Live data from Hacker News

The daily life of a medieval king

medievalists.net

161–170 of 175 posts

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#161
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? :)

Arthur was fictional as far as we can tell, so he was only responsible for the deaths of imaginary kings.

Edit: duh, just saw the smiley. Carry on!

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#162

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…

Separation of powers as it’s described in civics class also doesn’t even pass the sniff test. As soon as you hear the idea your first question should be “why wouldn’t the 3 branches collude to the detriment of the public?”

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Separation of powers as it’s described in civics class also doesn’t even pass the sniff test. As soon as you hear the idea your first question should be “why wouldn’t the 3 branches collude to the detriment of the public?”

Ambition counters ambition. Federalist number 51.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#165

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…

I agree, and I will also add that the entire post is just basically quoting from another source, and adding zero original thought. Just point us to the book so we can read it, it's really good enough to say "hey, if you want to know what a medieval king's day to day was, check out this really cool book".

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#166
post #30

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.

Aladdin

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#167
post #78
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing intolerable about pickled vegetables. I eat them all the time

Properly picked, as in preserved and can be stored ambient for extended periods, or "pickled" as sold in a supermarket where the small print says "keep refrigerated after opening"? I have been told there is a huge difference between the two.

Traditional "properly picked" also had to ve consumed after being open or stored cold. Once you open it, backterias can get in and spread.

There is some difference in taste, due to modern additiomal conservants and minor changes in receipta, but not all that much.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#168

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.

Child mortality is the best example of what we take for granted.

"The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday"

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al...

It is so horrendous that I don't think we are really able to process the difference in 2025.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the force multiplier is just that she would sit on hold for you. Web sites rarely get so slow that you can't book the ticket yourself when it occurs to you. Note again that I'm using "she" intentionally. When females are considered unable to do "real work" we don't value their time and so it is a force multiplier for the men who don't have to sit on hold, and we ignore all of her time that is wasted.…

I think it's odd to devalue the time of someone who is helping you achieve more. That's definitely not a charitable way to treat people, nor is it the way I think about secretaries and assistants, regardless of their gender. While rank and file employees are no longer entitled to assistants, there are still thousands of people across corporate america in these roles and they are in many ways the most critical people…

It is societies attitude toward women that is in question here. Most individual assistants were valued by those they were assisting. However many assistants would be even more valuable if they were doing something other than assisting, and so by having so many female assistants we devalued females who were able to do better work if allowed (they probably couldn't get the needed education, and glass ceilings were in play).

Of course in 1950 we didn't have computers able to do many of the things assistants did. As such we needed them to manually do various tasks that today computers do better. However the sexist making it females who are doing the job harmed the better female who could have done something better, and also the less capable males who couldn't do anything more complex anyway. (though there are a lot of jobs that those males could do that are even less complex)

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#170
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never heard the term "cut" outside drugs that often involved putting something stronger but less expensive in

I’ve always heard it generally used as a synonym with dilute - generally speaking with drugs, cut often means incorporating any less expensive (not easily detectable) substance in with the original substance. More times than not it will not be stronger, it will be compounds that are not psychoactive at all, effectively “cutting” the potency of the substance while multiplying the quantity. There are cases with fentany…

If that was true everything would be cut with baking soda or water.
Post reply on HN