When did the aristocracy go from "rule by the best" to "fancy fucks who contribute nothing to society"?
>>1163051
Since inception.
When you have to defend your right to rule it's because people already call you a useless idiot and contest your competence. See also: divine right.
When the "rule by the best" generations started todie off and only people born to the title remained.
>>1163051
It was never rule by the best.
Also when Louis XIV built Versailles and removed nobles from their lands and obligations and had them play court intrigues instead.
>>1163051
"the best" just means those with high status, privileges and money
>>1163051
It started as rule by the richest landowner or good warrior or simply the buttbudy of the current ruling monarch.
>>1163051
>rule by the best
Top kek
>>1163164
That's the literal meaning of aristos-kratos.
some time in the 19th century
>>1163273
and north korea calls itself a democratic republic
>>1163051
Well you see, people tell you're the best, so you dress as fancy, most of the times you're not the best, but you're hella fancy.
There's a difference between aristocracy and meritocracy.
>>1163051
Centralization.
>fancy fucks who contribute nothing to society
That's only western Gayrope. And more specifically, France.
>>1163051
When nobility passed from actually capable and semi independant administrators of duchies and counties to useless remnants of an old order powerless and with only nominal titles.
Absolutism destroyed nobility
>>1163051
It was always like that in europe because Europeans were too dumb to create a civil service exam like the based Chinese.
Ideally the most capable guys got "promoted" by the ruler to the status of aristocracy. But then those guys had idiot children and so on.
>>1163458
mandarins could be just as shitty though.
The masters of mankind have always lived by the vile maxim. Take everything for yourself and leaving nothing.
I haven't a clue, OP
>>1163051
When enlightenment and post-enlightenment thinkers started making shit up and passing it off as profound fact
>>1163458
Scholar-Officials formed an aristocracy too m8. Hence Imperial China could be considered to have an aristocracy even if the Nobility has long died away.
To be fair however, Scholar-Officials weren't born, their sons have to undergo through the same processes. Except unlike plebs, the lucrative government salaries and connections meant they had an easier time.
>>1163598
Same thing with Janissaries & Devshirme bureaucrats in the Ottoman Empire.
Not making power hereditary isn't enough to keep elites from becoming asshats.
>>1163051
The best often still end up near the top, especially if they weren't born too low-status. Advisors and other decision makers are often more powerful than the ruler himself, despite not getting the status and recognition that the ruler gets, and being replaceable on a whim. But, yeah, the chance of someone truly great being born in an aristocracy is pretty small. Even with qausi-eugenic marriages, genetics is random enough that it's hard to draw multiple aces.
>>1163051
The moment it was conceived
>>1163051
A lack of competatition
Warring aristocratic naturally mean whoever has the best state and military management will eat up those that are worthless.
>>1163437
This.
As monarchies centralized they castrated the competence of almost all families but their own.
