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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeavenShallBurn" data-source="post: 3691350" data-attributes="member: 39593">Precisely he was king because he was BETTER.  His deeds were exploits of legend and he was descended of gods his arete was enormous and it would have been impossible for him to do anything but lead because others would know his greatness and naturally seek to follow him.Yes but during most of the past the ability of religion to enforce itself at a distance was very limited.  Basically it gained this power under two conditions when a single religion had sole hold of a region and the secular powers were weaker than the church, or when the State used the church as a tool to drive home its own aims.  For most of history in most parts of the World the power of religion was rather limited and small in scope for all its ability to affect belief and perception.Essentially the problem here is you are applying the real world to a place with a very different dynamic.  The levels are what make the difference, personal power in the real world is much more limited in nature due primarily to the massive increase in combat ability and toughness of high level characters.  Second your examples are all from after the development of the Nation-State, a fairly recent development and firmly post-renaissance.  Without the nation-state their is no State to have a duty to, duty belongs to individuals, their is no organized mechanism of government separate from the individuals who carry it out.  Take a good long look at the concept of arete it's not "me,me,me" nor "money.money, money" those are both strawmen thrown up to hinder actual discussion of the topic.  Arete is the concept of worth through act and respect for greatness and it drove societies for far longer than Country or Church have even existed as motivations.  Basically you're looking at the entire political spectrum of D&D campaign worlds from a very modern perspective with developments not necessarily present.  For Eberron they would be cogent, for parts of the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk they would be cogent but they are not necessarily the baseline. And when you throw the massive discrepencies in power between low and high levels they only emphasize this.  Without the mechanism of the nation-state high level characters would form the nucleus of authority because their arete would draw them into leadership one way or another.</blockquote>

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