Anime & Manga
"First, nobles should have the behavior of a noble, and wear a sinister smile at all times! It should be more like... eyes that want to rape every inch of my body! He doesn't get mad when his staff screws up? Is he an idiot? If a maid makes a mistake, he should use that excuse to do anything he wants to her! That's the proper way for a noble! As a noble, he should have the guts to make all the maids pregnant! Simply put, the type I like is the total opposite of that man, who could do good things even when I'm not around. He shouldn't be too eye-catching, either too fat or too skinny...If he looks down on the hardship of life and just wants to live his life easily like trash, that would be great. If he has debts, that’s even better! He also has to drink all day and refuse to work, always grumbling that ‘this is the fault of society’. He will then hit me with empty beer bottles and tell me: ‘Hey Darkness, use your slutty body to earn back some cash!’ (Immodest Orgasm while fondling herself)"
—Darkness, KonoSuba
Live-Action Films
Oh how we all get richer
Playing the ruling game
Only the poor get poorer
Then we’ll all sing together
To Society we’ll be true
Then we’ll all sing together
Literature
He said, "This will be the procedure of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots.
He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers.
He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants.
He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants.
He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work.
He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants.
Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.
He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties, and some to do his plowing and to reap his harvest and to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers.
He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants.
He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants.
He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men and your donkeys and use them for his work.
He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his servants.
Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.
"People always expect the worst of the rich and powerful, Sire. It is said one can always tell an aristocrat: he reveals only those of his vices which will make him popular."
—Edric to Paul, Dune Messiah
The Fifty Families are a coalition of those families that used to rule Europa. Their ancestors were brigands and thugs who were so good at killing people that the remaining people started giving them things so they'd stop. This made them Royalty. These days their descendants never mention this, as it seems entirely too much like honest labor. While the Fifty Families can do nothing directly about Klaus, they still have enough influence that they can be an annoyance.
—Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess (a Girl Genius novel)
Tabletop Games
Behind the palace-lined boulevards and Bach fugues, however, boiled a witch's cauldron of secret societies, occultism and debauchery. The upper class of England applauded the easy verses of Pope and the mannered wit of Fielding, then adjourned to revel in drunken lust at the Hellfire Clubs. In France, Madame de Montespan commissioned Black Masses with infant sacrifices to draw the King's love, then to kill him. Few remember that the arch-scientist Newton spent more time studying alchemy than gravity. The Followers of Set flourished in "Enlightened" Europe.
—Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Followers of Set (revised)
Lavish gatherings, grotesque displays of wealth, and absolute ruthlessness are what it takes to make it to the top of the Empire’s society. Turning a former friend or colleague into a social pariah in order to move up is acceptable and even expected. Rumors, scandals, and slander are the currencies of the upper echelons. The aristocrats love spectacular rises among their ranks but hunger even more for dramatic falls. Never trust an aristocrat. They got to where they are through their moral failings.
Video Games
Alphonse is the type of nobleman who gives the upper class a bad name — he is arrogant, antagonistic, and does not care about anybody but himself. With friends in high places, he seems to be able to wriggle out of any legal trouble that he gets himself into.
—Alphonse trading card on Steam, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark
Hahahaha! I can never get enough of watching these stupid commoners! ♪
—Iris Zeppelin, RosenkreuzStilette
"She beats her servants."
"He is low born. He has killed more than once to keep it a secret."
"He enjoys tormenting the help."
"He is low born. He has killed more than once to keep it a secret."
"He enjoys tormenting the help."
—The Heart when pointed at a noble, Dishonored
"She first learned she could get away with murder at only twelve. She pushed a servant girl off the balcony, and no one made even the slightest fuss about the incident.”
"Spoiled and treacherous. Oblivious to the suffering just outside her door."
“She has a servant whipped every evening, whether or not anything in the household is amiss.”
"Of course he did it. There were scratches on his face – his shirt torn. But his family has influence so everyone looks the other way.”
“He bought their house and lands, and then waited until the Month of Ice to have them removed.”
"Spoiled and treacherous. Oblivious to the suffering just outside her door."
“She has a servant whipped every evening, whether or not anything in the household is amiss.”
"Of course he did it. There were scratches on his face – his shirt torn. But his family has influence so everyone looks the other way.”
“He bought their house and lands, and then waited until the Month of Ice to have them removed.”
—The Heart when pointed at a noble, Dishonored 2
Web Original
The killer has been fetishized, celebrated, glamourised and bigged up beyond belief. He has been transformed from a skulking trick into a top-hatted, cloaked, evening-dress-wearing toff with a sinister gladstone bag, riding around in a coach with a royal crest on the side. Gentleman Jack, the genteel and aristocratic killer. There's no doubt that part of this - alongside the various attempts to make him a royal, a freemason or a posh establishment figure covering up for Queen, Country and Lodge - is the submerged horror of a system in which the poor, especially poor women, were the playthings of the rich, material to be used when needed and then allowed to sink back into the slum.
Real Life
God save and keep the Tsar — far away from me.
—Russian saying, made popular by Fiddler on the Roof
A king should be tried not for the crimes of his administration, but for that of having been king, for nothing in the world can legitimize this usurpation, and whatever illusion, whatever conventions royalty surrounds itself in, it is an eternal crime against which every man has the right to rise up and arm himself.
—Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.
...as Scott Fitzgerald noted, the nobles are not like those would serve them from the heights. They are tough eggs who like a good time whether it is playing polo or murdering enemies of the state. They take nothing seriously except their pleasures and themselves.
—Gore Vidal, "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt"
