I'm designing a tabletop game (shout out to /r/tabletopgamedesign) where players are trying to gain social influence and work their way up to King Louis XVI himself. I'd like the game to be populated by a cast of historically accurate characters and I'd like the game to represent something about their personalities and roles in the Paris social scene.

Who were the people I'd be trying to gain influence with and how would I be going about it?

Edit: Also are there any great reference material for this subject that you know about?

I was reading about several judges who have responded to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling by claiming that they aren't subject to the Supreme Court's ruling. I'm not seeking comments about Obergefell v. Hodges or comments that examine the parallels/differences between the two cases because Obergefell v. Hodges is a current event, but I do want to have a better understanding about the response to Loving v. Virginia so that I have a better contextual understanding when reading news about the response to Obergefell v. Hodges.

I am rather embarrassed of how little I know about the history of the world and early civilizations. I am looking to inform myself about this preferably with a book that has maps and pictures that help communicate the information. Does anyone have any suggestions of where to start? I apologize if this is a frequently asked question. I would love any suggestions.

Was it by chance? Or was there something inherent that distinguished them from other past religions?

So I'm not entirely sure this is the right place to ask, and I might be skirting the rules a bit as it might break the "20 yrs rule". Still, I don't really know where else to ask and I've been wondering about this for a while for the past... 20 years or so, and figured I'd give it a shot here. The subject matter isn't particularly serious but I am asking very much in earnest.

Anyways...

So there is a common myth that in Disney movies, specifically animated movies like Aladdin/Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast/ etc the artists intentionally incorporated "adult themes" into some of the scenes. Phallic shapes, stuff like this.

As a child and to this day I will see this assertion, evidenced by a particular scene or another in the movies. I mean, I always just figured people will "see what they want to" so to speak and that it these people were probably just reading a too much into otherwise benign imagery. Still, it doesn't seem that far fetched that an artist might try to subtly incorporate some "deviant" imagery, so...?

If anyone actually knows anything about this I'd love to get to the bottom of it.

Sorry if this isn't the correct sub for such a question.

I was watching a documentary on Henry VIII and one of the commentators said his style of governing was a template for later despots. Is this true and if so, how did he govern differently from his predecessors?

As in a celebrity is acting like a diva with all their absurd requests.

I teach history at a community college. I do both online and face-to-face classrooms. I was just thinking about next week's assignments and how exactly I will answer this question.

One of my words is certainly "tradition." There is such an interesting feedback loop into what Americans look back to as "tradition" from the Romans, and what the Romans themselves looked back to as tradition. Mos maiorum meaning "the way of the ancestors"... is just a little insight.

Romans continued to call themselves a republic after they were arguably a dictatorship, in part because of tradition, no?

Second word, "influential." Sometimes I ask whether Byzantine or later was a continuation of Roman culture, or something new entirely. Not new ideas, I know. In either case, both answers insist that the Romans were incredibly influential.

I know that Venice (like other Italian city-states) called itself a republic, and that ancient Rome produced the most famous republic in ancient times.

What I'd like to know is whether the example of the Roman Republic had any influence on later Venetians (or other Italians)?

Were Venetians aware of the Roman Republic and its structure before the Renaissance? Did they try to replicate its institutions, or avoid doing so? Did they think of themselves as following a Roman model?

Even apart from banks, what kept businesses from cheating people, around the time of the Renaissance? What sort of recourse could one get if they were cheated?

I get that the majority of Americans might be Christian, but is there anything substantially better that "Fox news told me so?"

As I understand it, legal contracts can only be binding if both parties understand. Did Native Americans truly understand what was happening? Did they have any idea about land ownership before Europeans came? Is it simply warfare that gave us the legal rights to the lands?