Welcome back to my take on David Mitchell's Unruly. Last time I looked at Mitchell's non-kingly words of wisdom (and a few parts which were questionable) on a basically random collection of topics. This time it'll be much more focused on the main subject of what David Mitchell thinks made for a successful medieval monarch. This is going to be very medieval-centric; if you want to draw out what's still useful for modern rulers, go ahead, but that's very much left as an Exercise For The Reader.
All of these are, of course, only guidelines. It's possibly to get away with flagrantly violating almost all of them, depending on the circumstances. But while a skilled ruler might well be able to ignore any rule, and even at least bend all of them from time to time, they almost certainly couldn't completely avoid all of them forever.
Listicle 2/2 : David Mitchell's Top Tips For How To Be A Successful King
Be legitimate. The rules of succession were actually somewhat flexible and varied continuously (I still can't for the life of me figure out why John of Gaunt wasn't king) but they were usually clear. Once everyone can see "the rules say it's clearly Tim's turn next" then it becomes a lot harder to convince anyone it should actually be Fred. Lacking a constitution is actually a strength here, because there's no procedure for changing the rule book. There's no system to game except naked strength, and most people, most of the time, don't really want to go down that route. Rewriting unwritten rules is a whole lot different from rewriting actual... well, writing.
Ideally, you need a very clear reason why you should be next in line, not a terribly convoluted chain of vague connections or lots of individually-unconvincing reasons like Henry VII. He won and all, but that was because of the extenuating circumstances of decades of preceding warfare and Richard III being even worse than Richard II. And poor old Matilda was very clearly the heir apparent, but Stephen managed to oust her because he had a penis and that was apparently quite a high priority for most of the nobles at the time. So "being legitimate" isn't a guarantee of anything, but it does usually count in your favour.
Be openly pre-acknowledged. If people commit to you as heir before you ascend the throne, so much the better. This is by no means a done deal (again, I'm looking at you, Stephen) but it does help. Trying to actually have your heir anointed as king before you yourself die, however, was tried in England but it never caught on : people found it confusing as to who was actually the king – not least of all the heir themselves, who might get ideas ahead of their actual designated time. Still, telling everyone – in public, please, I'm looking at you, Edward the Confessor – who you want to take your place definitely helps.
Don't have a minority. It's best if dad dies when you're a grown-up so you can learn the art of kinging directly from him. He alone doesn't have any competing interests. He alone isn't trying to curry your favour, because he's king and you're not (yet). Everyone else, however, is likely to try and mould you to their own interests. In the particular case of Richard II, everyone telling him he was the epitome of regal magnificence without actually teaching him how to rule was a downright catastrophe.
Convince people you're magical. The power of coronation seems to have grown from something incidental – initially it was far more important to be acknowledged by the Witan – into something literally transformative. It was as though putting on the crown for the first time conveyed some magical change from mere mortal into divinely-appointed ruler. This kind of ritual helped turn the Dark Age thugs with the biggest swords into medieval kings, ultimately just guys with gold hats but now viewed as set apart from other men.
Remember the pretence (I). The tricky bit, the balancing act, is to convince other people you're magical while not falling for it yourself. Richard II fell for it and he was one of the most useless of the lot. You also can't just not bother to pretend though : start convincing people you're not special and there's nothing to stop them form having a go themselves, as happened in the early days of the Tudors, when everyone knew that Henry VII's claim to the throne was as weak as Donald Trump's claim to healthy genes.
The wise kings, the ones who actually ran things pretty well – Alfred, Athelstan, Henry I, Henry II, Edward III, a few more – knew that their actual hard power was very limited. Their strength came from persuading their subjects, which meant being ruthless when they had to be but also magnanimous when they could. They were disciplined in their use of rewards and punishments alike, never pushing the social norms too far, but also seeking to bend them to their own ends rather than simply going with the flow of the historical currents. They listened, but they also directed. They found a balance.
Certainly you can't adopt John's approach, which, in Mitchell's words, was simply, "I'll do what I fucking like". At that point there was, he says, a widely-understood notion, sincerely believed, that a king's kingdom was literally his own personal property. But previous rulers didn't like living in a shithole so had tended to treat the kingdom in a way that everyone could basically accept. John didn't mind living in a shithole, so broke this convention and ultimately that, in turn, broke him.
