In Shadowrun universe, many corpos are run by dragons.

The king answering with anything other than some variation of “Because I ordered you to” broke my immersion.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-d29z8G6U28 And here this exact post is, animated with the original voice acting!

In actuality, most corpos are run by people. Lofwyr, whose corporate umbrella includes 4758 companies, is an outlier and should not have been counted. /s

One of the reasons I can never stomach Nick Bostrom’s Fable of the Dragon Tyrant because it depicts the idea of a stoic king who cares about his people.

(Also, glosses over completely how an ageless soceity would be stacked under feudal-capitalism)

Many powerful people like to make people believe (and possibly believe themselves) that they’re just rulers. And it’s just plainly more effective when your underlings are well-informed of your intentions (assuming you’re not trying to set them up). e.g. imagine if the knight thinks that a dragon is a direct threat to the king and burns down the countryside to hunt it (any means necessary etc.), when in reality it’s not a direct threat to the king at all and you were just supposed to keep the countryside safe from dragonfire.

Of course, the entire premise is that it’s not obvious to the knight why a dragon must be killed and what are acceptable means to achieve that. e.g. in Faerun’s Sword Coast, you’d expect that every knight is well-informed about this.

Did kings hoard all the wealth? I thought kings had a monopoly on violence, not necessarily wealth

It’s almost as if the stories of dragons were an allegory for the king or the one sin charge

You need massive amounts of wealth to gain and maintain a monopoly on violence. So they did both.

No spoilers, but you should check out the Sword Interval webcomic.

Also if you possess a monopoly on violence wealth is not difficult to obtain

The wealth was needed to pay soldiers. You needed soldiers to make sure people did what the king wanted, such as people paying taxes to get wealth. The whole thing with taxes and needing gold as money was basically invented for supporting militia, according to some.

Armies are expensive, and war is REALLY expensive.

And once you have that wealth you NEED a monopoly on violence to maintain it, which requires more wealth, and so on.

I too have played the Shadowrun Returns series

IIRC everything you had was considered to be used by permission of the king. Like, he ostensibly owned everything and was just letting you use it.

I must have missed the part where the dragon funded infrastructure, hired knights to keep his populace safe, propped up the food stores and economy in times of famine, and negotiated with neighboring kingdoms when needed. Oh and funding research. Forgot how often dragons did that.

And for those asking about benevolent kings:

Aragorn

T’Challa/Black Panther

Mufasa

King Arthur

King Leonidas

King Tirian

Some real life good kings(and a queen)

Emperor Augustus(look up the slave who broke a crystal glass)

Empress Wu Zerian

Cyrus the Great

There have been various degrees of absolutely and constitutional monarchies throughout history. One famous example is the limits imposed by the Magna Carta, which only benefited nobles.

There has often been a distinction between royal property and the personal property of the royal family or members of the royal family.

For instance, many of the palaces of the British royal family are national property and Parliament has a say in their use and must provide a budget for their upkeep. The total family privately owns a significant percentage of the rented agricultural land in England, and vast amounts of residential rentals in London.

But Lofwyr literally controls 95% of the GDP with those companies, who are run by his extended family!

A yes, the benevolent ruler, almost as common as the benevolent slave owner.

Funded infrastructure

Or, returned a small amount of the value extracted in order to facilitate further extraction

Hired knights to

Keep his interests safe

(Hoarded resources and returned a pittance to prop up) food stores and the economy in times of famine

Negotiated with neighboring kingdoms

To further state interests

Funded research

At public expense for private gain