The idiot king, a figure of much bemusement in medieval Europe, is the most powerful smoke screen imaginable. A hapless buffoon, dull and suggestible, who is ostensibly bestowed with power but has their strings pulled from beyond

This is all modern-day activism and democracy https://twitter.com/acczibit/status/1385709326556438535

Basically, centuries ago some European towns had the "idiot king" custom where the town, "for shits and giggles," would choose someone mentally ill or feeble -as long as they were suggestible- to be their "king" for a short period of time

This came with some caveats though

First, most of the "king"s orders had to be harmless. He'd say "all must cluck like chickens" and then the townspeople would do that, all laughing and in on the joke

Second, actually destructive orders (burn the town down, declare war on the neighboring town etc) were ignored

But third, and here's how it gets sinister, the idiot king was used as a puppet to gain a casus belli, a cause for war, against hated people in the town where there normally, officially, was none

Like say you had someone who was a hated nuisance to all but had broken no laws

The people would fill the idiot king's ears with poison about that person nonstop. Finally, being suggestible, he would "order the hit" and they, their "hands bound by his orders," would beat the person within an inch of their life, if not kill or expel them altogether

This was one of the main motives all along, but a facade of reasonable civility had to be put up to keep the social fabric from disintegrating altogether, so the idiot king was made up as a smoke screen custom which really granted the townspeople extrajudicial authority