Discussion Retarded/Senile emperors

Why does it seem that almost all emperors in CNs are either retarded or going senile? They don't trust loyal subjects at all, giving the said subjects thousands of reason to hate them and revolt.

 

absolute power corrupt,
the emperor are mostly paranoia bunch.
always thinking who will dethrone them cause they themself mostly come with power thru plot, conspiracy and coup in some cases.

 

What else is the plucky hero and his bunch of plucky friends going to fight? An actual good guy who just happens to have a opposing path to the same goal as the the protagonist despite both having the same dream or vision for the future where suffering and evil is eradicated and the concept of justice and kindness is the standard upon which all man ,woman, and child strive for? please that won't stir conflict or make the readers root for the protagonist

 

Short answer: to move the plot forward

 

^same as above, so the ML has an excuse to take over the country without seeming like he's power-hungry. He's really doing it to better the lives of the people by dethroning a bad emperor so he can convince them to not only help him, but when he's successful at taking the throne there aren't any rumors denying his heavenly mandate. Plus there's usually a sibling prince who also wants the throne, after the protagonist gets it they sometimes show up in a rebellion to not only solidify the protagonist is the hero, but the hero's taking of the throne was not a bad rebellion like the sibling prince's.

 

Read up on the Roman Empire. It's got an extremely interesting history.

Appointing a horse Consul, burning down part of your capital city, collecting cobwebs, ...

And just madness in general: the years or 4/5/6 emperors, coups and assassinations galore, 50 emperors in 30 years, ...

This is all after the empire got emperors, of course. Some of them were competent, like Traianus or Augustus or Constantine. But there's a lot of wackos as well.

 

thats da wae of life...

 

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's a lot easier to usurp your ruler when you've been playing the loyal vassal card and knows more of their plans rather than being the disloyal vassal and never being told anything important because they sure as hell don't trust you.
And the really loyal subjects would never be obnoxiously flattering, but just go about their business as they should, trying not to interfere with politics. The ones that want to get advantages, get ahead or get rid of rivals ? They would flatter the hell out of the emperor, and if the emperor can't be assured of what they're up to, he can't trust them.

Basically, it takes one skilled disloyal subject to undo generations of your family ruling, whereas you can kill many loyal subjects at will to keep it like that, until they have had enough and one of them rebels .

 

You never took history lesson, did you?

 

But how do you know who's sincere and loyal and who's not unless somebody majorly fucks up? Even in more recent times spies and double agents are a thing. look up agent garbo, who was one of hitlers most trusted spy masters... And also a double agent.

This is also accompanied by the fact that Chinese royalty is the 1% of the 1%. When you have that much money and power from the moment you're born you start to doubt. How many people you know are friendly to you not because of your status and power? It's incredibly likely any acquaintance has something to gain from you, whether that gain comes through good or bad relation.

Also there's a reason why monarchies with ruling power doesn't coexist with democracy.

 

I did but they are too retarded, why can't we have competent emperors like the dark elf prince from TCF, or the king from book eating magician, etc.

Even Elf prince A from FFF-CLASS hero is reasonable.

 

You overestimated real life emperors, and most rulers in general.

 

answer : authors cant write complex chars and default to idiot char mode for kings.

 

I could go on about how characters are given foibles to generate drama or how emperors are human too and so even the best of them have their blind spots, but that isn't necessary. The original premise is just flat out wrong and there are tons of competent or wise emperors out there. My regular advice of reading better books doesn't apply here because the quality of the writing doesn't have anything to do with ability of the emperor, but the general principle still works.

 

Exactly. And when the author is not smart but wants to make the MC outsmart the ennemies, the only option is to make the ennemies dumb af. That being said, emperors are often the ennemies.

 

I feel like you haven't read Reverend Insanity.

 

I haven't but to be fair I rarely read chinese novels, their synopsis are ,to put it mildly, odd. Can you give me a better summary