In the Traditional hierarchy the warrior and the king occupied the second and, in certain formulations, the highest active ranks. Their function was to uphold and to defend the order whose spiritual foundation was maintained by the priestly or sacred authority. The warrior ethos was not mere violence. It was the disciplined capacity to risk the self for something that stood above the self.
The modern age has dissolved both the warrior type and the royal function into technical and administrative roles. Courage is reinterpreted as the willingness to express emotion or to challenge social norms. Leadership is measured by managerial competence and by the ability to maintain consensus. The older qualities of detachment in action, of faithfulness to an oath, and of readiness for sacrifice have become residual.
The young man who feels the pull of the warrior type must recover those qualities in a form that is possible under present conditions. The battlefield may no longer be the primary arena. The arena is the daily resistance to softness, to the demand for perpetual safety, and to the reduction of every commitment to a temporary contract.
The kingship that remains possible is first the kingship over oneself. The man who can command his own forces, who can remain upright under pressure, and who can act without being ruled by appetite or by fear has already restored, in miniature, the royal function. From that restoration a different relation to external authority and to external struggle becomes possible.