*Feudal monarchies, rather, where the king's power was constrained by custom and rival interest groups (not just against him but also each other) in the Church, the nobility & the towns/burghers. Absolute monarchies emerged in the 1600s and quickly gave way to revolutionary regimes which took their centralist & bureaucratizing tendencies further in just 100 years.
Well, I guess there was also Imperial China, but that had its own problems.
*Feudal monarchies, rather, where the king's power was constrained by custom and rival interest groups (not just against him but also each other) in the Church, the nobility & the towns/burghers. Absolute monarchies emerged in the 1600s and quickly gave way to revolutionary regimes which took their centralist & bureaucratizing tendencies further in just 100 years.
Well, I guess there was also Imperial China, but that had its own problems.
Absolute monarchy is not very accurate. Even the French Sun King, je suis l'etat, had to grapple with significant power sharing agreements.
Listen to the first couple episodes of Mike Duncan's french revolution podcast if you are interested in the details.