Venice was one of the world's wealthiest cities, due partly to its favorable geographic position. But its unique political system allowed it to prosper relatively peacefully, while its Italian rivals were engulfed in civil wars among the various powerful families struggling for control. Rather than build guard towers and maintain personal armies to rip each other apart, the Venetians built an elaborate political system to neutralize the power struggles and allow everyone to focus on making money instead. The first step in this stability was to list the city's leading families in the famous Golden Book, and only these families and their descendants could participate in government. Utterly unfair to the 99 percent of people not in the book, but at least everyone knew where they stood. Of course the guys in the book could still be killing one another for the top prize, so they took the additional step of making the top prize pretty unattractive.



The families in the Golden Book were all part of the City Council, whose only real function was to elect members to a series of more important councils, which in turn selected the Doge. He was always elderly, with an average age of 72, and served until he died. He got to wear elaborate clothes and live in a great place, as you can see in the photos. But in return, he lost all privacy, with chaperones with him for all meetings and reading all his correspondence, even with his wife, to ensure he couldn't engage in the usual plotting. He also had to pay for the running of the government himself and received no salary, and despite his advanced age, had to lead the Venetian military into battle for every campaign. He also risked exile if Venice suffered a defeat, so these last two rules tended to make Venice less battlecrazed than its neighbors. All in all, it was a prestigious way to end your days, but was hardly lucrative and overall pretty unappealing.