Firstly, the term "king" may evoke some anachronisms which can be problematic when attempting to apply the term to a society as richly complex as the Mesoamerican tribes. Additionally, there are fundamental issues within definitively describing what life and the varying degrees of privilege were like for a society as ancient as the Mayans and Aztecs. Many of the findings which have allowed us to draw conclusions today are based on evidence such as glyphs and reports from predominantly archaeological findings. Much evidence has been lost to us thanks to the devastating effects of colonization and genocide which took place during the Age of Exploration. Secondly, there are many differences in Mayan and Aztec societies. For the purpose of answering your question, I will focus exclusively on elements within the Mayan world.

Classes within Mayan society were predominately divided into three major "categories"; the noble, the commoner, and the slave. Within these three categories were what can be considered subdivisions of authority based on what Folan considers to be "occupational specializations". For example, a commoner craftsman who frequently interacted with a member of nobility would have greater social privileges then a commoner who functioned as a merchant or artisan of goods. If we are to think of this in the terms as we do today, it could be summed up as those "having connections" had a significant edge over those who did not. As a result, the idea of categories is difficult to understand in the scope of Mayan society; there were upper, middle and lower classes within the upper, middle and lower classes. However, general conclusions can be made as to what sort of people were to be found in these levels of society. Religious and political leaders predominantly dominated the upper class. War was an important component of the Mayan civilization, and thus "captains" also occupied the most powerful class. As mentioned previously, craftsman and artisans were frequently found in the middle class. These individuals could rise far higher then the level which they were born into; a relatively skilled merchant could come into a great degree of wealth and thus attain a high position of political and social power. However, the nobility was directly involved in the regulation of these classes and evidence suggests that they appear to have been concerned with those attempting to elevate themselves into the upper classes. The lower classes were those found in fields and general labour. In accordance with what I previously mentioned regarding occupational specialization, scholarship has noted that those in the lowest classes were often the least skilled workers or those who functioned as 'part-time specialists'.

Commoners typically lived in sectors that illicit thoughts of what today we consider neighbourhoods. We can learn a lot from the composition of houses in such neighbourhoods, and they remain one of the principle areas of investigation today in understanding the mysteries of Mayan society. Aspects such as the complexity of the vaulted architecture in some homes and overall spatial dimensions of homes allow us to infer that there was a clear discrepancy in wealth between members in both the elite and commoner classes. The larger houses occupied by richer men somewhat resemble the manors from medieval Europe, with large subcomponents of the household to host more people who could attend to the various enterprises they were working with (such as production of weapons, the handling of acquired goods, etc.) Districts were extremely important in distinguishing class; while commoners typically lived in residential areas, merchants often lived in civic centres which allowed them to move their goods more freely.

What we can generally conclude is that life in these societies was based around the class which you were born into and how capable you were at the task you were expected to perform. War captains less successful in the field were given less warriors to work with; part-time workers did not have the same level of rights and access to those which full-timers did. Members attempting to move through the ladder of society were heavily scrutinized by the upper classes and intensely regulated. Additionally, location was a major indicator of who you were; it can be reasonably assumed that civic centres of commerce and activity were more developed and thus technologies which improved the standards of living were more readily available to those with power and wealth. An ajaw - a political leader in Maya who could we often associate with the term 'lord' - was one who was generally superior to his peers in his duties and was able to maintain that position. This position was particularly volatile, as the definitive "rulers" of Mayan cities came from established dynasties. The death of such dynasties often resulted in an ajaw seizing power through bloodshed.

I hope this helped answer some questions. The source from which most of this information has been drawn from is Folan's Coba: A Classic Maya Metropolis. Other information was taken from academic reviews of Sylvanus Morley's The Ancient Mayas, from which I was not readily available to find a full text document on the database I used.