Ironically, Mitchell suggests John may actually have been an atheist, co-opting the notion of divine appointment for his own cynical gains without ever really believing in a damn thing beyond himself. When you start doing that, or when you stop questioning yourself, others will start asking the questions for you... awkward questions like, "are we really sure about this one ?".
Like the modern royals who have absolute power provided they promise not to use it, some degree of medieval power wasn't supposed to be actually used, or at least certainly not on a whim. Going down that route was what forced systemic change, not any high-minded ideals about trying to be nicer to anyone. People are naturally averse to questioning the system, but they absolutely will if you push them far enough. Power is seen as legitimate only when it's not abused.
So promote yourself and believe in yourself, but remember the system is all make-believe. Deep down, everyone knows this, but by default they'll go along with it as far as they can. Don't give them a reason to rock the boat and they won't. And for crying out loud, try and make the system work rather than reforming it, because reform leads to fundamentally dangerous instability.
Remember the pretence (II) : Pay homage to those weaker than yourself. If a ruler you owe fealty to is actually weaker than you, render homage to them even so. This flatters them, humbles you, and doesn't alter the balance of hard power. Doing it the other way around is seldom a good idea as this just rubs it in their noses.
For example, if Edward I had just treated the Scottish with more respect, rather than instantly assuming his conquest was complete and perfect immediately, he probably would have had an easier time of ruling the place. A lot of kingship does seem to be about the symbolism of power as much as exercising it, as it was with the Roman Emperors : the competent ones would have the dignity to pretend to be humble and not max out on the worldly pleasures that were notionally theirs to command. The attitude of pretending not to be rich and powerful seems to me one of the key ingredients to securing real wealth and power. Flaunting it unnecessarily is a sign of weakness and political incontinence, not the hallmark of the truly powerful.
Remember the pretence (III) : Convince everyone they've won. Or as Mitchell puts it, Henry VIII was like a "big, smelly, terrifying Good Friday agreement". Protestants and Catholics alike thought he was one of them when really he was all about himself. Now Henry VIII was not a successful king, but he did retain power. He was essentially an overpowered screw-up, with almost everything he did going badly wrong, but he did understand how to wield his power to avoid losing it. This strategy, though, is again something that works best from a position of strength, a sort of iron fist in a velvet glove. If you have the strength to enforce your rule, you'll be all the stronger if you pretend you're not doing that. If Henry had openly picked a side there'd have been chaos.
You win or you die. Sometimes, when you get sufficiently powerful, you have no choice but to try for the crown. Harold was too powerful for any other ruler to have ever kept him alive; no medieval British monarch was ever usurped without dying suspiciously quickly afterwards. Theoretically, this could have happened. They could have abandoned their claims and gone off to be a monk somewhere, preferably very far away. But being king was fundamentally an extremely dangerous business, which is why the good ones took it extremely seriously. Once again, understanding where the real power lies, and not believing your own myth of being a chip off the old God, is crucial.
Have a higher purpose : be haughty, not naughty. This one I have to add myself. Most of your dealings should be transactional (more below), but if you can give yourself the air of a moral purpose, that can help set you up as something more than a mere mortal. This can mean denying your own followers from time to time, but the haughtiness of appearing above the petty material concerns can be very important in sustaining the belief that you're a little bit divine.
For god's sake, though, don't go nuts with this. Do this well and people will respect you, but ignore their base desires completely and they'll despise you. William II generally got away with it by being pragmatic and competent, which was fine in that he didn't really care about the Church... but it was less fine that he didn't care about fathering an heir.
And you absolutely can't be a zealot. You can't let ideological purity get in the way of pragmatism as the hard left does :
While, in principle, all the various kinds of lefties claim that their main aim is to keep the Conservatives out of power, in practice many left-wing groupings reserve their greatest animus for each other... That's what the hard left does – but that's not the problem. The problems is that's all it does... focusing its ire on people it calls Tories but who are in fact fellow Labour supporters – just ones who are a bit more centrist, a bit more capitalist, frankly a bit more realistic.
