can be stored
| ambient for extended periods, or "pickled" as sold in a
| supermarket where the small print says "keep refrigerated
| after opening"?
|
| I have been told there is a huge difference between the
| two.
| mapt wrote:
| Qualify it as three types.
|
| There are the fermented pickles
|
| There are the pickles that get mixed with prefermented
| preservative (usually vinegar/salt) and pressure-canned
|
| And then there are the pickles that get flash cooked or
| not cooked, mixed with preservative, and refrigerated for
| a limited time
| IAmBroom wrote:
| That is why some salt-preserved foods are traditionally
| soaked before consumption: to remove the excess salt.
| cgannett wrote:
| Also because salt itself was much more valuable back then
| you wouldn't have as much or even any salt in your fresh
| food so you use the "preserved in an intolerable amount
| of salt" food products with the unsalted food products to
| get a quite tolerable middle ground at consumption time.
| Mash potatoes and pickle bits mmm
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Mash potatoes and pickle bits mmm
|
| And thus potatoes and sauerkraut was born.
| ben_w wrote:
| Without the potatoes, they hadn't arrived from the
| Americas by this point.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Clearly, they meant rutabegas, turnips, and cabbages.
| eviks wrote:
| > pickling, salting, drying, smoking, fermenting,
| sugaring, and confit. Which makes for quite a long list
|
| None of which preserves the taste/nutrition well for a
| wide range of foods like greens/fruits/vegetables, you
| the limits in seasonal availability don't get resolved
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a difference of being a bougie bitch expecting to
| have fresh greens in the dead of winter with a meter of
| snow on the ground and being thankful you stored the
| fall's harvest in such a way that you have food to last
| until that meter of snow has melted. Maybe they could
| have utilized green houses earlier, but when did it
| become practical to make clear sheets of glass?
| antonvs wrote:
| The point is they had many workarounds for being "limited
| to seasonal availability." That doesn't mean _everything_
| was available or as nutritious.
|
| Plus the excellent point that dylan604 made, they weren't
| bougie bitches.
| Roark66 wrote:
| >Plus, various foods like grains, root vegetables,
| onions, and even apples could be stored for months using
| proper techniques. They didn't have the luxury we have of
| not paying much attention to how we store things and just
| replacing them when they go bad, so they became quite
| good at this.
|
| I would also expect them to have various special
| variaties of apples/pears that actually improved their
| taste with storage. For example a variety that was best
| with 2 months of storage, another one that was best after
| 6 months.
|
| Then you have cheeses, yoghurts, milk. Those things could
| be available year round. One would expect the king of
| France to have quite a variety of cheeses at his
| disposal. Then we have meats prepared in a hundred
| different ways. From simple roasting, to gelling,
| pickling like modern hams. And so on.
|
| Then we have various types of wild mushrooms. I wonder if
| the king ate wild mushrooms and who picked these
| mushrooms for him... Poisoning would be so easy to get
| away with if he did.
|
| It would be tough without potatoes, tomatoes and peppers,
| but I think food-wise I'd be just fine (assuming money
| and power).
| artursapek wrote:
| Exactly. People today seem to forget why fermentation was
| discovered in the first place.
| dmurray wrote:
| > Addendum: food security was assured, food choice was very
| restricted by modern standards.
|
| Not by the standards of the world 5th percentile, as in the
| question posed. The 5th percentile today is mostly
| subsistence farming and doesn't have access to imported
| foods or own a refrigerator (though there probably is one
| in their local village, and they may well own a mobile
| phone).
| prmoustache wrote:
| It doesn't work for everything but clove act as a decent
| local painkiller. I once broke a tooth and cloves in my
| mouth made me go through the day until my appointment to
| the dentist.
|
| The taste wasn't so fun though.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| I don't know where the "no painkillers" meme comes from,
| but opium's been around forever and is among the easiest
| drugs to harvest: just lightly score the poppy seed pod and
| collect the latex. It was as known and available in the
| middle ages as in the ancient Greek world.
|
| https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.92.15_supplement.
| P...
|
| Alcohol, though, is great for dissolving opium into an
| easily ingestible potion, whence one gets dwale or
| laudanum.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Dwale is technically a nightshade preparation, not opium-
| based. Laudanum is opium.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > A huge number of critical historical decisions were taken
| by people who would fail a breathalyzer.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| The idea that historically people went around hammered
| because the water supply was poor is a myth.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| See the consumption records for the 18th-century American
| colonists. The rates are astounding.
