The king is a puppet of a dictatorial deity. The solution is to overthrow god.
Turns out we were in a JRPG the whole time
Reach heaven through violence
Nepotism, son. It hardens in response to the lowborn existing within 20ft of my person.
This really gets into the foundational expectations of the setting.
In a reality structured to allow for Heroes, a leader must be one, or else be replaced by the next one to stroll through.
Hero might be the wrong word except in the traditional sense of demigod. There’s an implicit positive moral judgement in the term that being a monarch has very little to do with.
I’d also argue that it’s more that monarchy by its own self justification is based on the idea that the king protects, and therefore effectively owns, his subjects. A king might do that by effective governance however. If they can’t do it personally they’d need the loyalty of a champion, for example.
NANOBLESSINGS, SON!
If this king doesn’t have access to wizards casting every defensive spell in the player’s handbook on him every single day of his life, wearing the best magical armor in the world that glamors into ordinary royal attire, with defensive wards cast around his immediate vicinity every day, and he just let adventurers stroll into his castle armed while he was being lax with all these precautions, then he deserves to get Kirked.