A medieval king could go on Crusade but that so far as the leaders were concerned, religion was playing a distant second fiddle to ambition and a chance for glory. A good king should give the semblance of devout belief but never try to court the fanatics or put prayer before power.
Secure your heir and legacy. Don't question the succession process. That doesn't mean you can't designate a different heir to the most obvious candidate, but you have to work within the system. One ruler tried the half-baked idea of saying that only heirs conceived while they were king – rather than before they themselves ascended the throne – were legitimate, which didn't catch on. But you could usually still get a way with a fair bit of wiggle-room. Actually I was quite surprised at how flexible things could be : the typical view that it's the eldest male son was a relatively late concept in medieval sovereignty.
So don't question the process, because otherwise you open a can of worms. It risks people Asking Questions like, "if we don't have to do it this way after all, why can't we do it that way ?", and that leads to chaos. You also need an heir as part of your duties as ruler, to help prevent a power struggle form occurring in your own lifetime. You definitely want to avoid would-be leaders scheming in advance (even if they only ever do so behind the scenes). No, if everyone knows where they stand as soon as possible, so much greater the chance of a stable reign and a smooth transfer to the next one.
Don't have favourites. Or at least, don't let personal feelings get in the way of political business. Edward II, says Mitchell, could have had as much sex with men as he wanted if he'd only kept Piers Gaviscon in the closet and not given him political power he neither deserved nor was suited to. Favouritism like this was what led to political strife : a good king had to be transactional, giving nobles who supported him positions of influence regardless of whether he personally liked them. Worse still was the case of favouritism with a regency period, which would lead to chaotic power struggles to control the heir. The result was the heir would grow up to be a little shit like Richard II or a moron like Henry VI.
Respect the social norms. Try not to innovate, because innovation leads to thinking, and thinking will lead to everyone thinking that the whole "kings" idea was just made up. If you have to do something new, and you will from time to time, present it as restoration, not novelty. People like things which already work, and trying to hearken back to an imagined golden age seems to tap at something deep in the psyche.
This is not to say that you can't make use of innovations which do occur. Edward I, being somewhat despotic, was oddly fond of parliaments because he was able to use them to extract money. He made the system work to his own advantage, rather than trying to change it. When change happens, it's far better if you can guide the process and pretend it was like this all along : nothing's really changing, so no reason to doubt the divine right of kings or anything silly like that.
Suppress doubt. Mitchell's number one point is that you have to stop people from wondering what might happen next. When they do that, they get ideas that maybe they can change what happens, and that leads to rebellion and ruin. In fact the paramount task of any good medieval monarch is to stop this happening. I'd say that if you only do two things as ruler, make it these : understand the source and limits of your power, and make sure everyone knows what's going to happen next.
That's where the importance of those transactional relationships comes in. You have to both bestow favours and riches on your supporters and deal harshly with traitors. This is a weak society you're dealing with, and the moment it loses confidence in the process is the moment all hell breaks loose. But this is not to say you should be cruel, exactly. In fact, harming innocents (like Richard III and the Princes in the Tower) is liable to make you massively unpopular. Not only are certain things simply morally unacceptable even in an age of widespread violence, but they also make you unpredictable. If you go around murdering innocents, why should anyone trust you ? Similarly, if you reward your favourites rather than your actual supporters, what's the point of anyone following you ? Being capricious won't help you at all.
Generally what you want is to be essentially fair and reciprocal, albeit by the standards of the time. That can mean chopping off heads or gouging out eyes when people rebel, and if you don't do this then all that will happen is more rebellion. Start being truly psychopathic about it and you're probably in real trouble, but if you don't follow the convention then people will lose all trust for you. Likewise, you want to avoid being bribable and controllable. You want to be broadly politically (not militarily) predictable, but not perfectly or precisely : if people know exactly what reward or punishment they'll get, they can start to manipulate you. You need to be your own person.
Conclusions
So that's how to rule medieval Britain. Know where your power comes from, be basically predictable, at least occasionally principled but generally transactional, treat the job seriously, and don't innovate more than you have to. Do all of these and you're likely to come out on top. Producing and designating an heir, and at least having some role in their education, are optional but useful extras.
David Mitchell's ideal medieval monarch, then, isn't exactly a nice bloke, but he's not a cunt either. Unlike George R. R. Martin's depiction, short-term cynicism represented a catastrophic failure of the system, not a fault in human nature. When the system was run well, it functioned coherently. It made sense.