|
| The water myth is not the cause.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Controversy... yeah... Historians have seen the mountain of
| evidence think one thing, and people ignorant of history who
| think he had something to do with their favorite version of
| the Bible know The Lord wouldn't have chosen a gay "author".
|
| He wasn't gay, but his many male lovers might have been. :D
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Doing so worked for Henry VIII
|
| Apart from his painful, smelly leg ulcers that he had to
| tolerate for years
| ramses0 wrote:
| I've made it a hobby to compare my current standards of living
| to "When would this be kingly?" We've traded down so much on
| quality of products (and sometimes: quality of life) but making
| a conscious decision to "live like a king" in a lot of cases
| isn't that hard.
|
| Simplest example? Indoor plumbing: Boom, 15th century king.
|
| Silly example? I got my wife seven silk pillow cases one year
| as a Christmas gift. A bit spendy, but instantly "living like a
| king".
|
| We don't have "the royal kitchens", but do have Door-Dash. We
| took a tour of a castle somewhere in Canada (probably
| Craigdarroch) and they had a bunch of sitting rooms and reading
| nooks with extra lights and stuff... Steal Those Ideas! You too
| can live like a king, you just have to rewind a century or two,
| and be strategic about the luxuries you pick.
| athenot wrote:
| I love this! It's really a mindset of taking seemingly common
| things that we take for granted, and reconsider them under a
| fresh look to appreciate how amazing they actually are.
| psychoslave wrote:
| I don't know how common it is, but having consommable water
| delivered at home, being able to take daily shower and just
| having to push a button to get rid of my shit, always leave
| me in amazed state. I wish every human could enjoy all
| these "commodities" and more.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Couple of points on life expectancy: If you made it to age 15,
| it was likely you'd live to be 60-80. Life expectancy wasn't
| lower in the past because people died earlier, they just died
| as children at a much higher rate, but there are some important
| caveats. In King Charles V's day, a simple cut that today we
| would not even think twice about could prove fatal from
| infection. Add to that the common plight of royal families
| being extremely inbred (I'm not sure if this was the case for
| Charles V) and it is actually likely that most people alive
| today, regardless of wealth, would likely live longer than him.
|
| Now, when you compare a low wealth person today to a peasant
| from the medieval era, if you remove child mortality, they
| likely had a similar life expectancy, although again, the
| modern human is more likely to have access to antibiotics,
| regardless of wealth--as others have mentioned, they just
| didn't exist back then.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > a simple cut that today we would not even think twice about
| could prove fatal from infection
|
| maybe .. most mammals do not get infections from an ordinary
| cut.. it is humans that are uniquely weak that way
|
| source: retired medical surgeon
| ainiriand wrote:
| My cat almost died from an infected wound from the bite of
| another cat, so maybe it depends on the wound.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Expert fallacy.
|
| Nothing in your career particularly informed you of non-
| human mammal infection rates, unless you moonlighted as a
| veterinarian.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| That's why I said `could', instead of `would'.
| crabbone wrote:
| With how many times you find: "horse and man fell to the
| ground", and "he smote him such a buffet", and "armed himself
| at all points", "hauberk covered in blood" and so on... I'd
| think that life expectancy wasn't exactly great...
|
| Wasn't Arthur alone responsible for the untimely death of like
| a dozen kings? :)
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Worse: Arthur is responsible for hundreds of bad self-
| published fantasy novels.
|
| Yearly.
| biophysboy wrote:
| You might be interested in "A Distant Mirror" by Tuchman
| dm319 wrote:
| [flagged]
| verisimi wrote:
| [flagged]
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Hard disagree. Boredom is the consequence of a disengaged
| mind. Seems like his life was pretty fulfilling, with new
| music and entertainment, new people to meet and talk to, and
| new issues to solve, and when he did get bored I'm sure he
| had ample opportunities to do new things and take on new
| endeavors to satiate his mental appetite.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Sounds about like a manager at any large-ish company. Not in a
| disparaging way, just interesting.
| twalichiewicz wrote:
| https://archive.is/XnX1g
| khazhoux wrote:
| The supplicants brings to mind the opening scene of The
| Godfather.
|
| I'm endlessly perplexed how a human with the same number of hours
| as me, can rule a kingdom, or run a modern country, or be CEO of
| a major company, meanwhile I'm working long hours every day and
| still get nothing accomplished.
| pyrale wrote:
| How many secretaries, go-to people, etc. do you have?
