>As Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World, millions of people probably prayed earnestly for God to save their king/queen
Knowing how most kings and queens have behaved throughout history, I think Sagan suffered from a faulty premise. The queen everyone loved best made it to 96.
>>NoMore+(OP)
IIRC, European elites (nobility and royalty both, and royals more than lesser nobles) until something like the 17th-18th century overall lived shorter lives than the general population, largely because they spent more of their lives in cities, which were extremely unhealthy until fairly recently; more recently, though, British royalty has, for example, been living much longer [1] than the British population at large.