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> His meal was not long, for he did not favour elaborate food, saying that such food bothered his stomach and disturbed his memory. He drank clear and simple wi
by braza 1y ago
> His meal was not long, for he did not favour elaborate food, saying that such food bothered his stomach and disturbed his memory. He drank clear and simple wine, light in colour, well cut, and not much quantity nor great variety. Like David, to rejoice his spirits, he listened willingly at the end of his meal to stringed instruments playing the sweetest possible music.
For me, the most curious thing here would be to know if a person in today's world in 5th percentile in wealth (i) would have (i) a larger life expectancy than a king in the 15th century, (ii) more food security, and (iii) more life opportunities.
Every time that I hear those stories from medieval times, as soon as I become fascinated by their tales and so on, I imagine how hard it would be to live there, even as a king.
Does someone know any reliable sources about that kind of comparison?
- dan-robertson 1y agoI assume someone in the 5th percentile of wealth is going to have very negative wealth which is only really possible in developed countries, eg an American medical student or a doctor who is part-way through paying off their loans, or someone suffering from massive credit card debt / car loans. (I think this isn’t really what you were thinking of though. I think the poorest people in the world still live, in many ways like medieval peasants except with much lower infant mortality and somewhat net food security)
- LudwigNagasena 1y agoThe correct metric is probably something like Actual Individual Consumption.
- mihaic 1y ago> someone in the 5th percentile of wealth I find the percentile measure terrible to technically mean 95% of the population, but is often colloquially understood the other way around. It's like German numbers, when people say five and forty to mean 45. The general population rejects needless complexity.
- psychoslave 1y agoThe general population cultivate disagreement on every matter it can afford to.
- fmbb 1y agohttps://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub... Hunger worldwide has been getting worse for the last quarter century or so. 733 million people don’t have food security. I think about 5-10 million die every year from starvation. In medieval times there were famines, but they were caused by there not being enough food to go around due to disease or bad harvests. Today millions of people starve even if there is no bad harvest or animal pandemics.
- rtsil 1y agoAnd malnutrition isn't only about lack of food, it's also about mediocre quality of food: > Similarly, new estimates of adult obesity show a steady increase over the last decade, from 12.1 percent (2012) to 15.8 percent (2022). Projections indicate that by 2030, the world will have more than 1.2 billion obese adults. The double burden of malnutrition – the co-existence of undernutrition together with overweight and obesity – has also surged globally across all age groups. Obesity will soon, if not already, become a major public health disaster in poor countries.
- HKH2 1y agoWell giving people food doesn't solve hunger problems because those people just breed. Why doesn't Africa have more farms and infrastructure?
- IAmBroom 1y agoShort answer: Climate (even without climate change) and war. Long answer: Western colonialism.
- Ishxnxibz 1y ago> Long answer: Western colonialism. How do you explain lack of farming / infrastructure prior to colonialism? More or less all environments populated by sub saharans struggle with infrastructure. This is true before, during, and after colonialism.
- raincole 1y agohttps://history.stackexchange.com/questions/43292/what-was-the-life-expectancy-of-a-medieval-european-monarch https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/43292/what-was-t... > For England, including the Kings of Wessex from Æthelberht on (the first I could find a birthdate for), and the Kings of England up to Edward IV, whose reigns extends to 1483 (and consequently into Modern Ages, if we take the usual date of 1453 - the fall of Constantinople - as the end of the Middle Ages), I found the average age of death of monarchs to be 44 years. (http://ideias.wikidot.com/reis-da-inglaterra-na-idade-media http://ideias.wikidot.com/reis-da-inglaterra-na-idade-media) Life expectancy is longer than that in even the poorest countries today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#/media/File:Life_expectancy_UN_map_2023.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
- gampleman 1y agoAnd very very importantly, this is taking the death ages of kings (i.e. people who lived long enough to actually become monarchs) compared to life expectancy at birth (i.e. people who lived long enough to be born). Given that until roughly the 1700s infant mortality was brutal (according to [1] fully 50% of children died before reaching adulthood), this comparison becomes even starker, since average life expectancy of a crown prince at birth would be far lower (somewhere in their 20s). [1] https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ii-starting-at-the-end/ https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an...
- bluGill 1y agohow much of that early death was poison or in war?
- rcxdude 1y agoGiven their position, kings and other members of a warrior elite generally would likely have downwards pressure on their life expectancy from that.
- psunavy03 1y agoThis "average life expectancy in the ancient world" thing is nothing more than an illustration of when to pick the median over the mean because the data is skewed by outliers.
- em500 1y agoNot that I have any direct knowledge, but I think a real king (either medieval or modern day) has a huge number of constraints on life opportunities. They have a lot of nominal wealth, but probably also too many obligations and duties (real or perceived) to just say, the heck with it, I'm going to be a full time traveling musician or rock climber or some such.
- walthamstow 1y agoWe've seen this recently in British and Japanese royal families. Some people just don't want it, and to get a normal life they have to leave the monarchy.
- pjc50 1y agoThis is reminding me of folk tales where the king, prince or princess disguises themselves and goes among the commoners, but I can't name a definite example of the trope at the moment.
- cyberlimerence 1y agoI think there are multiple versions of this. One example is Gråkappan.[1] It was mentioned in the Severence series, funnily enough. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XI_of_Sweden#Greycoat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_XI_of_Sweden#Greycoat
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoAladdin
- samlinnfer 1y agoKangxi emperor being disguised as a commoner in some kind of undercover boss scenario is a common trope.
