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The daily life of a medieval king

medievalists.net

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Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#71

Post by HKH2 »

fmbb wrote: post #45
dan-robertson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume someone in the 5th percentile of wealth is going to have very negative wealth which is only really possible in developed countries, eg an American medical student or a doctor who is part-way through paying off their loans, or someone suffering from massive credit card debt / car loans. (I think this isn’t really what you were thinking of though. I think the poorest people in the world still live, in many way…

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…

Well giving people food doesn't solve hunger problems because those people just breed.

Why doesn't Africa have more farms and infrastructure?

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#72

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

That's a fascinating treatise.

It also paints Charles in quite a good light. I assume that she wrote to please, but it also sounds like he was a genuinely good king.

I have heard that the best form of government is an absolute monarchy, and the worst form of government is an absolute monarchy.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#73

Post by colechristensen »

khazhoux wrote: post #22

The supplicants brings to mind the opening scene of The Godfather. I’m endlessly perplexed how a human with the same number of hours as me, can rule a kingdom, or run a modern country, or be CEO of a major company, meanwhile I’m working long hours every day and still get nothing accomplished.

>Give as few orders as possible, once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

Being a leader is a matter of taste. Make the decisions you need to make, take the actions you need to take, delegate the rest. If you had a very qualified group of people to do absolutely everything done you didn't want to do yourself "you" would get an incredible amount of stuff done.

Watch The West Wing for a taste of how the president of the US operates.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#74

Post by baxtr »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72

That's a fascinating treatise. It also paints Charles in quite a good light. I assume that she wrote to please, but it also sounds like he was a genuinely good king. I have heard that the best form of government is an absolute monarchy, and the worst form of government is an absolute monarchy.

Re your last paragraph: can’t this be said about any form of government since there will be any kind of variation independent of form?

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#75

Post by psychoslave »

mihaic wrote: post #44
dan-robertson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume someone in the 5th percentile of wealth is going to have very negative wealth which is only really possible in developed countries, eg an American medical student or a doctor who is part-way through paying off their loans, or someone suffering from massive credit card debt / car loans. (I think this isn’t really what you were thinking of though. I think the poorest people in the world still live, in many way…

> someone in the 5th percentile of wealth I find the percentile measure terrible to technically mean 95% of the population, but is often colloquially understood the other way around. It's like German numbers, when people say five and forty to mean 45. The general population rejects needless complexity.

The general population cultivate disagreement on every matter it can afford to.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#76

Post by Roark66 »

antonvs wrote: post #51
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…

> No refrigeration either, so you're limited to seasonal availability. Well, except for food preserved via pickling, salting, drying, smoking, fermenting, sugaring, and confit. Which makes for quite a long list. Plus, various foods like grains, root vegetables, onions, and even apples could be stored for months using proper techniques. They didn't have the luxury we have of not paying much attention to how we store t…

>Plus, various foods like grains, root vegetables, onions, and even apples could be stored for months using proper techniques. They didn't have the luxury we have of not paying much attention to how we store things and just replacing them when they go bad, so they became quite good at this.

I would also expect them to have various special variaties of apples/pears that actually improved their taste with storage. For example a variety that was best with 2 months of storage, another one that was best after 6 months.

Then you have cheeses, yoghurts, milk. Those things could be available year round. One would expect the king of France to have quite a variety of cheeses at his disposal. Then we have meats prepared in a hundred different ways. From simple roasting, to gelling, pickling like modern hams. And so on.

Then we have various types of wild mushrooms. I wonder if the king ate wild mushrooms and who picked these mushrooms for him... Poisoning would be so easy to get away with if he did.

It would be tough without potatoes, tomatoes and peppers, but I think food-wise I'd be just fine (assuming money and power).

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#77

Post by taneq »

baxtr wrote: post #74
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72

That's a fascinating treatise. It also paints Charles in quite a good light. I assume that she wrote to please, but it also sounds like he was a genuinely good king. I have heard that the best form of government is an absolute monarchy, and the worst form of government is an absolute monarchy.

Re your last paragraph: can’t this be said about any form of government since there will be any kind of variation independent of form?

No. The best form of government is never a committee, but the worst form is seldom a committee.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#78

Post by ben_w »

mik1998 wrote: post #64
ben_w wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pickling, salting Yes, but also my understanding is that the preservation technique of that name involves much more salt than modern palettes are willing to tolerate, and also salt itself was much more limited in supply. Despite this, salt as a preservative was indeed critical to civilisation. > fermenting True, and also I want to say "blessed are the cheesemakers" etc. here. :)

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.

Re: The daily life of a medieval king

#80

Post by IAmBroom »

pjc50 wrote: post #29
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…

I remember many years ago the Economist pointed out one of the Rothschilds died young of something that would have been readily solvable with penicillin, but no amount of money could get you something that didn't exist yet. I'm going to go with a cautious "yes" to the first: the ages at death of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs are not great. "No" on the second (king is never going to have to wo…

Controversy... yeah... Historians have seen the mountain of evidence think one thing, and people ignorant of history who think he had something to do with their favorite version of the Bible know The Lord wouldn't have chosen a gay "author".

He wasn't gay, but his many male lovers might have been. :D

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