Were people happier under monarchies?

We have monarchies today.

Ask the residents of Tonga, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland and Thailand.

>>1528860
No.

>>1528860
>Is it surprising that the people could see their fate and that of the world only as an endless succession of evils? Bad government, exactions, the cupidity and violence of the great, wars and brigandage, scarcity, misery and pestilence -- to this is contemporary history neatly reduced in the eyes of the people. The feeling of general insecurity which was caused by the chronic form wars were apt to take, by the constant menace of the dangerous classes, by the mistrust of justice, was further aggravated by the obsession of the coming end of the world, and by the fear of hell, of sorcerers and devils. The background of all life in the world seems black. Everywhere the flames of hatred arise and injustice reigns. Satan covers a gloomy earth with his somber wings. In vain the militant Church battles, preachers deliver their sermons; the world remains unconverted. According to a popular belief, current towards the end of the fourteenth century, no one, since the beginning of the great Western schism, had entered Paradise.

--Johan Huizinga, the Waning of the Middle Ages

>>1528860
Some were, some weren't

>>1528860

Given that the number of armed revolts per polity per year was higher when monarchies were in than it is now, I'm guessing no.

File: 1445712177293.jpg (23KB, 480x600px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 480x600px

>>1528892

People are happier when they are further from the exercise of power; or when they have more influence over the exercise of power.

Monarchs tended to allow mini-monarchs to rule underneath them, any of them could be worse than the top monarch. In France, the Louis' did their best to consolidate power into their hands, but disempowering the mini-monarchs would have resulted in a coup eventually, and did result in revolution in fact.