- bmn__ 1y agohttps://allthetropes.org/wiki/King_Incognito https://allthetropes.org/wiki/King_Incognito
- pjc50 1y agoI remember many years ago the Economist pointed out one of the Rothschilds died young of something that would have been readily solvable with penicillin, but no amount of money could get you something that didn't exist yet. I'm going to go with a cautious "yes" to the first: the ages at death of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs are not great. "No" on the second (king is never going to have to worry about food security, that's for the peasants) And "life opportunties" .. bit of a divide by zero situation. As king, you technically have all the opportunities. But you can only do things which actually exist at the time. And you're bound by the social and religious conventions of the time, which you mess with at your peril. Doing so worked for Henry VIII but not for the various Georges. See, for example, the controversy over whether James 6 might have been gay.
- pjc50 1y agoAddendum: food security was assured, food choice was very restricted by modern standards. Remember the medieval period is pre-Colombian exchange, so no potatoes, no tomatoes, no peppers. Some spices, but a different range to what modern palates are used to. No refrigeration either, so you're limited to seasonal availability. In the winter that means you're eating a lot of root vegetables and bread, even if as king you're guaranteed a supply of fresh meat and fish (from the royal holdings dedicated to producing it). Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury This is where you get the memes about shocking medieval Europeans with a time travelling bag of Doritos: both the bag and its contents are completely impossible items for them. Worth noting that durable items could be shipped long distance - precious metals, gems, textiles - but foodstuff shipping was more limited to high value density stuff like spices and the European wine trade. Speaking of wine: no modern stimulants. No coffee, no tobacco, no weed, no cocaine, no opiates. No painkillers, no anasthesia. For all those situations, you have one option: alcohol. A huge number of critical historical decisions were taken by people who would fail a brethalyser.
- defrost 1y agoQuite a few precursors to modern stimulants though, there were many Solanaceae (nightshade) variations in Europe, from harmless through high to deadly. Papaver somniferum (opium poppy) got about the place quite a bit (according to archaeologists at least. Hemlock and henbane were both used as painkillers and dulling agents .. up to unconsciousness and death, depending on dosage. Added: Monastery herb gardens often had quite the range, eg: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/articles/7-magic-potions-grown-by-monks/ https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/ar...
- ramses0 1y agoI've made it a hobby to compare my current standards of living to "When would this be kingly?" We've traded down so much on quality of products (and sometimes: quality of life) but making a conscious decision to "live like a king" in a lot of cases isn't that hard. Simplest example? Indoor plumbing: Boom, 15th century king. Silly example? I got my wife seven silk pillow cases one year as a Christmas gift. A bit spendy, but instantly "living like a king". We don't have "the royal kitchens", but do have Door-Dash. We took a tour of a castle somewhere in Canada (probably Craigdarroch) and they had a bunch of sitting rooms and reading nooks with extra lights and stuff... Steal Those Ideas! You too can live like a king, you just have to rewind a century or two, and be strategic about the luxuries you pick.
- athenot 1y agoI love this! It's really a mindset of taking seemingly common things that we take for granted, and reconsider them under a fresh look to appreciate how amazing they actually are.
- audinobs 1y agoChild mortality is the best example of what we take for granted. "The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday" https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-all-time-child-mortality-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041693/united-states-al... It is so horrendous that I don't think we are really able to process the difference in 2025.
- psychoslave 1y agoI don't know how common it is, but having consommable water delivered at home, being able to take daily shower and just having to push a button to get rid of my shit, always leave me in amazed state. I wish every human could enjoy all these "commodities" and more.
- thesuitonym 1y agoCouple of points on life expectancy: If you made it to age 15, it was likely you'd live to be 60-80. Life expectancy wasn't lower in the past because people died earlier, they just died as children at a much higher rate, but there are some important caveats. In King Charles V's day, a simple cut that today we would not even think twice about could prove fatal from infection. Add to that the common plight of royal families being extremely inbred (I'm not sure if this was the case for Charles V) and it is actually likely that most people alive today, regardless of wealth, would likely live longer than him. Now, when you compare a low wealth person today to a peasant from the medieval era, if you remove child mortality, they likely had a similar life expectancy, although again, the modern human is more likely to have access to antibiotics, regardless of wealth--as others have mentioned, they just didn't exist back then.
- mistrial9 1y ago> a simple cut that today we would not even think twice about could prove fatal from infection maybe .. most mammals do not get infections from an ordinary cut.. it is humans that are uniquely weak that way source: retired medical surgeon
- IAmBroom 1y agoExpert fallacy. Nothing in your career particularly informed you of non-human mammal infection rates, unless you moonlighted as a veterinarian.
- thesuitonym 1y agoThat's why I said `could', instead of `would'.
- ainiriand 1y agoMy cat almost died from an infected wound from the bite of another cat, so maybe it depends on the wound.
- crabbone 1y agoWith how many times you find: "horse and man fell to the ground", and "he smote him such a buffet", and "armed himself at all points", "hauberk covered in blood" and so on... I'd think that life expectancy wasn't exactly great... Wasn't Arthur alone responsible for the untimely death of like a dozen kings? :)
- biophysboy 1y agoYou might be interested in "A Distant Mirror" by Tuchman