| bluGill wrote:
| 75 years ago someone in my position would have had a
| secretary - she (sexism intended) would have covered about 4
| others. My boss would have had a personal secretary. Today
| Outlook (or similar programs) do the majority of what she
| would have done and they do it better. I can book an airline
| ticket myself in the time it would take to explain what I
| really want to the secretary.
| tristor wrote:
| I think you are mistaken, because you have made a category
| error. The work of a personal secretary or an assistant
| isn't merely to book you an airline ticket or manage your
| calendar. These are part of it, yes, but not the entirety
| and even in those you are missing the nuance of it. Their
| job is to understand you, and act on your behalf in the
| matters you delegate, knowing what outcome you would choose
| yourself. This is a force multiplier in the way that
| Outlook will never be.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Their job is to understand you, and act on your behalf
| in the matters you delegate, knowing what outcome you
| would choose yourself.
|
| And that works very well even today when you are high
| enough to get a personal secretary. For the engineer who
| always shared the secretary with several others she
| didn't know you as well, and in any case their
| preferences were not important enough to consider (you
| don't get first class options).
|
| Even for my boss, outlook is a force multiplier over a
| secretary because he (happens to be he today, has been
| she in the past, and likely will be again in a few years)
| doesn't have very many things where knowing preferences
| matter and doesn't have such complex scheduling needs
| that a human needs to do it. The ability to schedule his
| own meetings is much more powerful than asking someone to
| do it - while it might take more time to do it he can see
| that by not inviting one person the meeting can be had
| sooner and that is a much greater multiplier than the
| time saves by having someone else who not knowing those
| details delays the meeting until everyone can be there.
|
| Yes when your situation is such that a secretary can
| "understand you, and act on your behalf in the matters
| you delegate, knowing what outcome you would choose
| yourself" it is a force multiplier. However most of us
| are not really that different from anyone else and even
| where we are we are not allowed the level of
| differentiation. We also don't have nearly the ability to
| delegate things, much less enough things that someone
| else can delegate them on our behalf. And so for most of
| us outlook is a force multiplier over the secretary we
| would get.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I started work in that era. That secretary booked an
| airline ticket by calling her contact at the same
| airline, regardless of price savings.
|
| She typed his messages; that task is obviously done by
| the boss himself these days (Obama's blackberry addiction
| is a case in point). Voice-to-text handles her job while
| I'm driving; NO ONE did that job back then.
|
| In the middle of the night, I can set an appointment that
| just occurred to me. Again, that's not something 1980s me
| could do.
|
| Technology is a force multiplier you are ignoring. As bad
| as Outlook seems, it is better than most secretaries
| could be.
| bluGill wrote:
| A large part of the force multiplier is just that she
| would sit on hold for you. Web sites rarely get so slow
| that you can't book the ticket yourself when it occurs to
| you.
|
| Note again that I'm using "she" intentionally. When
| females are considered unable to do "real work" we don't
| value their time and so it is a force multiplier for the
| men who don't have to sit on hold, and we ignore all of
| her time that is wasted. I agree with those who are glad
| such days are over.
| tristor wrote:
| I think it's odd to devalue the time of someone who is
| helping you achieve more. That's definitely not a
| charitable way to treat people, nor is it the way I think
| about secretaries and assistants, regardless of their
| gender. While rank and file employees are no longer
| entitled to assistants, there are still thousands of
| people across corporate america in these roles and they
| are in many ways the most critical people to getting
| things done in many companies, and I have the utmost
| respect for them.
| scott_w wrote:
| By having a team around them. I'd recommend listening to
| podcasts by former politicians to get an understanding of the
| types of challenges they have. Rory Stewart regularly talks
| about his time in government. I recall former chancellor George
| Osborne talking about how much government energy is spent
| reacting to crises and giving the illusion of control.
| lucianbr wrote:
| If you have people who take orders from you, obviously you can
| accomplish much more. If you're CEO, literally everyone in the
| company is that. Of course they can get a lot done.
|
| Another way to see it is they themselves don't get anything
| done, in the end others do all the work.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Delegation is key
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Give as few orders as possible, once you've given orders on a
| subject, you must always give orders on that subject.
|
| Being a leader is a matter of taste. Make the decisions you
| need to make, take the actions you need to take, delegate the
| rest. If you had a very qualified group of people to do
| absolutely everything done you didn't want to do yourself "you"
| would get an incredible amount of stuff done.
|
| Watch _The West Wing_ for a taste of how the president of the
| US operates.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I bet I could rule a kingdom well enough. A lot of old timey
| kings seemed to be real dummies.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| He did that much in the morning, after getting up, on an empty
| stomach??
