As that cartoon lion once famously sang before killing his uncle and shagging his cousin, I just can’t wait to be king! It’s not a sentiment I was expecting to be writing when I first fired up The Sims 4’s latest major expansion, Royalty & Legacy – I’m hardly what you’d call an enthusiastic monarchist – but here I now am, several hours in; scheming and extorting my way to the top, drunk on unearned power.
In Royalty & Legacy, a Sims’ regal ascent is tied to the concept of Nobility. Any Sim can be a Noble, and all that’s required to get started is a throne, a knighthood, or – the cheaper, more straightforward option – a book purchase and a bit of research into their ancestry. But first, I turned to the forgotten depths of my harddrive, plucking out Daxton Flood – a young adult Sim of limited fortune and humble living – for what I’d vaguely envisaged to be a sort of rags-to-riches story.
As exotic as the Noble life might seem in reality, Royalty & Legacy simplifies it down to a fairly standard Sims 4 career. By completing various tasks, a Sim can slowly rise through the ranks of Nobility, earning money, power, and opportunity as they go. Which brings us back to Daxton Flood – now wrenched away from his happy, familiar life in Ravenwood and relocated to a drab fishing shack in the new world of Ondarion. And credit to Maxis, Ondarion is beautiful; a gorgeously detailed coastal region split into three distinct neighbourhoods: the art-loving Dambele, the opulent Bellacorde, and Verdemar, a quiet coastal corner that once served as home to nobles and pirates alike. And, really, who could resist that kind of storytelling prompt: son of a legendary pirate resurfaces and becomes unruly pirate king? Of course I was in.
Or at least that was the plan. But it didn’t take long to veer off course once the power started trickling in. As a Noble, each promotion – from humble knight through the likes of viscount and duke on the way toward king – requires a Sim to complete a checklist of vaguely thematic tasks. And so Daxton’s earliest days were spent polishing his Charisma in front of the mirror, nipping off to practice waltzing and swordsmanship, or vanishing on rabbit-hole-style Noble Ventures. And while the benefits of promotion start off fairly small – a couple of Noble-skewed social interactions – things steadily grow more interesting. It wasn’t long before Daxton was holding court, giving speeches, and making life-changing decisions for his subjects after listening to their woes. And eventually it’s possible to enact powerful decrees in your kingdom – boosting the likelihood of pregnancies resulting in twins or triplets, perhaps, or increasing the payout of creative pursuits if you enact the Artisan’s Proclamation.
And while all this is going on, Royalty & Legacy keeps track of your Noble Alignment, responding accordingly depending on whether your actions most frequently favour the proletariat or the nobility (did you spend your afternoon helping out at the local school or mocking the poor?). Imagine my surprise when a well-dressed stranger showed up with a nicely wrapped gift – containing, it turned out, a pile of trash, making his feelings on my reign entirely clear. Sometimes too, you’ll receive missives in your letter box, praising your grand beneficence, or slapping you down with thinly veiled threats. You can, if you wish, fire a few responses back from atop your throne. Which really did set the tone for everything to come when I discovered the only place big enough to put one was in the yard next to Daxton’s bins.
Daxton’s grasp for kinghood didn’t exactly start swimmingly, but soon enough we were getting the hang of this whole Nobility thing. We set up a family dynasty for future heirs and began working toward unlocking some powerful boons; we enacted a couple of entirely self-serving decrees, put the gladrags on for a nobles-only ballroom whirl, kissed a couple of frogs (no handsome princes this time, just slimy lips), failed at extracting the mythical sword in the stone, won a quick swordfighting tournament in the afternoon, and slipped away for an illicit tryst with a gentleman from an opposing house at sundown. Scandalous!
And secrets are their own currency in Royalty & Legacy. After finagling a friendship with a fellow noble so they’d dish the dirt on some of Daxton’s less malleable acquaintances, we learned some very interesting things. One of Daxton’s love rivals, for instance, had taken to the dark arts in order to manipulate her extended social circle. And armed with this shocking knowledge, he could happily orchestrate her downfall. Extortion is one option if you’re looking for a specific outcome, but exposure also brings its own machiavellian sense of reward. And having exposed her secret on social media, I was delighted to see she’d been blighted by a random assortment of debuffs – mockery in the streets, a frequent need to pee – for the next few days.
But what goes around and all that. After a pretty good streak as supreme ruler of my glorious trash yard – peasants delighted by Daxton’s beneficent rule, poshos slightly more irked – it all went a bit wrong. Royalty & Legacy introduces Backrooms, a lot-type that serves as one thing by day and another by night. And having heard rumours of a bookshop-turned-red hot night spot over in Dambele, it seemed like the perfect place to continue Daxton’s steamy affair away from prying eyes. Which turned out to be true – but then disaster struck when a drunken swordfight resulted in a spectacular loss on the way home, Daxton becoming embroiled in his own scandal of shame. Nobody likes a loser. And guess who found out, sweeping in for her revenge?
You can, of course, ride out a scandal – secreting your Sim away until the hungry mob finds a new target and the debuffs have gone. But that kind of skulking didn’t seem in character for Daxton and his ordinarily proactive approach to bin-adjacent rule. So I purchased a podium and used his Noble powers to call a press conference in front of his humble abode – it’s all about the optics! – after which news-hungry journos and curious onlookers began amassing in their droves. And the full-throated apology Daxton so convincingly delivered would probably have done the trick if I hadn’t suddenly discovered the option to make him instantly nude.
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from Royalty & Legacy, assuming it’d be a little too far removed from my usual, more grounded Sims 4 playstyle. And while it definitely feels like an expansion primarily designed to fill a very specific role-playing niche, its systems – even if they are built on familiar foundations – coalesce in a way that really sells the illusion. And even though it’s hard to feel comfortably all-in on anything The Sims right now, given EA’s controversial new ownership, I can’t pretend I didn’t get swept up in the adoration, manipulation, and corrupting influence of power. Will Royalty & Legacy stay in my DLC rotation for the long term? The jury’s still out – but maybe Simba had the right idea all along.
