Let's get a discussion going on monarchism. This is a political board after all.
In high school my teacher explained to us that monarchy is bad because when you get a bad ruler you can't vote him out. And sometimes you get crazy leaders (King George was supposedly crazy) or problems because of the incest between related royal lines. Of course we all know democracy also has issues.
The main defense of monarchy I'm familiar with is Hans Hermann Hoppe's 'Democracy: The God That Failed'. He's an anarcho-capitalist but argued that monarchy is better than democracy because of time preference.
wiki.mises.org
Democratic leaders have an incentive to satisfy immediate demands even when it would be better in the long term to do otherwise. Monarchs can look at the big picture since they don't have to worry about getting re-elected.
I've even heard that there was some consideration given to making George Washington the head of a new monarchy. And if you listen to conspiracy guys like Alex Jones supposedly all presidents have been descended from monarchs anyway and usually the candidate with the most royal blood wins. That could be a conspiracy, but it could also be their destiny (divine right of kings). And of course there are theories about royalty being descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, or from royalty from the lost tribes of Israel if you want to get into /fringe/ territory.
So I'm interested in reading defenses of monarchies as well as other historical systems generally seen as obsolete/barbaric, things like feudalism, serfdom, slavery, castes, the dark ages, the divine right of kings, the inquisition, the crusades, witch trials, theocracies, etc. And also unpopular views like the American Revolutionaries being on the wrong side, Galileo being the unreasonable one, etc. Partly for the novelty factor but also curious to learn. So post about any of that stuff, recommended books/videos, etc. Debate welcome.