Why is royalty preferred in fantasy over science fiction?

[nixie]

It has been awhile since I read them but I'm pretty sure Mickey Zucker Riechert Renshai series didn't have royalty. Wizards and Norse Gods yes, royaty no.

 

[Joshua Jones]

Baen has a fair amount of hereditary aristocracy, and seems to have a deep philosophy that's quite 'in the blood' for military matters. But science fiction is generally a literature of change, rather than one big victory and happy ever after. Fantasy has more of a tendency towards stability, when we beat down this present menace we'll get back to the golden age when everything was better, and just dissolve into it neverchanging for several eons…

There's quite a nice lump of meritocracy in SF, and no real shortage of plutocracies, but it's generally accepted theocracies are bad, as they tend to damp out change. Still, the evil, all embracing bureaucracy seems to maintain its popularity over military authoritarianism as an antagonist.

But no-one seems to be attempting new, viable techniques of social organisation. It is clear even to me, a political near null spot, that democracy has faults - indeed, without considerable watering down is not viable at all for large masses of people. So why isn't SF throwing out alternatives, showing us possibilities for humans to live together differently, if necessary digging into older civilisations for different systems of organisation? Where are the Brave new Worlds, with brave new inhabitants? It's one of the functions of SF to point out potentials - and they all look bad, right now.

I tend to agree with you on this. Most of what I watch and read seems to have only a handful of variations on the same tropes with figurehead royals or evil emperors, corrupt aristocrats and suffering peasants.

Truth be told, one if the core themes of my SF WiP is the strengths and weaknesses of diverse governmental systems, and how ultimately, no political system can save us from ourselves. So, I have a near absolute, hereditary monarchy from a legal perspective, (though property ownership is still a thing) where the king determines the overall direction of the nation and what laws, social programs, and the sort he wishes to have, and parliament is something of an actualizing body which may advise the king if the laws requested contradict existing laws. However, the king is limited in that he is not above the law, may only serve as long as he is physically, mentally, and morally fit to do so (as determined by charter guidelines and parliament), may not make laws which are expressly to benefit himself alone (this would be considered a moral failing and make him suitable to be deposed), and ascent laws are strictly maintained. I also have republics, democracies, full communist nations (as in, no Big Brother figure), nations governed by a ruling council which are a mix of lifetime appointments and term elected individuals, a non-evil theocracy, a shareholder style plutarchy (as in, the more money one has invested in the national bank, the larger the share of the vote one controls), meritocracies, a genetic governance (they are non-human sentients, and they don't have governance as much as long term goals, and their engineered genes predispose them toward and make them suitable for their role in that purpose [except when they don't, of course), and others. And, each of these has strengths and weaknesses which are explored as fairly as I possibly can.

All this to say, I see the problem you describe as well, and try to remedy that in my own writing.