The first thing one should do is define which "good" one is aiming for. It is important to recognize the differences between the definitions of "good," one of which pertains to morality and the other to effectiveness. Of course, there is still the matter of what one might consider to be moral/effective good, and that can get very complex very quickly, but it is still important to start here when writing; just be prepared to change your mind on certain details, especially if you are trying to learn as much as you can about what you might want to see happen for yourself (e.g. how does a ruler, monarch or not, enact a beneficial policy that you want while/after dealing with a system that may not allow for such?). To be fair, you do not need to flesh this out completely or even in a particularly realistic way - you can just start writing and figure things out as you go - but just keep this in mind. Personally speaking, how a good ruler came to be can be comparatively easier to write. A war hero is arguably the easiest route, and there is plenty of merit in this. Of course, as alluded in the video, this will not necessarily translate to good rulership - it can, but it might not. It really depends on what you want to establish for this ruler. One thing to bear in mind, though, is that absolutely no ruler rules without some manner of advising. This is why the evil adviser trope is a thing. Good advisers are just as vital as good rulers. Yes, you can just make your ruler omniscient and therefore not need any advisers. but speaking for myself at least, that gets boring mighty quickly. It kind of relates to the scene from _Adaptation,_ the one where Robert McKee yells about all stories revolving around some kind of conflict/struggle. Of course, if you want to create a moral/effective good omniscient ruler, you are more than welcome to try; just be aware that it will be like going for the hardest difficulty run in a Devil May Cry game. In my world (and I have talked about many times in this channel's comments, so I'll skip a lot of other details), the ruling goddess-queen had originally waged a divine war against her kind, and she did so to protect mortals (humans, elves, etc.). While she was not the only one to express desire to protect mortals, she was the first to take action to do so, thus sparking a rebellion. Throughout her rebellion, she displayed the hallmarks of a top-notch warrior and general, but she spent most of her time during this as a general, waging a defensive war. This rebellion stretched from months to years to decades and to centuries, with no one, not even the goddess, sufficiently chronicling this length, so many details ended up lost to time. What was well-chronicled, though, was how the rebellion ended (though technically, it is more of an armistice than an outright cessation of all hostilities). It turned out that a lot of her allies from the divine realm were actually sleeper agents. They had managed to embed themselves all throughout her chain of command, taking decades and then centuries to do so. The whole time, they operated like any faithful/loyal subordinate would, but they also slipped intel back to the divine realm. Eventually, well, the closest comparison I can give is that Order 66 happens (I am a massive Star Wars fans, so expect more comparisons to it than anything else), and with that, nearly 3/4 of all mortals end up slaughtered; some mortals had sided with the divine realm, only to be betrayed themselves after joining in this act. The goddess survives the attempt on her, and so do her closest allies, and they manage to escape with the survivors they were able to gather themselves. The breaking point for the goddess, though, came when they reached the shelter she had personally built for the survivors closest to her, and... well, because I used the Order 66 comparison, I will go ahead and simply compare it to the aftermath at the Jedi Temple and let you imagine how she takes it. The survivors continued to turn to her for leadership. Her aides recognized they cannot simply run and hide, so they concluded that an effective counterattack is needed and thus pitched it to the goddess. The goddess, meanwhile, had already reached a similar conclusion, but her mind was more on revenge than survival. Using what remained of their intel networks, they determined where in the mortal realm that the divine realm had been waging their war from. As for how it went down, well, it's basically another scene of the Jedi Temple, only based on the intro cinematic from the SWTOR MMO where the Sith attacked the Temple - and yes, the goddess and her allies basically "went Sith" on the divine, with the goddess herself personally leading it all from the front. After that, she sent her allies off to focus on what remains of the mortals, and with that, she secretly embarked on a personal revenge mission, resulting in her more-or-less eliminating what remains of the divine's commanders. There was one more battle - or rather, duel - that she took part in, but this is taking too long, so I will end this part here, though the outcome of it should be obvious enough. Anyway, despite a possibly desperate attempt to just disappear afterwards, her remaining loyal allies managed to track her down. Mind you, they did not force her back; rather, they refused to let her give up on the people she fought for, and they quite adamantly refused to let her give up on herself. Eventually, she relented, concluding that disappearing would not be the best course of action. Upon returning, she learned that they had discovered a new realm, one similar to the mortal realm while bearing a few hallmarks of the divine one. They determined it to be not connected to the divine realm at all, ultimately deciding to evacuate as many as they could to this realm. In the end, a sizable number of humans, for various reasons, were left behind in the mortal realm while all of the others escaped to this new one. From there, they gradually colonized this new realm, eventually building it up into a monarchy with the goddess as its queen. Her twelve closest allies - and arguably her only remaining friends - became her advisers, using their knowledge and experience from overseeing their earlier networks to establish new ones in this realm to provide everything they were back in the mortal realm as well as what they could not before because of the rebellion. The descendants of these twelve advisers formed the Twelve Great Families that look after all aspects of their new society, and the goddess remained on the throne, still somewhat connected to her people but otherwise usually uninvolved (not directly at least) for the centuries that pass until the events of the story for which I built this world for. While she remained queen the entire time and even over the course of the story I wrote, the people refuse to have anyone else as their queen, even when they accepted the transition into a representative democracy (that is in my story, but this post is already far too long, so I will not be detailing it here).
