Or other people saying theyre the king as they have a bigger army than the king.

That's basically Rome. The population supported the Emperor against the vaguely democratic Senate every time.

Well if you had enough wealth and military experience, you could get real power.

And they would rather have had the military be the only root to real power under an autocrat.

people not born to hold power probably shouldn't be given power

@charles watson but that never worked.

indeed, kings would often surround themselves with people of ignoble heritage

It has produced the same amount of incompetent people as elections

Maybe less as the son that's incompetent tends to get killed and replaced.

Appointing your number 2 seems to work best.

well there was definetly some disorder that lead to becoming more democratic, but it still would have been preferable to maintain the older order

But your heir has to actually be your number 2 and effective at it.

With monarchy, if you do not have an adult male heir already doing part of your job, then you have failed.

And your kid will suck almost always.

That's how you end up with Aethelred the Unready or Nicholas II or Louis XVI or Commodus.

Or Caligula

Or Dominitian who just pissed people off.

Or Richard and John

Or William II, Henry I,

Totally incompetent pieces of shit.

what about Henry VIII?

Henry VIII was very competent as was Elizabeth and James I. Charles I was a fucking idiot

The problem was Henry VIII had no heir.

If he could hand his absolute monarchy to his #2 and have him marry his daughter, that would be a lot better but he couldn't

What was your issue with Henry I?

Henry I had like 30 kids and none of them a real heir

Which caused a massive civil war.

As he attempted to make his daughter queen and stephen said nuh uh

So you had actual anarchy.

wow, amazing how something like that can happen

I didn't much like Elizabeth I, but I'd need to read more about her again perhaps

It's all held together by one guy.

James I can afford to be a flaming homo who believes in witches but the moment he hands it over to his son who will actually mismanage it to hell and cause a massive civil war, then yeah you fucked up.

I mean, 40 some year reign, no heir?

You don't have an adult kid to carry out your power.

Pretty easy.

couldn't find some prince willing to knock her up?

He tried but she didn't have any power on the ground.

And that is really obvious

If you marry her off to the third biggest goon.

And you're #1, your nephew is #2 etx