Tell me about eunuchs, /his/. They were a mainstay of pretty much every oriental royal court from the ERE to China, from the depths of antiquity to the end of Imperial China and the Ottoman Empire. Every time I read about something in that very broad range, I see that the primary sources complain about the influence of the perfidious and manipulative eunuchs on the king, and implying or stating that the general populace/nobility agrees that that's terrible and needs to be stopped.
If this was such a popular cultural view, why did it go on for so long everywhere? Sometimes a new ruler would banish the eunuchs from palace service, but they would always be brought back later on. Very rarely do contemporaries have anything positive to say about eunuchs, I can only guess that in fact hatred of eunuchs wasn't the general view, and a shitload of historians were just butthurt and jealous that they themselves weren't in those high positions, or that many, many, many kings were just deathly afraid of cuckolding.
>>1292194
Some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs and some become eunuchs for the glory of Heaven.
Also I would look up Constantine the eunuch's story. He was a big player on the Byzantine side during the Fourth Crusade. He help depose quite a few emperors. I would also look up the castrati who were castrated male singers and the last one that lived actually made some recordings. They were a big thing in Italy back in the day. Origen is also interesting.
Typically they could continue to be popular because they didn't have their own family loyalties and could serve as bureaucrats. This is kind of like priests (see first semi-quotation I posted) who ideally didn't have children to advance. Nobility disliked them because they wanted to influence the ruler instead of these people without connections or even families.
>>1292194
The point of a eunuch, and really most slave/foreign courtier positions, was to have a political faction theoretically loyal to the ruler and not a local aristocracy or interest. Thus they were set up from the very beginning as antagonists to native elites and commoners since they, as lifelong bureaucrats with no personal relationships outside of the court, would mostly care about and promote the bureaucracy that empowers and enriches them.
They kept getting used because as untrustworthy as they seemed to the locals, the ruler usually thought the same thing about local power bases and desired a way to counter balance their influence at court (or even his own household if he took noblewomen for wives and concubines instead of slaves).
>>1292234
Also they don't fuck ur wife
>>1292244
That, too.
Then again, it depends on the type of castration. There are stories about eunuchs who only had their balls removed still being able to get it up and fuck harem sluts behind the ruler's back.
>>1292194
>Very rarely do contemporaries have anything positive to say about eunuchs
Eunuch singers were incredibly popular during the baroque. Some of them supposedly had an incredibly voice range, reaching the highest octaves with the strength of a manly voice. Of course castration doesn't necessarily turn you into a talented singer, so for many this career option didn't work out so well, still, quite a few became rich and famous that way.