My world weirdly has like, three monarchs out of dozens of nations. (Used to be four, fourth got tortured to death by Changelings and his nation imploded in on itself thanks to said Changelings). The most powerful ruler of my world *is* a classical philosopher king, (his country is very Greek inspired after all) and his main schtick is that he’s a ruthless moral paragon. His goals are benevolent, he sees racial prejudice as both evil and in efficient, after all, he’d rather have the shapeshifters and super strong fire breathing elves on his side, rather than face the fate of the last king who pissed them off. So he bans prejudice, harshly, if you can be proven to discriminate, you can get locked up, executed if you’re in a position of power. Are you arguing against his goals of democracy(very long-term) and equality? Then you’ll be assassinated. He wants to turn his country into a utopia, his plans, if fulfilled, very well could. But anyone deemed a problem gets taken off the board instantly. These aren’t good people he’s killing, but it’s problematic. And shows a great flaw: he’s very much so “ends justifies the means”, seemingly without limit. So if he gets in his head that something more problematic is necessary, e.g. conquering the other nations to spread the enlightenment of his own nation, he could go from ruthless paragon to ruthless tyrant very fast.
The first thing one should do is define which "good" one is aiming for. It is important to recognize the differences between the definitions of "good," one of which pertains to morality and the other to effectiveness. Of course, there is still the matter of what one might consider to be moral/effective good, and that can get very complex very quickly, but it is still important to start here when writing; just be prepared to change your mind on certain details, especially if you are trying to learn as much as you can about what you might want to see happen for yourself (e.g. how does a ruler, monarch or not, enact a beneficial policy that you want while/after dealing with a system that may not allow for such?). To be fair, you do not need to flesh this out completely or even in a particularly realistic way - you can just start writing and figure things out as you go - but just keep this in mind.
Personally speaking, how a good ruler came to be can be comparatively easier to write. A war hero is arguably the easiest route, and there is plenty of merit in this. Of course, as alluded in the video, this will not necessarily translate to good rulership - it can, but it might not. It really depends on what you want to establish for this ruler.
One thing to bear in mind, though, is that absolutely no ruler rules without some manner of advising. This is why the evil adviser trope is a thing. Good advisers are just as vital as good rulers. Yes, you can just make your ruler omniscient and therefore not need any advisers. but speaking for myself at least, that gets boring mighty quickly. It kind of relates to the scene from _Adaptation,_ the one where Robert McKee yells about all stories revolving around some kind of conflict/struggle. Of course, if you want to create a moral/effective good omniscient ruler, you are more than welcome to try; just be aware that it will be like going for the hardest difficulty run in a Devil May Cry game.
In my world (and I have talked about many times in this channel's comments, so I'll skip a lot of other details), the ruling goddess-queen had originally waged a divine war against her kind, and she did so to protect mortals (humans, elves, etc.). While she was not the only one to express desire to protect mortals, she was the first to take action to do so, thus sparking a rebellion. Throughout her rebellion, she displayed the hallmarks of a top-notch warrior and general, but she spent most of her time during this as a general, waging a defensive war. This rebellion stretched from months to years to decades and to centuries, with no one, not even the goddess, sufficiently chronicling this length, so many details ended up lost to time. What was well-chronicled, though, was how the rebellion ended (though technically, it is more of an armistice than an outright cessation of all hostilities).
