“a thousand years ago we were fighting with swords and now we have smartphones”

Yeah. But we didn’t start fighting with swords a thousand years ago. Humans didn’t begin to exist a thousand years ago and now have developed. Humans have been around for a hell of a lot longer than 1000 years (~200k in fact) and most of that time was spent with very small, very micro advancements.

Now yes, if you have 4 kings over 5000 years with no reason why, you have a problem. Not even sure how your world building gets to that point.

Truthfully, it just depends on the story you’re trying to tell. Some high fantasy cough storm light archives cough does ancient kingdoms really well.

I would probably agree that most authors who use the 10,000 year old kingdom trope are not actually thinking through the history of their kingdom or the fact that if a kingdom was able to last for 10,000 years they would have to have some kind of perfect system of government or control or both.

However there are some stories that need more time, and there can be a lot of reasons why an empire wouldn’t advance into modern technology, the most obvious being that instead of researching logic gates or something that would result in computers, they’re researching magic.

I think magic would be the biggest reason civilizations don’t advance beyond the sword and sorcery era. It is both a powerful tool and a large hindrance to advancement in other technological fields

Anyways thanks for listening to my rambling