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Comment by jungler | Hacker News Reader

Well, if I had observed all of it, I would be implicated, wouldn't I?

Most of the material comes second-hand. It's not hard to open up a biography of a powerful figure and dissect it.

It seems more likely that at certain times elites have found they have more in common with each other than the lower classes even across religious or ethnic boundaries.

This was certainly true for at least part of the Middle Ages. As Saladin famously said to Guy of Lusignan, "kings do not kill kings." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_of_Lusignan

It's not just "elites" (or I'm not clear on what you mean by that). For example, if you're a cop around dirty cops it's not enough just to not be a snitch. If you are around dirty business they will force you to accept bribes so you are in on the mutually assured destruction.

See also gangs, etc.

Pablo Escobar famously employed this tactic - you we're either on his payroll and accepted his cash or you were killed. "plata o plomo" - "silver or lead".

Some rather limited parts of the Middle Ages, perhaps. The Burgundians and Valois were pretty hard on each other.

It depends on the location and time. In the great English victories of the Hundred Years War many ordinary soldiers were killed whereas the French nobility were often spared. It did not hurt that the latter could pay fat ransoms, of course.

p.s., I'm reading up on the Burgundians. They do seem like a bloodthirsty lot. Thanks for pointing them out.

>As Saladin famously said to Guy of Lusignan, "kings do not kill kings."

And yet, most kings were killed by other kings or elite wannabe kings.

Yes, but it's wrong. Kings kill(-ed) kings all the time. For instance check out what the Saudis are doing these months.

That makes it a big question, why it's not happening more often then they can reproduce. And it's not like they are writing on their own wikipedia page "hey, I, prince Saudi XYZ don't kill Saddam Hussein's nephew because <reason>". So of course it's some guessing involved.

And I have yet to see a more convincing one than that they have dirt on each other. It makes a lot of sense. And while you might think that getting killed is worse than getting bad press or going to jail, for them it means losing power, and that's all they have.

So let's not get too romantic here and try to discuss the facts. If you have a really good reason they don't kill each other more often, then let's hear it. But morals or an "understanding" can't be it.

It really depends on the era and the type of nobility. Most of the European royal families were related in the 18th and 19th centuries--I can't think of too many instances of them killing each other with the gusto of, say, the leaders of the French Revolution. Exceptions like the killing of the Duke of Enghien blackened the reputations of the perpetrators, in this case Napoleon and Talleyrand.

The more interesting counter-examples are cases like the succession struggles in the Ottoman Empire, which after a couple of generations ran on the Highlander principle. The last brother standing became the Sultan.

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