It turned out that a lot of her allies from the divine realm were actually sleeper agents. They had managed to embed themselves all throughout her chain of command, taking decades and then centuries to do so. The whole time, they operated like any faithful/loyal subordinate would, but they also slipped intel back to the divine realm. Eventually, well, the closest comparison I can give is that Order 66 happens (I am a massive Star Wars fans, so expect more comparisons to it than anything else), and with that, nearly 3/4 of all mortals end up slaughtered; some mortals had sided with the divine realm, only to be betrayed themselves after joining in this act.
The goddess survives the attempt on her, and so do her closest allies, and they manage to escape with the survivors they were able to gather themselves. The breaking point for the goddess, though, came when they reached the shelter she had personally built for the survivors closest to her, and... well, because I used the Order 66 comparison, I will go ahead and simply compare it to the aftermath at the Jedi Temple and let you imagine how she takes it.
The survivors continued to turn to her for leadership. Her aides recognized they cannot simply run and hide, so they concluded that an effective counterattack is needed and thus pitched it to the goddess. The goddess, meanwhile, had already reached a similar conclusion, but her mind was more on revenge than survival. Using what remained of their intel networks, they determined where in the mortal realm that the divine realm had been waging their war from. As for how it went down, well, it's basically another scene of the Jedi Temple, only based on the intro cinematic from the SWTOR MMO where the Sith attacked the Temple - and yes, the goddess and her allies basically "went Sith" on the divine, with the goddess herself personally leading it all from the front.
After that, she sent her allies off to focus on what remains of the mortals, and with that, she secretly embarked on a personal revenge mission, resulting in her more-or-less eliminating what remains of the divine's commanders. There was one more battle - or rather, duel - that she took part in, but this is taking too long, so I will end this part here, though the outcome of it should be obvious enough.
Anyway, despite a possibly desperate attempt to just disappear afterwards, her remaining loyal allies managed to track her down. Mind you, they did not force her back; rather, they refused to let her give up on the people she fought for, and they quite adamantly refused to let her give up on herself. Eventually, she relented, concluding that disappearing would not be the best course of action. Upon returning, she learned that they had discovered a new realm, one similar to the mortal realm while bearing a few hallmarks of the divine one. They determined it to be not connected to the divine realm at all, ultimately deciding to evacuate as many as they could to this realm. In the end, a sizable number of humans, for various reasons, were left behind in the mortal realm while all of the others escaped to this new one.
From there, they gradually colonized this new realm, eventually building it up into a monarchy with the goddess as its queen. Her twelve closest allies - and arguably her only remaining friends - became her advisers, using their knowledge and experience from overseeing their earlier networks to establish new ones in this realm to provide everything they were back in the mortal realm as well as what they could not before because of the rebellion. The descendants of these twelve advisers formed the Twelve Great Families that look after all aspects of their new society, and the goddess remained on the throne, still somewhat connected to her people but otherwise usually uninvolved (not directly at least) for the centuries that pass until the events of the story for which I built this world for. While she remained queen the entire time and even over the course of the story I wrote, the people refuse to have anyone else as their queen, even when they accepted the transition into a representative democracy (that is in my story, but this post is already far too long, so I will not be detailing it here).
Yeah, for sure, that's why the video has that preamble about Philosopher Kings and Goodness!
My world weirdly has like, three monarchs out of dozens of nations. (Used to be four, fourth got tortured to death by Changelings and his nation imploded in on itself thanks to said Changelings).
The most powerful ruler of my world *is* a classical philosopher king, (his country is very Greek inspired after all) and his main schtick is that he’s a ruthless moral paragon. His goals are benevolent, he sees racial prejudice as both evil and in efficient, after all, he’d rather have the shapeshifters and super strong fire breathing elves on his side, rather than face the fate of the last king who pissed them off. So he bans prejudice, harshly, if you can be proven to discriminate, you can get locked up, executed if you’re in a position of power.
Are you arguing against his goals of democracy(very long-term) and equality? Then you’ll be assassinated. He wants to turn his country into a utopia, his plans, if fulfilled, very well could. But anyone deemed a problem gets taken off the board instantly. These aren’t good people he’s killing, but it’s problematic. And shows a great flaw: he’s very much so “ends justifies the means”, seemingly without limit. So if he gets in his head that something more problematic is necessary, e.g. conquering the other nations to spread the enlightenment of his own nation, he could go from ruthless paragon to ruthless tyrant very fast.
its only been 16 hours but this is very good an deserves more attention
nice an easy to follow along, good job
Great thanks!