Well, I have 2 queens and 3 kings and despite me liking equals, the 2 queens rule their kingdoms more than their husbands and the 3 kings theirs more than their wives, which I guess allowed reality to flood in a bit to my story, as usually there is always just that one single person in charge a bit more than the other. But yeah the further I go into the story the more they are going to play a role, at first you see them giving orders and the main character even taking some for his own benefit, hes lost with amnesia and literally has to work with them to find his way home, their benefit in helping is the fact that his land has technology and resources theirs lacks, which could be beneficial for either kingdom. As for the grapes and watching things go down and about, I hate that reality, its very real and can be used for good storys, but at the same time I kind of despise someone who rules and does nothing. I like to think of the roman leaders who led their armys into battle, when things happen they don't sit and watch, they are apart of it, they are usually the ones leading it and taking on the world head on with their people.

I take a decent amount of inspiration from Julius Caesar when he built the bridge across the rhine and led his army to explore their territory, and the act alone made the others fear them, to where they just freely walked about and then left, right back across the bridge. Or Ramses II leading the biggest army of chariots in history into battle in Egypt against the Hittites.

And as for any leader who wouldn't do so... Well, the people won't let a weak man or women rule for long, you are either one with your people or you are nothing at all, you are put there because of your actual display of fortitude. So I think I've avoided that, and I guess my version of a king and queen is rather very very different of what is pretty much every other version/story, just a man high up on his throne away from reality, which in mine, they're more like ned stark from game of thrones, beheading the people themselves and taking matters into their own hands.

I would actually be very interested in reading some of it, it sounds like it would be a good read from what you've explained, I haven't posted anything of mine online, its been a work in progress for 3-4 years and I'm really hoping to publish it this year finally. So I've kept it really underwraps except for two people I've shared the first dozen chapters with. I've really had to work hard on the first two about a war, I made a game demo of those two chapters, so my main character was a mary sue because in the game thats the only way you see the story is if you do everything yourself, so I've removed a lot of that and a lot of the one liners and fleshed it out into something more cooperative with more interactions and reality and less edgy, much much less edgy things, although I do suspend belief in those first two chapters more than any other till this day, I've tried much more in the later story arcs to avoid that level of extremes and war. And I've also avoided making my character suffer as many injuries as he had, no one has that much blood no idea what I was thinking before I fixed it...

And I can believe that, back in school, growing up was literally me growing up I use to be very dumb might I add, but when I would start to fall for a gal, I would find myself trying to raise myself up a bit because of whatever stupid thought that made me think I wasn't good enough and normalcy wouldn't cut it, which it did, normalcy gave me much better relationships lol, but dumb me had to go and try to raise the bar for myself and as soon as I would try to plan out a thought rather than be honest, I would pick up on them picking up on me doing that. And that made it worse cause then I'd try to hide it, but in reality, you should just talk to people fucking normal and get out of your self doubt or for some others, out of their ego lol.

But yeah eitherway, I think its impossible to avoid some cliches, I have a fair share of weak willed men characters and weak willed women, but still a good bit of strong from both, seeings you cannot really get too far in the world, by doing nothing, so there is a bit of pressure to be self reliant.

Also, yeah, you pretty much got the same idea of a man as I do of a women, not above or below, just equal, you explained it better than myself lol, I've never really known how to put that into words, but Bonnie and Clyde was a far better example than a king and queen. I'd had an easier time saying a lion and a lioness relationship as a comparison lol.