They might approve of the elite not being driven by boredom to constantly murder each other in useless duels.
Apologies, historical pedantry follows...
“Useless” duels started out as a way for nobles to legally murder each other (a mark of class distinction from the commoners who would actually be committing a crime when killing each other—useless only in the sense that status signalling is useless), but the elites weren’t stupid. Dueling evolved from sword-fights to the death to sword-fights to first blood, and then to gun fights with rules that tended to minimize fatal outcomes.*
*A legacy of this is the difference between fencing rules in foil/sabre and epee. IIRC, the former have highly structured rules about advancing and retreating (because being ignoring such things in early duels would get you killed); the latter is much less structured because it is based on duelling after the change from to-the-death to first-blood.
**Though this varied by time and geography. The Russians, for example, had a nasty tendency to toss the “civilizing” rules out the window. The Wild West variant as well.
We are talking about a specific time and place. 500 years ago in Europe a lot of duels were still deadly.
Also, just because duels may have been necessary for gaining and maintaining status at that time doesn’t mean that individuals would prefer that the most successful status seeking strategies were so dangerous. Today, you do not risk your life in the status games, and yes I think that would appeal to many average noblemen even 500 years ago.
Apologies, historical pedantry follows...
“Useless” duels started out as a way for nobles to legally murder each other (a mark of class distinction from the commoners who would actually be committing a crime when killing each other—useless only in the sense that status signalling is useless), but the elites weren’t stupid. Dueling evolved from sword-fights to the death to sword-fights to first blood, and then to gun fights with rules that tended to minimize fatal outcomes.*
*A legacy of this is the difference between fencing rules in foil/sabre and epee. IIRC, the former have highly structured rules about advancing and retreating (because being ignoring such things in early duels would get you killed); the latter is much less structured because it is based on duelling after the change from to-the-death to first-blood.
**Though this varied by time and geography. The Russians, for example, had a nasty tendency to toss the “civilizing” rules out the window. The Wild West variant as well.
We are talking about a specific time and place. 500 years ago in Europe a lot of duels were still deadly.
Also, just because duels may have been necessary for gaining and maintaining status at that time doesn’t mean that individuals would prefer that the most successful status seeking strategies were so dangerous. Today, you do not risk your life in the status games, and yes I think that would appeal to many average noblemen even 500 years ago.