Lovely! I’m perhaps a little weird in that I really like ritual and ceremony, and think they’re an important aspect of life we have too little of in the modern world. This kind of highly structured formality can of course become constraining and crushing if there’s too much of it, but If you ask me we’ve got the opposite problem going on, in that too much of the modern Western life is “formless”.
If I remember correctly, it’s been rare to non-existent in recent times, but in the medieval period there were times when it happened regularly. The Emperor nominally had all the power, but they were incredibly constrained by the court ritual and protocol. So a tradition developed where the Emperors officially retired once they had a suitably grown-up heir to take the throne (the definition of “suitably grown-up” varying significantly), and these retired Emperors were the actual rulers.