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I work half my day under those conditions.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "After this rest period, he spent a time with his most
| intimate companions in pleasant diversions, perhaps looking at
| his jewels or other treasures."_
|
| Men don't spend a lot of time looking at jewels anymore, but I
| guess the modern equivalent would be hanging out with your
| buddies having some beers and admiring your fancy car.
| OJFord wrote:
| Any collectible really? It's just that jewels ( _they 're
| minerals, Marie!_) used to be a more common one.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| I imagine there also wasn't much else to do if you couldn't
| participate in sports. (Article claimed he was frail so I
| imagine he wasn't out there playing soccer or jousting.)
| mseepgood wrote:
| So he only did four hours of actual work per day.
| achenet wrote:
| much like members of the original affluent societies, hunter-
| gatherers
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#The_...
|
| here is also a link to a video interview of Jeff Bezos
| explaining that he prioritizes sleep, because at his level,
| quality of decisions is more important than quantity of
| decisions.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze0op3sJr2A
| bluGill wrote:
| Read the critisim section. There is no reason to think
| hunter-gathers worked only 4 hours per week, unless you
| define work so narrowly that the majority of what they did
| doesn't count even though anyone who has done those tasks
| knows how much work they are.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Sounds about right for average office worker. WFH had its
| benefits too.
| empath75 wrote:
| This was in the middle of the Hundred Years War, too.
| bluGill wrote:
| What is work? Those religious services were mandatory to set
| the image of him as a king. The discussion around the jewels
| was also mandatory - again setting an image. While he had the
| ability to skip any of those things, not doing them sets him up
| as an image of a bad king and soon he will be removed.
| dartharva wrote:
| Which is still way more than most political elites of today
| do..
| jimbokun wrote:
| In all honesty that's probably true of most knowledge workers
| today.
| teleforce wrote:
| The author is Christine de Pizan, an Italian-born (Venice) French
| court writer [1].
|
| Fun facts, Christine married at the age of 15, now will be
| considered by both Italian and French law as an illegal underage
| marriage. The marriage was, by all accounts, a happy one [2].
|
| She had 3 children from the marriage to Etienne du Castel, (a
| royal secretary) for about ten years, remained widow after her
| husband's death.
|
| Christine was Catholic and is often presented as one of the first
| feminists in history.
|
| [1] Christine de Pizan:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_de_Pizan
|
| [2] Biography of Christine de Pizan, Medieval Writer and Thinker:
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/christine-de-pizan-biography-41721...
| projektfu wrote:
| And at the age of 12, the king (then dauphin) married his
| 12-year-old cousin, Joanna.
|
| Etienne was apparently 8 years older than Christine.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a fascinating treatise.
|
| It also paints Charles in quite a good light. I assume that she
| wrote to please, but it also sounds like he was a genuinely good
| king.
|
| I have heard that the best form of government is an absolute
| monarchy, and the worst form of government is an absolute
| monarchy.
| baxtr wrote:
| Re your last paragraph: can't this be said about any form of
| government since there will be any kind of variation
| independent of form?
| taneq wrote:
| No. The best form of government is never a committee, but the
| worst form is seldom a committee.
| baxtr wrote:
| Fair enough. Makes sense!
| namenotrequired wrote:
| It means the variation in monarchy is higher. So the best
| monarchy is better than the best democracy, but the worst
| monarchy is worse than the worst democracy
| adsteel_ wrote:
| "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in
| this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is
| perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is
| the worst form of Government except for all those other forms
| that have been tried from time to time...."
|
| - Winston S. Churchill, 11 November 1947
| game_the0ry wrote:
| From the looks of it, a medieval king spent more time with his
| subjects that a typical US congressman spends with his
| constituents -- rather, they tend to spend more time at dinner
| parties with lobbyists and donors. In fact, the only time I here
| from my congressional rep is when I get texts asking for more
| money.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| Medieval kings were a lot closer to mafia dons, in scope of
| government, role in government, and strength of position than
| any kind of politician we have in the western world today.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Much lower population, and you had to see the king in person,
| travelling at walking speed. It means the king could afford to
| listen to the comparatively few people who get to him.
|
| Among these people are probably a good number of what would be
| called lobbyists today.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| The time spent with lobbyists and donors most certainly gets
| totaled in for this purpose.
| jcalx wrote:
| Not specifically about kings but -- I recommend The Time
| Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer, for a very
| thorough look at daily life in this era.
