I know this is an almost insane digression, but I found it quite interesting that the author theorized the net worth of King Lear. Lear must have been worth a

I know this is an almost insane digression, but I found it quite interesting that the author theorized the net worth of King Lear. Lear must have been worth a billion or two, in today’s dollars. Far more, I would say! The way I see it, if you converted the wealth of medieval monarchs, relative to the world they lived in, into modern day terms, they would be the richest people alive. Lear was the king of Britain in an era where the king was an absolute ruler, and nominally owned the entire country. How much is Britain worth? Nowadays the GDP of the UK is over 2 trillion dollars a year. https://www.google.com/search?q=britain+gdp https://www.google.com/search?q=britain+gdp GDP isn't a great match to the wealth of an absolute monarch, but government spending in the UK is about a trillion dollars a year. How much of that is an obligation, and how much could be extracted to count as personal wealth? I estimate about half of it, for an income the modern equivalent of 500 billion dollars. In terms of net worth, that income stream would be worth a present value maybe $5 trillion. So, obviously this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation of something that doesn't make all that much sense, but in relative terms I would argue those medieval absolute monarchs were far richer than any modern rich person. In absolute terms, of course, it's a much different story.