“But why?” he asked Deliamber. The Vroon replied, “Why? is a useless question in matters of spiritual progress.” - Robert Silverberg

Beauty is a magnet: repels some, attracts many, leaves no one unmoved.

But the mighty computer is stupid. Thinking with the speed of light but unable to cross the gaps of intuition.

The King is an absolute monarch, and I mean absolute. Whatever he says, goes. There’s no council of nobles, no senate, nothing that remotely challenges the King’s authority. He’s got courtiers and bureaucrats, sure, but the whole empire is essentially his own private property, to rule as he pleases.
It sounds like a recipe for disaster. Certainly such an arrangement always has been, in historical times. No empire can hope to have an unbroken string of capable rulers. This king or that one might be all right, and maybe as much as a century can go along without any troublemakers reaching the throne. But sooner or later some madman is bound to come along, a Nero or a Caligula or a Hitler, somebody who won’t be able to handle absolute power, who runs amok and causes terrible chaos.