I'm not sure if I know how to write a story about a monarch and their duties

To put it plain and simple; I've often fantasized about stories that I've been considering writing and two of them involved the main character being the absolute monarch of a powerful country. Now, in addition to me having somewhat mixed feelings about absolute monarchies (after talking to so many people who believe that democracy is the best type of government), there's also the matter of me not fully understanding the duties of a king or queen.

There were times when I even imagined my royal main characters behaving like presidents or businesspeople or even 'Superheroes' protecting their kingdoms. Any advice on this matter?

Explain more about that feelings, and you should investigate more about the duties of the monarchs.

Have you...I don't know, tried doing research?

I have and so far, all really understand are the basics; make laws, meet visitors from other countries and make the decisions in regards to war and every day problems. As you can see, that information is somewhat minimal at best.

I want to cling to at least some way that makes a monarchy a good form of government, in order for me to get into the swing of my story. But, by doing that, it sort of implies that I don't care for democracy, which seems a little bit wrong, since, not only is that the government that I was born and raised to follow, but it's also the reason why I have so many good things in my life. So, me saying that monarchies (the very form of government that entire wars were fought against, in favor of democracies) are better, that just doesn't feel right. And yet, at the exact same time, I don't want the Monarchs of my stories to be the last absolute monarchs of their countries. Them abolishing the monarchies in favor of republics and democracies; to be honest, that just doesn't work for me. Especially after I went online and saw how very few monarchies out there are still absolute ones (hardly any at all, and all of them are such small countries too), while others are constitutional monarchies, which means the Monarchs themselves have no real power within the government.

What sort of time period/tech level is this taking place in? How common is democracy among this country's neighbors?

It's possible to portray a monarchy as functional and a good fit for that country without also demonizing other forms of government. If it works for your story, include mentions of other monarchies that work, ("Queen Soandso really knows what she's doing") and don't work ("King Whatshisface is partying while his kingdom starves to death"), to varying degrees. Do the same ("the people of Someplace are really excited for their new prime minister", "Otherplace has such bad corruption the country practically falls apart every four years") for democracies, too.

If the overall setting is different enough from ours, you could also just make an artistic choice and have monarchies be the 'default' or most common form of government for that world. If you can do enough research to make sure there's no glaring problems, while also making sure to have a variety of monarchies with varying degrees of effectiveness, you can get people to just accept that this is a world of monarchies.

You could have an absolute monarch who polls his subjects to find out what the popular opinion is on any given topic. And he can then use that information to base his decisions on — or not. It all depends how educated and informed his subjects are, and how much value he places on their input.

Your first thoughts were actually right on the money. Someone once described the job of true monarchs (as in, the ones that actually do royal duties) as being akin to the job of a CEO or another high-ranking business person. While "make laws, take care of your people, and solve everyday problems" isn't a very specific idea, you need to put SOME effort into detailing what that means by yourself.

In Moonflowers, my protagonist Alima becomes ruler of a kingdom of The Fair Folk (the king was trying to kill her and her family, but her dad killed him first). The kingdom is in crap shape because he who didn't care about the fairy citizens he was neglecting OR the humans he was roaming around slaughtering for fun. How is it in crap shape? Her castle needs a few months and hundreds of workers to repair (and that's with magic), the servants fled centuries ago (not that the king would have cared), and the roads are shot to hell.

In the sequel, she's settled into a steady routine of a) checking on her lords and her personal lands' villages, and b) FacePalming at the antics of some Upper Class Twits. About halfway through the chapter, her villagers come in with a horrifically wounded human man and his unharmed niece and nephew, and it turns out the cruise ship they were on was attacked by a crew of both fairy and human pirates.

The majority of the plot is how she handles the pirate attacks with the help of human admirals, and there's a shit-ton of Culture Clash between medieval and modern morality. The stress gets REALLY bad when the pirates attempt to kidnap and sell her, so when she escapes, she nearly gives her navy orders to do what modern people consider a war-crime (hunting down and killing all of the pirates) but her medieval subjects consider Good Is Not Soft. Because these pirates attacked a cruise ship full of innocent people, decimated coastal villages that were equally innocent, and discussed selling a queen into slavery right to her face. It gets worse when she finds out that they DIDN'T kill the numbers of missing people—they're going to sell them to a notorious slave-holding section of the Otherworld.

I'm a modern person and nowhere close to military, but that doesn't mean I'm portraying Alima's near-decision in the same sociopathic light as the fairy-king who tried to kill her and her family. The fairy-king just liked kidnapping random people and slaughtering them for fun. Meanwhile, she is a decent person trying to deal with 1) the vast differences between her American birth culture and the European fairy-kingdom she's in charge of, 2) being a twenty-something discussing war-matters with navy veterans twice her age, and 3) pirates who massacre and abduct people that she feels responsible for.

