How to Be Royalty

A concise guide with examples

Have you been accused of having Narcissistic Personality Disorder? That’s such an ugly label, and so unfair! Here’s why you should ignore that accusation:

There are two kinds of people in the world: Royalty and Peons. You, obviously, are Royalty. You may not have a title, a crown, a palace, billions of dollars or pounds, or Jeffrey Epstein’s phone number on your iPhone. But you are Royalty by dint of your superior talent, your excellent taste, and your always correct judgment in all matters.

As a public service, here are some guidelines that will help you to celebrate and enforce your status as Royalty.

Note: the persons and scenarios in the following examples are entire fictional. Any resemblance to real persons or scenarios is entirely coincidental.

It’s OK When I Do It

This guideline, also known as the Double Standard Rule, is the most important one, which is why we list it first. As Royalty, your sacred duty is to monitor, correct, and shame Peons to be on their best behavior. This means that Peons must be held to a stricter standard than you. Things that you criticize Peons for doing are perfectly OK for you to do.

Example: Suppose you are on a scenic train ride with a Peon that you are trying educate, and the train is passing along Lake Champlain, with gorgeous views of the lake and the Green Mountains to the east, and the Adirondack Mountains to the west. It’s perfectly OK for you to ignore the scenery and use your cell phone for hours as the train passes this scenery, because you are Royalty and scenery is not important to you. But if the Peon should dare to use its phone for two minutes, criticize it with language like this: “What are you doing? You’ve got your nose buried in the phone all the time! You’re missing the scenery!” This should shame the Peon into putting down its phone.

Follow up this action by making the Peon look at five dozen pictures on your phone, explaining each one in exhaustive detail and zooming in on important details. Then show the Peon some lame, AI-generated humor videos on Instagram, in the expectation that the Peon will find them funny. If the Peon should object and say it would prefer to look at the scenery, get huffy and move to a different seat, and continue to use your phone for the next hour.

Surveillance State

Because, as stated earlier, your job is to educate the Peon, always monitor the Peon for everything it says or does. Violate its boundaries at every possible moment, and question its actions with the strongest possible judgments, but frame your monitoring as “helping” or “noticing”. You must monitor everything about the Peon, from sanitation to etiquette, with ruthless efficiency, as if you were a cardinal in the Spanish Inquisition.

Example 1: If the Peon says it’s going to rinse its hands in the bathroom, after it leaves, enter the bathroom and check whether the bar of soap is wet. If it’s dry, criticize the Peon for having unsanitary habits. Bonus points: If the Peon finds a cookie on the floor and attempts to throw it away, say that it’s perfectly OK to eat. This action combines the Surveillance and Double Standard guidelines.

Example 2: If the Peon is talking on the phone to a service agent, such as the guy at Enterprise car rental, interrupt the conversation many times with advice on how to handle the call. Bonus Points: If the Peon attempts to help you find an electrical outlet in a hotel room, criticize the Peon for “meddling”. This action checks the Double Standards box.

Humiliation

Another important tool for Royalty is to humiliate the Peon publicly, so as to magnify the shame. By getting the public to side with you on your education of the Peon, you are strengthening your position and weakening that of the Peon.

Example: Suppose you are on a bus with the Peon, and someone offers a seat to the Peon, but the Peon says, “No thanks, I’m getting off at the next stop." Reprimand the Peon immediately, saying that it didn’t express thankfulness sufficiently by taking the seat. Lecture the Peon about how it’s important for older Peons to be more gracious to younger people by accepting their offers without hesitation.

TV Seizer

(The title of this section is a nod to TV Caesar by Procol Harum.)

Because you, as Royalty, have superior taste, always take control of the TV when you enter a hotel room. Do not ask the Peon whether it wants the TV on. Simply turn it on and start flipping through the channels. If the Peon should object and say it prefers some quiet after a long day, reprimand the Peon in the strongest possible terms, using language like, “Just get over it!”

After dinner, when the Peon is attempting to fall asleep, turn on the TV, switch to the YouTube channel and start watching Coldplay concert videos. (You may have earlier pretended that you like classical music, but do not allow such music to be listened to, either on the TV or in the car.) Fall asleep in front of TV, leaving it up the Peon to turn off the noisy box.

Summary

The guidelines listed above are just a few of the ones you need to keep in mind as you continue to correct and shame the Peons around you, but they are the most important ones. By continuing to exercise your sacred duty to make the Peons better in all ways, you are making the world a more fit place for Royalty such as yourself to enjoy your higher station in life.