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DaFranker comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong
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This was my understanding as well; the Divine Right of Kings is a 'recent' thing and was for European kingdoms specifically.
The oldest example I can think of that is sort-of-related is the Mandate of Heaven, and it seems to me like various forms of divine ancestry were the most common things to rely on to assert monarchic authority.
The Mandate of Heaven was double-edged though, unlike the divine right of kings.. The peasantry was considered a force of nature, and a rebellion was thus a sign that heaven revoked the ruler's mandate.
The on-topic point I attempted to make was that both were appropriate arguments of the form that would definitely pass an ideological turing test for "people who are rationalizing that their monarchy is the best thing ever".
IIRC, the Mandate of Heaven did help quite a bit in getting imperial rulers to not be total assholes, though.