|
| More specifically about kings, ACoUP has a great writeup [0] on
| royal legitimacy and the various purposes of the king's court in
| the context of my favorite medieval shenanigans simulator,
| Crusader Kings III.
|
| [0] https://acoup.blog/2022/02/18/miscellanea-thoughts-on-
| ckiii-...
| reillyse wrote:
| This is less historical record than medieval propaganda piece. I
| get that it was written as such but even the article at the
| beginning pretends it's an accurate representation of what the
| king got up to and then towards the end tacitly admits it's an
| idealized representation of how a king should behave. This
| basically brings into question all of the actual details. Did he
| go to church every morning ? Maybe it was deemed proper that he
| did but as the king he just skipped it - we'll never know.
|
| Likewise listening to commoners- maybe this was done for show
| with some well cleaned up subjects every so often , or maybe it
| was a genuine practice , we don't really know.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Given all the matters that a head of state has to attend to I
| would be surprised if they found time to go to church once a
| week, much less daily. Even with an on-site priest.
|
| As for listening to commoners, I'll accept the possibility of
| kings that wanted to be accountable to their subjects. The
| problem isn't the king, it's the nobility. The nobles are going
| to be filtering the commoners that get to talk to the king,
| because the king isn't _allowed_ to know any commoners
| directly. Hell, they might not even be able to speak the same
| language at all. England 's kings all spoke either French or
| German for a long time, and French wasn't so much the language
| of France as much as it was the language that France's ruling
| class spoke[0].
|
| Even if the king could understand commoners and had unfiltered
| access to them, it's not guaranteed that they could do anything
| with that feedback. Say, a peasant complained about what they
| pay to their lord. Does the king actually have the power to
| overrule the nobility? Will the nobility depose the king, or
| start a civil war that destabilizes the country?
|
| The game everyone's playing is ultimately to convince
| subsistence farmers to "go big or go home" - i.e. to overplant
| and overproduce food, at the risk of crop failure, so that the
| state can seize some of that food and eat it themselves,
| nominally in exchange for "protection"[1] from rival states
| whose main difference is that their king is fake while yours is
| rightful. In other words: the king and nobility are wolves, the
| commoners are sheep, and it's bad form for predators to
| befriend their prey.
|
| [0] At least until France erased their own minority languages
| in the 1800s and forced everyone to speak French, which I'm
| pretty sure counts as genocide
|
| [1] Identical to the 'protection' paid to a mafioso
| rcktmrtn wrote:
| > This is less historical record than medieval propaganda piece
|
| I think you could make a good case that the title is a little
| sensationalistic, but you could pick at US civics class in
| exactly the same way (and not just in recent history). The
| branches of government we learn about fail to include (or at
| least emphasize) the fundamental role of regulatory capture,
| lobbyists, and opaque/undemocratic three-letter agencies in
| real-world governance. Not to mention the fact that even the
| founding of the country was based on high ideals that were
| highly caveat-ed ("all men are created equal" unless those men
| are property).
|
| Regardless of the extent to which ideals are lived out in
| practice, to many people it's notable that those ideals are
| there at all. In my experience as a US citizens, most people
| educated here seem shocked to learn that there can be any
| ideals behind monarchy besides divine right of kings/"I am the
| state" [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi
| lisper wrote:
| > unless those men are property
|
| And unless those men are women.
| rfwhyte wrote:
| Yeah this reads as a total puff piece to me too.
|
| Seems to really want to paint a picture of the king as a pious,
| diligent, man of the people, yet it only leaves me with the
| impression that what was intentionally omitted is the true
| nature of the man.
|
| Just like any officially sanctioned biography of Trump would
| omit his late night reality TV binge watching, his gorging on
| fast food and his raping of children, this account embellishes
| Charles' best qualities while utterly ignoring his worst, so it
| is of no historical value whatsoever in terms of understanding
| who he truly was.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I was always fascinated by the detail that Odysseus plows his own
| fields, and what that means about being King of an island in
| mythological Greece
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Brilliantly, the "Lion in Winter" opens with the King of
| England, the most powerful person in Europe at that time,
| rising from bed and breaking the ice atop his personal
| washbasin in his bedcroom.
|
| Just in case you were thinking of Lerner & Loewe's England:
| this ain't that.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| Abdul Azziz al Saud, founder of Saudi Arabia, received
| supplicants on a near daily basis as all his subjects believed
| they had a right to bring their complaints to him.
|
| In the early years of his reign, he was involved in military
| campaigns to expand his kingdom.
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