Was it a nice system ? Oh hell no, of course not ! It was dreadful. It kept the peasants in insane working conditions, prevented reform, and allowed international warfare as more of an aspiration than a failure. "Come on guys, if we all chip in, I reckon we might just have enough money to invade France this year". But then, anyone expecting to find anything Utopian in the medieval system clearly hasn't read the brief :
I reckon that, as soon as anyone starts seriously believing a system of government is at bottom rooted in justice and loveliness, they've let their skeptical guard down and are inviting the unavoidably imperfect to descend into the downright hellish. The world has never been fair, and cannot be made fair, and claims that it can are foolish or dishonest. It can be made fairer and attempts to make it less fair can be resisted. Optimistic realists seek improvement, not perfection.
Which is exactly right. As he also points out, everyone hates centrists; people seem to want to believe in literal heroes and villains, right and wrong, and don't make much allowances for anything in the middle. Because you aren't clearly picking a side, the thinking goes, you must be one of them.
And yet... from the deeply flawed medieval system, eventually something better emerged. It wasn't a clear, linear arc towards justice. It was deeply embedded in the process of a radical change in the entire world view, "the underlying truth of existence". Exactly how and why this happened is not something I would care to guess, but the fact is, social progress did occur. We weren't stuck in the medieval pit forever. Improvement is possible even without sudden revolutions. Not subscribing to the most extreme viewpoints in one's political tribe doesn't make one any the less determined for reform, and it certainly doesn't make anyone somehow a member of the opposite faction.
These compromises of principle in order not to upset people set the Church of England on its path. It is despised by many for this. It is deemed to be soft, lacking in intellectual and theological rigour, trying to please everyone. Proper convinced Christians, and indeed ethical people of any belief system, should, it is often proclaimed, be fearless about upsetting people in order to uphold their values. Maybe. But I reckon most of the people who genuinely have no fear of upsetting others don't just have no fear of it, they actively enjoy it.
I strongly agree with that one too. The moral purity brigade mainly act from a sense of entitled self-righteousness, a protest move rather than a struggle for real change. The perfect really is the enemy of the good, and sometimes, then as now, it could truly be a fatal one.
Finally, what did we get as the system improved ? Mitchell's answer is clear : Shakespeare. On people questioning his existence, he has this to say :
Who would want that to be true ? Rather than the actual truth ? Here's the actual truth : a man with a normal background and education, an impecunious member of the provincial bourgeoisie in a backward kingdom on a war-wracked island at the edge of civilisation, turned out to be the greatest writer, and possibly the greatest artist of any kind, who ever lived. So far. That might be the most life-affirming fact in the entire history of humanity. Sometimes it makes me want to cry with joy. It's such a celebration of what humans can be. To want the truth to be otherwise is an act of spite against the very sanctity of our species.
Which is a sentiment I thoroughly share.
I don't agree, in the end, that the medieval rulers contributed nothing comparable to later leaders, even if things like Magna Carta were actually failures of the system rather than its end goals. I think that some of the above lessons in leadership are plenty relevant to the modern world. But more than that, to understand the medieval world view is fascinating not just in itself, but in understanding who we are as a species. Who we are when we have to deal with very different surroundings to our modern world. How we cope without mass communications, how we reason without huge swathes of statistics, what our intuition is without detailed data. What makes sense, on a base level, to the human brain, and why we still cling to some damn fool ideas today.
As for Shakespeare, I think geniuses of his calibre are something that happens almost regardless of the system we have in place. The challenge we should set ourselves is not "can we make more Shakespeares ?", because we can't : they happen or don't happen uncontrollably and regardless of circumstances. But we can ask whether our system is the best one to allow more normal people to make their best contributions. The medieval system was absolutely shit at doing that. The modern system is a staggering improvement – it isn't a different kind of bad, it's demonstrably, unimaginably better – but with its consumerism, bullshit jobs, pointless discrimination and myriad of other flaws, it's clear that we still have a long way to go. We, at least, actually value innovation. Maybe that gives us more hope than even the most skilful medieval king, who was, at core, just a thug in a shiny hat.