Hell, this comes up in-story where there's a whole range of reactions from other humans: Some are horrified that she nearly gave orders to kill the pirates to a man, but others go "they're fucking PIRATES, and they shouldn't have slaughtered hundreds of people if they only want a slap on the wrist." The veterans admit that while they'll abide by modern laws to arrest the human pirates and give them due process, they have absolutely no problem leaving the fairies up to Alima's navy.

Am I saying modern society is "better" than the medieval past (or vice versa)? Hell no. They're both different forms of society and they manage to coexist pretty well.

Srebak, rule 1 when writing a story is to distance yourself from your own oppinions as much as possible. I other words. Democracy migh according to you be the ultimate way to rule, but if the stories of yours has benevolent absolute monarch as heroes is it not a good idea if you let your idea of absolute monarchy = Allways Chaothic Evil rule your writing. Disconect your feelings. As Crystal Glacia kind of says, ALL way of ruling had eccamples were either eccelent, horrible or average. This includes absolute monarchies and democracies.

The same troper has a good point that the setting plays a big roll. In say the middle-ages (or an equavilent therof) that has absolute monarchy as the default governt form is absolute monachies not evil. In the modern day tough..

For a half-way "democratic" way of government there is the elective monarchy. It was usually an absolute monarcy where the more important and powerfull people in the country ellected a ruler-for-life king from among their own. The new ruler were often an close relative of the old ruler, like an son or nephew, but not allways. A bad ruler could of course be de-throned by this group of electors (or the occasional rebellion) if necessary and a new ruler elected instead.

edited 16th Aug '16 8:19:56 AM by TheBorderPrince

The crucial thing to remember is that no-one, no absolute monarch, no dictator, can run a country on their own. An absolute monarch is going to rely on his privy council for day to day governing. The men on that council will likely be representatives of powerful families or business interests, both because they are best placed to understand and govern the country, and because they'll want a voice that the monarch cannot refuse them, because of how powerful they are. No monarchy is ever truly absolute. Similarly, absolute kings nominally rendered justice, they were the kingdom's court of last resort, with the power to quash any ruling that they didn't like. However, there were far too many cases for them to hear them all in person, so in practice the king's involvement was a mere fiction and the ruling would be written by a chancellor, or a legal advisor to the king. Often, the Keeper of the royal seal will be doing some of those things - impersonating the king with his consent. His will be a position of great power, and you can expect many intrigues at the court surrounding it.

edited 16th Aug '16 2:09:34 PM by InigoMontoya

Good point Ingo Montoya .

Beurocracy and delegating power is neccesary in all societieties. You could probably at most only run a small village by yourself. This were one of the main reasons behind feudalism. The monarch can't rule the entire country, so it is neccesary to delegate the power. And with a lot of "beurocrats" of all kinds running around is there a way to cover for a bad ruler.

Historically did the common people of course know that this "delegated-way-of-ruling" existed and assumed that almost any problems they experienced with the government was caused by the local authorities. The higher authorities, like the monarch had just not noticed the local problem yet and would probably correct it when they just found out how injust the local authorities was.

So let say the monarch mess up with an ill-tought-trough law, tax or something and there starts to be rumours about Torches and Pitchforks in the country. How to solve it? Easy: Usually is it only to blame someone a bit down in the beurocracy for being the one messing up and you not knowing about it until you was told something was wrong. Things should solve themselves after that.

In Robin Hood, is it the Sheriff of Nothingham who is the real villain or is it the faraway King Richard who he collects taxes for and who is the one that writes the laws?

Actually, in Robin Hood, it was Bad Prince John, who was appointed Regent while King Richard skived off to go on the Crusades.

I knew these stories was a bit of a bad example and that Prince John were the regent, but it was the best example I had. And can we actually besure that King Richard Lionheart didn't appoint the sherriff and didn't come up with all those laws and taxes...

Well, since we're dealing with writing fiction in this thread, I'm going with the fictional account of Robin Hood, which places the blame squarely on John, while Richard's only real fault was leaving his greedy kid brother in charge.

Let us not derail the discussion...

Another important thing to consider is the story.

This thread's been quiet for a little while, so I'm not sure about the OP's current needs for advice.

A very important point of ruling is having the power to keep enemies from taking over. Many people compare kings to mafia dons in addition to businessmen, and Game Of Thrones is described as "The Lord Of The Rings meets The Sopranos" for a very good reason. There are certainly good kings both in real life and in fiction, but Good Is Not Soft and many kings have been overthrown because they didn't have the stomach to make hard decisions.