> A good king is one who lets their kingdom unravel to be replaced by something a bit more democratic in a more-peaceful-than-the-French-Revolution style. That

> A good king is one who lets their kingdom unravel to be replaced by something a bit more democratic in a more-peaceful-than-the-French-Revolution style. That's a rather shocking statement. Letting a kingdom unravel is a recipe for chaos and therefore intrinsically opposed to the peace and the common good of the society governed. A king who would do that would ipso facto be a bad king. A transition to a more republican style of government is so a plausible consideration, but this would not be the unraveling of the kingdom, but a reform. (Of course, sometimes tyrannical forces within a kingdom may gather enough strength to force armed resistance against them, but then it is not the king who causes violence, but rather those tyrannical forces, and the king is right to defend his people against them in proportion to the threat they pose. On other occasions, that tyrant is the king himself and thus one who must be opposed in proportional manner.) I also wish to note that whatever the flaws of the ancien regime, the French Revolution was a despicable orgy of violence and that our Jacobin school textbooks ought to edited to reflect this fact.