The daily life of a medieval king • Hacker News Board

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#141

Post by psychoslave » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 6:21 PM UTC

athenot wrote: post #122

ramses0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spend…

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.

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.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#142

Post by cyberlimerence » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #30

walthamstow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I think there are multiple versions of this. One example is Gråkappan.[1] It was mentioned in the Severence series, funnily enough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XI_of_Sweden#Greycoat

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#143

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:34 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #135

cgannett wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Without the potatoes, they hadn't arrived from the Americas by this point.

Clearly, they meant rutabegas, turnips, and cabbages.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#144

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:36 PM UTC

Telemakhos wrote: post #116

pjc50 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

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, wh…

Dwale is technically a nightshade preparation, not opium-based. Laudanum is opium.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#145

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:38 PM UTC

psunavy03 wrote: post #117

pjc50 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

> 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.

See the consumption records for the 18th-century American colonists. The rates are astounding.

The water myth is not the cause.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#146

Post by lisper » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:38 PM UTC

rcktmrtn wrote: post #139

reillyse wrote: post #105

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 dee…

> 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 agenci…

> unless those men are property

And unless those men are women.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#147

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:41 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #106

thesuitonym wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fam…

> 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

Expert fallacy.

Nothing in your career particularly informed you of non-human mammal infection rates, unless you moonlighted as a veterinarian.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#148

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

jajko wrote: post #107

fmbb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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.

"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+worldwid...

Unsupported claims are not "patently untrue"; THAT claim also requires citation.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#149

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

crabbone wrote: post #111

braza wrote: post #10

> 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 t…

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? :)

Worse: Arthur is responsible for hundreds of bad self-published fantasy novels.

Yearly.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#150

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:49 PM UTC

gherkinnn wrote: post #41

pyrale wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

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.