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Did people really commonly believe in the inevitability of the "divine right of kings"? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Contemporary anticapitalist narratives sometime compare a supposed inevitability of capitalism currently for globalised societies with the supposed (religious) inevitability of monarchies before the Industrial Revolution.

How comparable are those beliefs in their respective hold on societies before and after the Industrial Revolution?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I doubt there's any hard evidence, most commoners couldnt read and would never have wrote shit like that down even if they could.

What we do have is things like plays. Shakespeare seems high-class these days, but was written for commoners. And was often critical of nobility and showed they were flawed regular people.

Anything worse than that, and you were likely to lose your head.

So I feel like the safe bet was commoners hated the royals, and just couldn't do anything about it.