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

Yeah they totally swore that the holy Roman empress would.be queen to him but half of them of course reneged.

And capturing Stephen on the ground didn't do jack shit as they couldn't kill him as his dudes still controlled half the country.

And he had a major general of there's who would.be killed in return and you can't lose a third of your guys as you killed a guy that would cause them to kill your guy and his men won't fight for you anymore

That's what Robb stark did on game of thrones and what the mad king did before then.

That's why killing the king often won feudal battles as if you said you would fight for a dude as he is your dude and he dies, you have no reason to fight anymore.

See Hastings when everyone but Harolds personal guard ran away after he got anarrow in the eye (he still wasn't dead)

Your skull will often stop the bullet or arrow like Moshe Dayan.

https://mega.nz/#!xqQ3wKCC!x9Y2WIpZazrp_InGwvvhZRUZwtCKBXGdwUoBJKp2CxQ

@charles watson it's like why you can't conquer a place easily if you can't insert yourlsef at the top of what's already there